This document examines the restructuring of local schools and how restructuring can involve students with disabilities and the special education programs that serve them. The document is designed to create awareness of the issues related to restructuring and programs for students with disabilities and puts forth options for reconsidering and…

This booklet, the third and last in a series of monographs on solutions to the problem of school dropouts, is designed to provide guidance for local organizations to address the needs of students at risk of dropping out. It sets forth the goals and objectives of a planning approach that illustrates how local communities could organize to increase…

This document presents findings of a nationwide study that examined the extent to which American high schools are implementing various restructuring activities. A survey mailed to principals in all of the nation's 10,365 regionally accredited public and private high schools elicited a 33 percent response rate. Seven indicators of major school…

In the spirit of educational reform, the purpose of this paper is to review the literature and present six empirically derived dimensions underlying the construct of teacher empowerment. The dimensions were obtained from a study conducted on school empowerment in nine school districts across the country from 1989 to 1992. Empowerment has been…

This book points to the need to attend to ever-present inequalities of education in the light of new political correctness, technology, and curricula. Following the introduction, chapter 1 offers a review of neoconservative, liberal humanist, and radical theories of education. Chapter 2 suggests that one way to rethink and restructure the nature…

This digest provides a process for assuring that the unique needs of students who are gifted are addressed within the context of systemic educational reform. Several key elements guide the process: creating belief statements, clarifying the issues, and designing strategies for implementation. Generating belief statements based on what is believed…

This is the second of a two-volume briefing book that examines education issues in California from 1983 to the present. It includes summaries, findings, and recommendations from selected California education studies and reports published since 1983. The material is presented verbatim. Topics include: a summary of California's Education Summit;…

This document contains the Virginia Beach superintendent's report to the school board on the adoption of a resolution that supports school-based management (SBM) and shared decision making. On December 17, 1991, the school board passed the "Resolution of Support for School Based Management and Shared Decision Making." The report contains…

As society moves into the information age, changes need to be made in the educational process to ensure that students will have the skills they will need in the changing workplace. By keeping abreast of the changes in society, education, and training, instructional technology professionals can play a key role in restructuring the educational…

Inherent, interrelated, and structural biases against excellence in education that operate at the university and school levels in the American educational system are discussed in this paper. Structural constraints of the American secondary system include universal secondary education, comprehensive school organization, downward coupling, local…

This study examined the feasibility and advisability of using telecommunications in the Chicago Public School (CPS) system to support school reform that has been mandated by recent legislation. Survey research yielded information on the current status of staff development and Local School Council (LSC) training, and provided the basis for…

In the United States today, policymakers and citizens believe that the quality of their schools must be improved. Reform policies and strategies are the focus of the first section of this report. The four areas identified are the perception and interpretation of the problems of quality, the methods of preparing reform or ad hoc measures, the main…

The demand for educational reform has reopened several debates concerning fundamental aspects of education. Three of these debates--the goals of education, school governance structures, and the locus of control for reform--are linked to teacher participation. This paper suggests that education's goals could best be addressed by action research…

Conditional deregulation of federal elementary and secondary education assistance programs, that is, waiving one or more program regulations in return for some additional accountability, has been proposed in recent years and endorsed by the Bush administration. The "America 2000" legislation proposes a broad authority for conditional…

The Neighborhood Schools Improvement Act (H.R. 3320) was ordered to be reported by the House Committee on Education and Labor on October 17, 1991. This report provides an introduction to the "systemic statewide reform" concept, on which H.R. 3320 is largely based, plus a summary of the bill, and a discussion of selected issues related to…