National restructuring organizations are described in this paper, with a focus on those that work across districts to support multiple aspects of school restructuring, rather than within-district or state organizations. Data were derived from interviews with individuals in each program and from program descriptions and secondary sources. Section 1…

Schools increasingly are ineffective institutions for a growing number of children and youth. Problems of the schools are connected with other institutional problems within the family and the health care system. As a society, Americans have tended to wait until children's needs and problems have reached epidemic proportions and then have provided…

The California agenda for middle-grade reform is based on 10 regional networks, each composed of 1 foundation school and approximately 10 partnership schools. Background information on middle-grade reform implementation as of 1988-89 and recommendations for improvement are provided in this interim evaluation, the first in a series of two reports.…

Schools must move away from individualism and toward more participation and shared decision making to meet the needs of society. Eight schools in Maine School Administrative District #4 adopted site-based management in an attempt to do this. Several important goals must be set in restructuring schools. First, students must enter the marketplace…

Findings of a study that examined the working conditions that teachers face in an urban school district in the southern United States are presented in this paper. A survey mailed to 1,329 teachers in 15 secondary and 68 elementary schools produced an approximate 50 percent response rate per school. Interviews were also conducted with the union…

Without a deliberate emphasis on designing and using technology to improve the organization of schooling, even the best learning technologies will have limited long-term impact on our educational system. Research has identified two key conditions of good schooling: students can learn well when they are actively engaged with multiple resources and…

This publication outlines the ways in which school districts are implementing school reform. Information in this resource directory is based on a survey of national affiliate districts and members of the National School Boards Association's (NSBA) Federal Relations Network. Section 1 discusses school reform, the role of school boards in improving…

This lecture examines the failure of the United States to produce literate, mathematically competent high school graduates and criticizes "cyclic faddism" as a ploy of desperate educators who keep going back to methods that have been tried and found wanting. Bright spots in education are cited, including the achievement of Jaime…

Issues in school choice as a method for achieving educational reform are discussed in this booklet. The first part provides a brief historical background of the school choice movement, including an analysis of the issues being debated over the marketplace theories and the general philosophy behind school choice. The second part highlights a few of…

Questions that must be addressed to ensure successful implementation of financial delegation to the schools are presented in this paper. The features necessary to successfully introduce increased financial delegation to the schools are described. Key questions are presented to help readers evaluate their own plans. The questions involve the…

This paper discusses a series of questions that state policymakers can use to assess the systemic nature of their education reform efforts. Suggestions are offered for identifying the evidence of scope, coherence, and balance of reform. To assess the scope of reform, a first step is to determine if the performance-based standards provide the…

This book brings together ideas and strategies of prominent advocates of school reform. Discussing their experiences, especially in urban schools, in forming coalitions, framing court cases, and dealing with state politics in New Jersey, Texas, Illinois, Michigan, Alabama, Kentucky, and Washington, the contributors to this collection explore what…

This paper describes a study of teachers in an elementary school, how they constructed and viewed their understandings of social and professional organization, how these understandings were modified as the central values of the organization, and how its social and political context underwent significant changes. The report focuses on the values…

Teacher empowerment is a cornerstone of educational reform efforts. This study measured dimensions of teacher empowerment with a census of the 3,677 teachers in 169 Ohio public elementary schools initiating self-designed state-funded restructuring. Mailed surveys examined six dimensions of teacher empowerment (decision-making, professional growth,…

When Kentucky established a comprehensive reform of its schools in 1990, it targeted the nature of professional culture, norms, and activities in education. To explain this reform movement, a narrative analysis of research reports targeting various aspects of the 1990 Kentucky Education Reform Act is reported here. The focus is on identified…