Children spend more time in school than in any social institution outside the home. And schools probably exert more influence on children's development and life chances than any environment beyond the home and neighbourhood. The purpose of this book is to document some important ways schools influence children's development and to describe various…

In Australian educational policy debate, advocacy of choice and diversity has come to be linked to support for educational markets and therefore with educational reform and restructuring associated with "economic rationalism." This paper argues that choice and diversity are better conceived within a framework of democratic educational…

This book was designed to help school, parent, and community leaders acquire the skills necessary for the successful restructuring of middle-level schools. Chapter 1 defines middle-level education and describes the forces that shaped and continue to shape middle-level education, the evolution of middle-level schools, and current middle-level…

This handbook describes skills and competencies that are consistent with the most generally accepted middle school philosophies. These include the philosophy that middle schools should be student-centered, should ease the transition to high school, emphasize an integrated curriculum, and implement instruction that emphasizes active learning.…

A study of 24 elementary, middle, and high schools conducted by the Center on Organization and Restructuring of Schools (CORS) found that simply adding school-based support services to bureaucratically organized schools is unlikely to prove effective, and does not necessarily produce better student achievement. However, the research linked schools…

Charter schools have emerged as the latest model for school reform. This handbook contextualizes the emergence of the charter-school concept by examining both the broader political shift in educational governance toward local control and the more specific movement in school reform toward greater institutional autonomy and school-based change. The…

Although differences in the organization of public and private schools are a focus of school reform discussions, those differences are not well understood. Using data from a national sample of secondary schools in the 1990-91 Schools and Staffing Survey, conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), this report examined…

The Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey and Public Education Agency Survey are annual state-level collections of information about the numbers and types of public schools and education agencies, the numbers and selected characteristics of students, dropouts, and the numbers of staff. This report summarizes statistics from each of…

Contracting in public education is not a new development. This book examines projects that transfer the management of entire schools or school systems to private firms. Chapter 1, by Rima Shore, is a comprehensive survey of the practice of contracting out in public education. It provides a broad historical background for the U.S. education system…

The Talent Development Model for high schools was developed to fill a major current void in American education--the lack of a proven model of high school effectiveness. This report presents the essential components of the Talent Development High School, a model of changes in high school organization, curriculum, and instruction based on research…

Each year, comparable and comprehensive data about all of the nation's public elementary and secondary schools, local education agencies (LEAs), and state education agencies (SEAs) are collected through administration of the Common Core of Data (CCD) Surveys. This report summarizes CCD data for a period (1986-87 to 1990-91) during which major…

This publication contains a brief description of secondary education in Spain. It constitutes one part of a series entitled "Guide to Secondary Education in Europe," developed as part of a Council of Europe project. Chapter 1 presents a general overview of the Spanish education system, with a focus on secondary education. Chapter 2…

This paper describes an elementary school's attempts to give its students a "moral education." The school's program emphasized participation and discussion while stressing rules and principles of cooperation, trust, community, autonomy, and self-reliance. School personnel initiated a more democratic environment by moving the locus of…

This review of literature and research concerns innovative programs and services for students in the transition between elementary and secondary schools. Chapter 1 identifies the areas of focus, methodology, context, guiding assumptions, and report structure. Chapter 2 looks at the characteristics and needs of early adolescence and discusses the…

This study assesses community-sponsored Jewish supplementary high schools, and its implications were analyzed and applied to proposed closings and mergers among Catholic schools in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania). Data were gathered via administration of a questionnaire, follow-up interviews, an examination of published articles and reports and…