The Chancellor of the New York City Board of Education was required to set minimum standards of performance and establish the accountability plan for all schools in the city's decentralized school system. The system includes 32 community school districts. A 29-member commission, which held periodic one-day meetings, developed the standards for the…

This House committee staff report concerns the impact of educational policies and practices on at risk students and minority teachers. These two groups have been adversely affected by rapid changes in education. Demands for higher standards and expectations have not been matched with adequate resources to meet the special needs of these students…

The effectiveness of a commercial preparation class in New York City for the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) was studied. A group of the regular clientele of the school (55 eleventh graders) was compared with a group of low-income minority students given scholarships to the course (33 Black or Hispanic eleventh graders). The effects of the coaching…

This paper uses research and propositions to argue that staff development funds provided under Chapter 1 of the Education Consolidation Improvement Act of 1981 be used to integrate understanding of the special needs and prospects of and for Chapter 1 students throughout a school. Rather than isolate staff development opportunities within a Chapter…

This paper provides responses to questions which address the effectiveness of California's instructional program and possible strategies for its improvement. The text mentions several topics including "excellence for all"; the needs of a "demographically changing student population"; James Coleman's notion that public schools…

This paper reviews current educational research and philosophy on effective school characteristics and discusses how to put them into practice. Prevailing beliefs among educators have advanced from "there are good and poor learners" to "there are faster and slower learners" and now to "most students are similar in learning…

Change processes at the school building level are considered in order to formulate a number of locally based strategies, derived from research, for significantly improving schools and classrooms. Part I of the three-part analysis examines, through illustration, what is known about successful change processes at the school and classroom levels.…

This report describes a study which tested the applicability to rural schools of "effective school" research, which focuses on characteristics associated with schools found effective through analysis of standardized student achievement test scores. Strategies for providing input from local personnel included research awareness sessions,…

Reported on is an analysis of rule systems established in successful elementary school classrooms. The report's first chapter provides an introduction to this verification inquiry, part of a larger study, Ecological Perspectives for Successful Schooling Practice. In chapter 2, the sample, methodology, and data analysis procedures used in the rules…

An examination of definition, causes, variables, and strategies of implementation suggests the kinds of data necessary for measuring school effectiveness. By focusing on students who first enter school below grade level standards and by understanding that student learning is embedded in a system of key elements or variables that, over time, are…

Drawing from a review of the literature and on-site observations, this paper sets forth a comprehensive framework for organizational renewal within the community college. Part 1 focuses on the adaptation of organizational life cycle theory to community colleges. Building upon a broadened definition of human development and the related hierarchy of…

This book comprises part I of the eighty-sixth annual yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education. Focusing on the theme of the ecology of school renewal, this volume consists of 12 articles by different authors. The first five articles focus on school improvement: "Structure, Process, and an Agenda" by John I. Goodlad;…

In 1987, under pressure from its accreditation agency and the state, Broward Community College (BCC) initiated the Institutional Effectiveness and Assessment Project to improve the college through outcomes assessment. The project had four interrelated components: (1) a revision of BCC's mission statement to incorporate a new section on…

This paper examines the current and future roles of organizations such as education laboratories in serving the changing needs of urban education. Concerns for greater effectiveness in support services stem from the growing need to effectively deal with some of the complex, lingering issues which to data have been only marginally addressed. Urban…

This paper describes a plan to improve school effectiveness in the Tulsa (Oklahoma) Public Schools by incorporating instruction in thinking skills. The program selected by the school district was the Strategic Reasoning Program, based on Albert Upton's Design for Thinking and J. P. Guilford's Structure of the Intellect. The Strategic Reasoning…