By devolving authority to local schools, the 1988 Chicago School Reform Act sought to weaken central power in the school system and to promote greater site-based control. This report presents the voices of Chicago Illinois public school students regarding their school experiences--how they describe their teachers and peers, their classes, and…

The movement toward school-based management (SBM) has promoted the need for self-imposed accountability. This book provides specific examples of strategies that schools have used to successfully implement SBM and to enhance their accountability functions. Chapter 1 provides the rationale for undertaking accountability measures, and the second…

The third year of an ongoing research project to document and evaluate an innovative Japanese language program in grades K-5 (n=195) is reported. Two strands of research are examined. The first deals with school and community ambiance, and attempts to capture in a systematic way the attitudes and perceptions of parents, teachers, and students in…

A survey investigated the attitudes of commuter students toward distance education. Respondents were 397 students attending Purdue University Calumet (Indiana) for at least two semesters. Results indicated that if the students had the option of taking a course at home or in a classroom, 59 percent would use the distance option; over half of these…

While teachers traditionally have been evaluated by school administrators, the call for multiple and variable lines of evidence in teacher evaluation has had many proponents. To evaluate the use of multiple judges, teacher ratings from four judges using a common evaluation instrument were compared for 93 teachers from grades three and above.…

This paper examines structural antecedent classroom interventions to assist general classroom teachers in educating children with Attention Deficit Disorder-Hyperactivity Disorder (ADD-HD). The effectiveness of early classroom intervention models is explored. Modifications to physical classroom arrangements are evaluated, including open…

This annual journal issue contains 21 papers, many of which were developed as background pieces for sessions of the annual conferences of the Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education (POD). Papers are grouped into four sections on: personal reflections, faculty development, evaluation of teaching practices, and…

This theme issue includes four articles on racism in colleges and public schools and on strategies to build ethnic and racial tolerance. "Affirmative Action: Not a Thing of the Past" (Linda Cantu) reviews the history of affirmative action and its positive effects on Hispanic and Black enrollment in higher education, discusses current efforts to…

Most American visitors to Japanese senior high schools have observed only the very best public academic schools in the nation. Two-thirds of Japanese students attend other schools. This book presents findings of a case study that focused on the 12th-grade experience in a Japanese public general high school. The data were supplemented by visits to…

This review of the literature considers three issues: how out-of-class experiences of undergraduates contribute to the goals of higher education and valued outcomes; the institutional conditions that encourage students to use out-of-class time in educationally purposeful ways; and the role of all members of the campus community to foster such…

This study assessed the learning environment resulting from a reformed first-year curriculum at the University of Michigan Medical School. First year medical students (N=435) provided demographic information and rated their academic and clinical preparation, aspects of the learning climate, and the level of their cognitive and behavioral skills…

Celebrating diversity is critical for maximizing the benefits of the diverse makeup of faculty, students, and communities served by colleges. Understanding the importance of diversity is important for academic leaders because their attitudes towards diversity influence the perceptions of others in the institution and can affect hiring practices…

High school educators can learn much from the middle school reform movement and apply its strategies to change interdisciplinary teaming and student advocacy programs. Many high schools today still operate with an outdated, impersonal, departmentalized, and factory-model approach to schooling, in which students do not develop a sense of belonging…

This paper addresses the main issues related to concepts of school effectiveness and their implications, with a focus on the selection of school-performance indicators. School effectiveness has many definitions, which is in part due to the different demands made by various social groups. The boundaries of performance within which schools should…

This book argues that democratic education should equip citizens to be "the measure of all things." The volume contends that the voices of society should develop the skills of questioning, criticizing, and reconstructing the language of the day in order to dissect the rhetoric of politics, economy, and culture. But the volume asserts that these…