In this article, the author discusses the issue of high school reform in American high schools. According to him, there are a number of reasons, but chief among them is that a consensus haven't been reached on what high schools are supposed to do. He states that America can claim it has some of the best high schools in the world, and it does. But…

Strengthening the connection between teaching and learning with high-quality feedback is critical to the success of every school (Fullan, 2001). Yet creating feedback systems that are contextually sensitive; accessible to students, faculty, and administration; and also practical to implement represents an immense challenge. Despite considerable…

In the mid-nineties, the New York City Schools Chancellor created a citywide improvement zone to take over a significant proportion of the city's lowest performing schools whose local community school districts had failed to improve them. This "Chancellor's District" defined centralized management, rather than local control, as the…

In the 1990s, federal legislation authorizing funding for secondary vocational education, increasingly called career and technical education (CTE), began to mandate accountability requirements such as improved academic achievement. These requirements have necessitated a search for ways to integrate CTE into broader school reforms that have…

This is a study of distributed leadership in the context of elementary schools' adoption of comprehensive school reforms (CSR). Most CSRs are designed to configure school leadership by defining formal roles, and we hypothesized that such programs activate those roles by defining expectations for and socializing (e.g., through professional…

This study examines the systems of technical assistance and support that Northwest Region states implemented during 2005-2006 for schools in need of improvement. By highlighting key characteristics and differences among state systems, the intent is to stimulate an analysis of what states can do and what issues they might address to move schools…

Leadership development has traditionally focused on administrators' responsibility for promoting and enhancing school improvement efforts. Today, there are a growing number of educators who believe leadership in the classroom plays an equally significant role in building a strong school culture. In Teacher Leadership, Elaine L. Wilmore offers a…

During the summer of 2006, Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and union officials announced that the Pico Union area of East Los Angeles would soon be home to the Belmont Zone of Choice (BZC). The BZC encompasses the Belmont High School attendance area and will include up to 10 Belmont Pilot Schools, each with a targeted enrollment of 400…

For five years the major school reform agenda in America has been the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, which was part of the most recent reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). Now ESEA is up for another reauthorization by Congress, and everyone is wondering what is going to happen next. One could argue that there is…

This article explores what it takes to develop systemic strategies and structures that engage youth as coconstructors of their learning environment and experience. It looks at efforts nationwide to engage young people in educational change endeavors, draws on lessons learned from a national high school reform initiative, and addresses some…

Charter schools, and other market-based reforms such as school vouchers and the student tutoring provision of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, are steeped in politics largely because they challenge the legitimacy of traditional power and funding arrangements in public education. The charter school reform is a significant public-private hybrid…

Dropout prevention programs are school- and community-based initiatives that aim to keep students in school and encourage them to complete their high school education. To be included in the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) review, programs have to operate within the United States and include dropout prevention as one of their primary objectives.…

The importance of the beliefs and attitudes of teachers and building-level administrators in achieving school reform has come to be widely acknowledged. As University of Wisconsin professor Kent Peterson put it: "You can implement a good-quality improvement plan and knowledgeable, data-driven decision making, but if the [staff] doesn't…

In line with other public sector provision, the English school system has been subject to modernization since the advent of the New Labour government in 1997. This article views the reform of education in the light of the movement towards new public management and traces the process of the reform of workforce remodeling that has seen the shedding…

The purpose of this ethnographic study is to examine how a commitment to socially just pedagogies influences the core practices and policies of a school. This article presents a comprehensive description and analysis of two public middle schools committed to teaching for social justice: Urban Promise Academy and San Francisco Community School.…