This theme issue includes eight articles that discuss partnerships between schools, colleges, and businesses. The partnerships are members of the National Network for Educational Renewal (NNER). "School-University Partnerships: Fundamental Concepts" (J. I. Goodlad) outlines the concepts, agenda, and structure essential to…

The Schools Reaching Out (SRO) program suggests that the achievement of low-income urban students can be raised through a "paradigm shift" to beliefs in success for all children in school, and the necessity of parent involvement for achieving that success. SRO attempts to change the traditional distant relationship between schools and…

Based on the premise that an understanding of the historical context of educational innovation in American public schools is necessary to selectively choose from the great variety of current reform propositions, this report reviews trends in education from the turn of the century. The first section presents a critique of turn-of-the-century public…

A redefinition of the concept of learning necessitates the development of a "thinking curriculum." Second in a series of nine video conferences, this guidebook describes components of a thinking curriculum, which is characterized by a dual agenda of content and process. Contents of the guidebook include pre- and post-conference…

This report presents the conceptual framework for a public school choice plan for New York City and discusses why school choice represents the best hope for meaningful reform. Public school choice is defined as giving school professionals the freedom to design innovative and distinctive school programs; and giving parents the right to choose, in…

The strategies for school based management and shared decision making are seldom studied together. A written survey administered to practitioners currently using one or both of the strategies provides information for the implementation of shared decision making. Methodological limitations include a sample of 230 site personnel with a response rate…

The application of a social theory perspective to an analysis of the concept of restructuring is the purpose of this report. Restructuring is a conjunctive concept that involves changes in a school district's pattern of rules, roles, relationships, and results. A systemic viewpoint examines the reciprocal interactions between structure and process…

This study analyzes local school council (LSC) meetings in Chicago (Illinois) during their first year of operation. The Chicago School Reform Act of 1988 created a radical shift in authority from the central bureaucracy to the LSCs, empowering the LSCs to set educational policy and govern schools. The councils hire and evaluate the principal,…

Restructuring is a process initiated to substantively change the governance, operation and instruction of public schools or districts identified as failing. There are multiple definitions of restructuring, but the common thread binding all restructuring models is a substantive change of the standard operating procedures of a school or an entire…

The conversion of large urban high schools into small, focused learning centers is gaining currency as an education reform strategy. This publication provides guidelines, along with guiding questions, for those considering such a conversion. The first section explores the structural, organizational, and political challenges involved in converting…

Multiyear teaching is part of an ongoing interest in ways of organizing schools to best support the social and academic aims of education. Here, teachers are assigned to follow the same class as their students move together from one grade level to the next. In the first of three sections, the potential benefits of multiyear teaching are introduced…

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) requires states and school districts to act aggressively to turn around failing schools. NCLB lists 31 different interventions of varying degrees of severity that are available to state and local policymakers when faced with schools whose students fail to make sufficient academic progress and sets forth…

For at least 20 years, America has been engaged in the process of school reform, the most recent of which is the P-16 education reform movement. However, the phenomenon of two- and four-year colleges working closely with schools is clearly not new. A divide has developed between the educational levels, resulting in a lack of collaboration among…

The National High School Center released methods for improving low-performing high schools based on some of the most rigorous research currently available in the school reform arena. This research brief identifies lessons learned as well as key practices used to strengthen high schools and is based on evaluations of four widely used high school…

A diverse and growing body of research points to the need for an overhaul of America's public education systems. The Panasonic Foundation created its Partnership Program for systemic educational reform in 1987. Since then, the foundation has collaborated with 16 school districts and 3 state departments of education. This book informs others…