The first part of this text on school development provides a detailed historical review of school reform in Europe and North America. The middle part of the book gives an overview of the theoretical basis for educational improvement, and the book concludes with an analysis of educational change strategies. The chapters are: (1) "The New…

Local governments play a central role in improving the lives of children and families and in piecing together solutions to other major social, economic, environmental, and political challenges. Some ways to nurture and support systems reform activities in local governments, including those of educational systems, are explored. Systems reform can…

This document contains four papers from a symposium on assessing the learning organization. "Measuring Organizational Learning: A Confirmatory Factor Analysis of an Organization Survey" (Jamie Callahan Fabian, Ralph O. Mueller, Dail L. Fields) compares two models for measuring four constructs inherent to Schwandt's model of…

This booklet lists the interim performance objectives of the Office of Student Financial Assistance (Department of Education) as required by the Higher Education Act Amendments of 1998. These interim objectives are intended to guide the office until the end of the September 1999 fiscal year. The first objective is to improve customer satisfaction.…

While America's two-year colleges are diverse in function, mission, clientele, and organizational structure, they share a common identity in their commitment to a developmental philosophy. A rarely used, but nonetheless tenable and cost-saving path to development involves exploring strategies which simultaneously contribute to faculty, student,…

Guidelines for developing personnel management programs in private-independent schools are provided in this book. Chapter 1 explains the need for a new perspective on personnel evaluation that encompasses three components: supervision, evaluation, and professional development. Chapter 2 outlines the elements of good instruction, and the third…

The leadership task for a new age of schools is to stimulate continuous innovation, rather than to manage for compliance using outdated standards of work. This paper presents a typology of work cultures--the varying work conditions of schools and the challenges they present to principals in developing high-performance work cultures. Data were…

Quality is an important part of the process of managing institutional change. This book focuses on how Total Quality Management (TQM) as a management philosophy translates into practice, both in school systems and corporations. Data were obtained through observations and interviews conducted at 11 sites--4 companies and 7 educational facilities.…

One of a series of reports documenting efforts at educational restructuring nationwide, this paper focuses on the achievements and ideas of James Comer, founder and director of the School Development Program (SDP) of the Child Study Center at Yale University. The first part of the report presents remarks made by Dr. Comer on the history and…

This document explores the changing U.S. office, from its expansion in the 1830s due to the railroad industry to its dominance in the U.S. economy of the late 20th century. This examination of the office provides a way to study the U.S.' growth from the industrial revolution to the information age. Chapter 1 provides a brief historical overview of…

This paper discusses the validity of licensure examination results as an indicator of the performance of higher educational institutions. Licensure examination scores are available to departments for a variety of disciplines and analysis is best performed within the departments. The quality of feedback may dictate the usefulness of results. Using…

In June, 1989, The National Council of Jewish Women and Yale's Bush Center in Child Development and Social Policy convened the Family Day Care Round Table as part of the National Family Day Care Project. Goals of the round table were to: (1) explore hard questions about family day care; (2) identify promising programs and practices for enhancing…

This case study describes the Imaginative Educational Cooperation (IEC) Project, a program that focused on organizational development and participative decision making in two city schools. The IEC was one of nine programs chosen by the Documentation and Technical Assistance (DTA) Project as representing exemplary strategies for problem solving in…

These two articles, by Harold Wool and by H. Roy Kaplan, examine a study called "Work in America" which was written by a 10-member task force under the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. The authors then present data and discuss ways in which the quality of work in America could be improved. (EJT)

A report of an attempt to institute alternative systems of communication in a reading center in order to restructure and personalize student- teacher and staff-staff relationships. The objectives, rationale, results, and procedures involved in the design and operation of the support system are described, along with suggestions for future research.…