This study explored the effectiveness with which Catholic secondary schools served students from low-income families, with particular emphasis on the usefulness and results of tracking. Teams of researchers spent one full week in each of three Catholic secondary schools on the east coast gathering data through interviews with students, teachers,…

Over 11,000 parents of pre-high-school-age children from the Archdiocese of Washington (D.C.) rated the importance of eight factors which influenced their decisions to send their children to Catholic schools. The sample included about 2,000 non-Catholic parents with children in Catholic schools and about 1,700 Catholic parents with children not in…

This paper is designed to help educational leaders improve their decision making strategies (and correspondingly educational practice) by evaluating their own strategy in concert with a model proposed in the paper. The proposed model provides educational leaders with an enhanced context within which one can effectively analyze and evaluate…

Profiled in this report are exemplary schools selected for national recognition through the Elementary School Recognition Program. Section 1 describes the national recognition program and the criteria and processes used in selecting schools. Section 2 presents basic background information about the schools: their community settings,…

Professional computer education organizations serve a valuable function by generating, collecting, and disseminating information concerning the role of the computer in education. This report touches briefly on the reasons for the rapid and successful development of professional computer education organizations. A number of attributes of effective…

Because organizational effectiveness of schools is difficult to define, a model is needed to explain the complexities of the concept. Two models offer some promise. One is the goal model, which defines effectiveness as the degree to which organizations meet or surpass their goals (either official or operational). The other is the system resource…

Replicating Success, a school improvement program in Philadelphia, is designed to raise the achievement level of all students in 30 selected, racially isolated, low achieving schools. Each school undertakes an extensive needs assessment process and then develops an individualized schoolwide plan which takes into account the characteristics of…

To what extent can school principals provide effective educational leadership? Research shows that, contrary to textbook images, principals react to their circumstances instead of controlling them and that they spend most of their time on administrative, not instructional, matters. Further entrenching principals in their administrative role is the…

This paper describes and explains three needed developments for building a foundation from which knowledge unique to a profession of educational administration can emerge and thus improve school effectiveness. Each needed development is associated with a general need for a shift in the focus of scholarly attention. Researchers need to focus first…

Productive changes in schooling throughout the 1980s are contingent on emphasis being placed on school effectiveness rather than on curriculum adjustments. Today's curriculum sprawl, caused by the state and federal legislatures' penchant for creating courses to cure newly-emerging social ills, must not deplete resources that should be directed…

Research studies on educational reform show that moving from reform to quality education through centrally designed reform movements (such as clearer legislation or other strategies) is inherently limited. Reform is most likely to succeed when schools are stimulated to change and provided with appropriate assistance and when schools receive enough…

Asserts that the widely cited set of characteristics of effective schools cannot be substantiated. The lack of research supporting the formula raises questions about school effectiveness programs. Recommends a synthesis of approaches that meet a school's needs and include a broader political agenda. (CJH)

Schools need more incentives to begin to produce more "thoughtfulness." As it is now they respond by "getting by" because they are only held accountable for minimal levels of achievement. Policymakers need to develop a different system of acccountability. (MD)

Describes experiences in a Black English course in which teacher and students mounted the charge of making schooling relevant and useful when they decided to mobilize on behalf of a Black classmate whose unarmed brother was killed by white policemen in Brooklyn, New York. (JOW)

This article describes what principals can do to establish a school environment that incorporates a true multicultural atmosphere and that reflects the student body and the community from which it comes. Two sub-topics are the cognitive/learning climate and the affective psychological climate. (JL)