For the use of teachers and administrators involved in designing and maintaining structures that promote teacher and student engagement, two case studies using pseudonyms were prepared for classroom discussion. The first case, "Hillside High School," describes the process of reforming a traditional school. The second, "City Park Secondary School,"…

Restructuring schools implies not only different organizational structures and different ways of operating, but different underlying assumptions. Restructuring schools would include changes in human relationships, changes in incentive structures, changes in how people work and relate to one another, and changes in some of the assumptions made…

A plan to promote parental school choice, namely, the Cambridge Controlled Choice School Desegregation Plan, is described in this report. The introduction presents a definition and the history of school choice, and the second chapter offers a program description of the community context, an overview of the public school situation in Cambridge,…

It is widely assumed that empowerment represents the organizational transformation strategy to help schools fulfill a broad array of announced goals, such as academic excellence, economic prosperity, military security, and social equity. This paper directs a demystifying light on the rhetoric and rationality of organizational transformation theory…

The AED Center for School and Community Services has applied decades of research to pioneering successful approaches to school reform. It has also evaluated--and helped to advance--some of the most exciting initiatives in American education. In the tradition of AED, the Center defines "education" broadly. Recognizing the interdependence of many…

This paper is focused on the last of the fourth options in the "What Works When" series, a series designed to help district leaders understand what is known about when and under what circumstances each of the four options works to improve student learning. The goal of this series is to help district leaders determine which change is the…

The Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory asked state department of education staff members of Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana to recommend Title I schools that had made significant improvement in student achievement. The Title I schools have schoolwide or targeted assistance and vary in size, grade configuration, diversity, and…

The attitudes of deans of the faculty of education at Turkish universities about educational change and the restructuring process were studied. Responses were received from all 42 deans of faculties of education in Turkey. Deans wanted change to occur at the highest levels of the educational system, but indicated that they themselves did not…

Many studies of school restructuring during the 1980s profiled teachers and administrators; however, little research examined the students who attended schools undergoing change. This book spotlights students in five high schools that participated in the Coalition of Essential Schools (CES) reform network. The CES is a school-reform partnership…

Despite their progress, most schools in Kansas' Quality Performance Accreditation (QPA) System fall short of the philosophy and practice envisioned by QPA. What has been accomplished and what remains to be done in QPA is detailed in this two-volume report. It was found that teachers working together were at the center of improvement. Schools where…

Sweden is undergoing a school decentralization process from a formerly centralized system. This report examines how school personnel are adapting to the changes. Schoolteachers, administrators, and staff members were interviewed, and, where appropriate, responses were coded for numerical assessment. Additional data include school-reform plans for…

This paper proposes a framework for the application of psychology to schooling that engages collaboration among users and has the potential to improve education outcomes. The assumption underlying this approach is that effective application to social and schooling contexts are self-directed, active, and experiential. The Learner-Centered…

This guidebook provides evaluation assistance to district and school staff. It was published in response to the Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration (CSRD) Program, passed by Congress in 1997 to provide incentives and support for low-performing, high-poverty schools. CSRD is an attempt to ensure that schools conduct evaluation of whole-school…

This booklet is the fourth in a series of "hot topic" reports, that address current educational concerns. The booklet examines questions relating to grade configurations, its purpose being to increase awareness and understanding of the issues surrounding grade span. It explores the ways that schools have addressed concerns associated…

This paper examines how teachers' expectations of their ability to produce student learning varies within teaching assignments. In the study described here, 359 teachers in 9 restructuring secondary schools in 1 district estimated their ability to perform common teaching tasks in 4 of the courses they expected to teach in the coming school year.…