This article provides a brief historical context and analysis of current middle school reform efforts to promote student engagement by facilitating social relationships. International comparisons of perceived social climate are presented to assess whether sense of belonging and support are lacking in American schools. Research documenting…

Background/Context: School districts are responsible for helping schools improve learning for students. However, many district initiatives conflict with each other or with existing instructional practices in schools. Recent research on urban school reform points to the value of program coherence in sustaining school change. Our paper addresses an…

In 1988, Illinois entered into a 5-year commitment, called the Illinois Alliance of Essential Schools (IAES), to implement the Coalition of Essential Schools (CES) philosophy in several secondary schools. This paper presents findings of a study that examined how IAES schools defined the program's nine Common Principles and the implementation…

School-based management (SBM) offers a mechanism to promote school improvement through decentralization. Decentralization can occur only gradually and cannot simply be implemented. The power to make decisions influencing organizational policies must shift to school-based councils comprised of administrators, teachers, parents, community members,…

Changes in the principal's role--from a manager to a facilitator--are integral to most recent restructuring efforts such as the accelerated schools process. Traditional ideas about the role of the principal appear inadequate to the challenge of restructuring now facing the schools. Some researchers in the field have described the principal's new…

Across the nation, governors are leading reform efforts to transform their public education systems to meet world-class standards and the National Education Goals. In the midst of controversy about school restructuring, governors are faced with the challenge of defining a middle ground. The National Governors' Association (NGA) identified some of…

This guidebook was designed to be used as a resource by teachers and school administrators interested in implementing school-based reforms. It provides examples of promising reform strategies and lessons learned from a national study of school-based reform. The congressionally mandated study of Effective Schools Programs was conducted by an…

Can Total Quality Management (TQM) improve the performance of school systems in meaningful ways? This paper evaluates the soundness of TQM as an improvement program for education by comparing its philosophy and prescriptions with the mounting theoretical and empirical wisdom on introducing and sustaining large-scale organizational change and more…

Paradoxically, educators can be quite successful at building the necessary community coalitions around their restructuring efforts and yet experience isolation from their peers who are also engaged in restructuring work. This publication describes outcomes of a program that linked schools working to implement the Nine Common Principles of the…

A new paradigm for evaluating school restructuring that is based on the teacher-as-researcher concept, or action research, is presented in this paper. The first section compares the traditional and new evaluation paradigms. The old model is competitive, one-dimensional, reactive, and based on external change agents; it appeals to fear and views…

Decentralization has been one of the centerpieces of education reform in the United States over the past decade, yet the results so far are not encouraging. This booklet presents findings of a study that explored the hypothesis that decentralization efforts have failed to relax external constraints on schools or to enable school staffs to make…

Although the role of the school library media specialist is frequently undervalued, the media specialist can become a leader in restructuring a school through strategic planning methods. The book shows library media specialists how to help direct the planning team that is developing the vision of the school's future. The overall strategic planning…

School-based management refers to a form of educational administration in which the school becomes the primary unit for decision-making. The book is structured into five parts. In part 1, international developments in school-based decision-making and management are documented and analyzed. Described are developments in Australia, Canada, France,…

The role of Chicago foundations in school reform from 1987 to 1990 is examined in this paper, with a focus on the paradoxical relationship between the city's philanthropic community and the Chicago Reform Act of 1988. Data were derived from three surveys conducted since 1987 on the levels and targets of educational grantmaking by Chicago…

The education system, like most organizational structures, needs fundamental changes to keep pace with the social and economic conditions of an increasingly complex global society. Taking an aerial view, this paper describes the topography of systemic change to provide multiple stakeholders a better vantage point for communicating and making…