Research has posited a set of rather obvious, ordinary, and predictable factors making up an effective school. Three case studies from Britain, Africa, and Thailand are used to explore different contexts for school administration and how the resulting administrative reality can contribute to school effectiveness. Reforms cannot succeed without a…

The Morningside Academy in Seattle, Washington, is a remedial program for children and youth with learning problems. Working with job preparation agencies and focusing on fluency-building techniques with real-world applications, the program improves basic skills an average of two grade levels every five weeks. (SK)

A small Texas school district initiated a shared governance plan that involves teachers in decisions and innovations at each school. Cites some successful accomplishments along with problems inherent in time limits and the committee structure itself. (MLF)

Describes some of the concerns educators have about the Outcomes Accreditation (OA) model, indicating that the traditional resource standards approach has been abandoned prematurely. Suggests that a combination of the strengths of both processes will yield the best results. Provides a sample implementation timeline. (MAB)

This cross-sectional study of 190 Hong Kong elementary schools investigates how principals' leadership influences school performance in terms of multilevel indicators (organizational characteristics, teacher performance, and student performance). Survey results show that strong leadership is associated with high organizational effectiveness,…

In 1986, the Halton Board of Education in Toronto, Canada, initiated an effective schools project. This paper reviews the project, outlines some key results, and describes lessons learned about school effectiveness. Significant change is affected by school growth planning, school culture, administrative leadership, principal and teacher mobility,…

Describes a research project conducted in Kentucky that developed and tested the Kentucky Teacher Inventory, a set of teacher evaluation instruments that could be used to determine career path advancement and to examine teacher attitudes and use of that information as a means to promote school effectiveness. Effective knowledge utilization is…

Describes a collaborative, five-year project in the southwest to develop and explore ways of overcoming school culture obstacles to restructuring. Discusses four promising interconnected conditions--group dialog, public mindfulness, "outsider" questioners, and dialog facilitators--using examples from the project school, which seeks to…

Investigates how school organizational culture is related to important organizational characteristics and how the profiles of strong culture-effective schools differ from those of weak culture-inefficient schools, in terms of organizational variables, teachers' job attitudes, and school effectiveness criteria. The survey of 54 randomly sampled…

Describes a study of California public-school principals aiming to identify important parameters of secondary instructional leadership, estimate their effect on school achievement, and determine whether they are the same for secondary and elementary principals. The ways that principals govern the school, build school climate, and organize the…

Britain's 1992 Education Bill closely follows the 1992 "Choice and Diversity" White Paper's advocacy of "grant-maintained" (self-governing) status for schools. These decentralization measures may prove simplistic and ineffective, because the White Paper identifies no school evaluation criteria other than popularity with parents…

New developments emerging from a study of organizational effectiveness in Australia's system of higher education are reported, and a second study is also described. The results have established a four-group typology of institutions: classical universities, institutes of technology, colleges of advanced education, and other institutions.…

Effective-schools research indicates that greater community involvement in school management usually enhances children's cognitive and affective development. Future school effectiveness will be influenced by how successfully school councils and governing bodies function. Without adequate, ongoing inservice training for participants, school…

Efforts toward excellence and effectiveness in school programs should be viewed as a powerful opportunity for gifted education. Gifted educators should work toward expanding receptiveness to lessons learned from organizational research on innovation and change, effectiveness, and improvement, and educators should recognize that gifted education…

Gifted education faces a quiet crisis as reform movements focus on cosmetic administrative changes in school organization and management rather than interaction among teachers, students, and the material to be learned. Two goals of American education are presented: providing the best possible education to promising students and improving the…