The American public education system seems to be resistant to curative measures. This book is a journalistic account of Cleveland Heights High School's unsuccessful struggle to achieve excellence and equity. The high school, located in a middle-class suburb of Cleveland, implemented the Model School Project in 1988 to address the persistent…

A review of research traces the history and development of staff development and inservice teacher education during the 20th century. Current research suggests that if teachers were to consider staff development as one of their most important responsibilities, they would have a profound influence on the direction their school would take in…

This study looked at the experience of four high school teachers as they worked to develop a collegial community by implementing the "Connections" program. The teachers were on the faculty at Cedar City High School in southern Ohio where their subjects were, respectively, English, Social Studies, and Physical Science; one teacher was in…

Shared decision making (SDM) as an element of educational reform promises enhanced quality outcomes and appeals to educators who see virtue in the idea of people coming together to plan what is best for themselves and their students. Analyses have shown, however, that school councils implementing SDM rarely tackle operational classroom decisions…

This case study examines one School Community Consultative Committee (SCCC) involved in planning and implementing a primary school Human Relationships Education program in Australia. Developments on the local level that have led to this type of parent participation are outlined. Findings from two literature reviews on parent participation are…

This monograph concentrates on the components of collaborative cultures and how schools develop such collaborative cultures. Urban schools face unique challenges in the frequent lack of resources and the special needs of their often disadvantaged populations. The school culture is a unique quality of the school that is a complex web of norms,…

Among several innovations in public school curriculum and financing, the 1990 Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) also included a school-governance provision. School-Based Decision Making (SBDM) Councils include administrators, teachers, and parents in addressing school-level curriculum and instructional issues. These groups have not had a…

For the 1992-93 school year, the Indiana Department of Education awarded planning grants to 10 school corporations and special education cooperatives which applied to be Inclusion School Pilot Sites. Funding was provided for activities related to planning and becoming more inclusive. Visits and interviews at the sites led to conclusions about…

Problem posing is a tool for developing and strengthening critical thinking skills. Freire expanded on the idea of active, participatory education through problem-posing dialogue, a method that transforms the students into critical coinvestigators in dialogue with the teacher. Problem posing begins by listening for students' issues. Teachers…

This document consists of a high school level study unit on decisions that faced the United States with respect to the Soviet Union following World War II. In applying the choices approach to the problem solving, the unit calls upon students to become active participants in the history-making process. To enhance authenticity, the lessons rely on…

Written in Spanish and English (on facing pages), this manual is a practical guide for those interested in forming a worker-owned cooperative. It includes examples based on the personal experience of teaching about cooperativism and worker-owned cooperatives to a group of construction workers with diverse levels of education; vocabulary and…

This practicum was designed to improve preschool, kindergarten, and first grade teachers' group decision making skills in order to encourage program continuity from grade to grade in schools in a culturally diverse metropolitan area. A second aim was to use shared skill building to reduce isolation and improve problem solving among preschool and…

The nature and direction of educational reform and the principal's role in it are examined in this book. Information was gathered from a questionnaire that was mailed to an unspecified number of leading principals and administrators in each of the 50 states. A selected number of the initial respondents participated in a follow-up questionnaire.…

This paper describes the implementation of the School-Based Improvement (SBI) model in the Austin Independent School District (AISD), Texas, which was piloted by a total of 28 schools during the 1990-91 and 1991-92 school years. Evaluation was conducted through a review of campus improvement plans and student achievement data, interviews with six…

This paper outlines a framework designed to help school districts evaluate themselves during the implementation of systemic change. Based on the experiences of districts that participated in the NEA Learning Laboratories Initiative, a process called "rapporteuring" was developed. The process provokes the particular site into serious…