This digest addresses city and state takeover as a school reform strategy, outlining the emergence of takeover in the past decade, discussing promises and limitations that takeover offers, and synthesizing the research to date on takeover's effectiveness. A notable trend over the past decade is greater implementation of takeover reforms,…

Noting that the population of foster children who "age out" of the foster care system may be even more at risk than other foster children, this research brief summarizes a longer report examining trends in foster care in the United States, the number and needs of those aging out of the system, and public policy implications. The brief indicates…

The nine papers included in this book are: "The Why, What and How of Educational Reform in Japan" (Roger Goodman); "Why Reform Japanese Education?" (William K. Cummings); "Destruction and Reconstruction: A Comparative Analysis of the Education Reform in Japan and Germany under the U.S. Military Occupation After World War…

This report explores the insights and experiences of activists who build strong constituencies to reform public schools. It presents data from a 2-year study involving the seven primary constituency and coalition building grantees of the Ford Foundation's Constituency Building for Public School Reform Initiative. Data were collected from 14…

This final report describes the activities and accomplishments of the Consortium on Inclusive Schooling Practices, a federally-funded 5-year project to investigate the utility of a systemic approach for building the capacity of state and local education agencies to provide inclusive educational services. The project focused on four states…

This paper suggests ways of incorporating parent involvement in the elementary school classroom and at home, and presents the findings of a survey study examining how teachers in a New York City school in the Bronx perceived the influences of parental involvement on the development of children's literacy skills. Following introductory remarks, the…

This report describes the degree and nature of hardship among low-income and poor working and nonworking families in a nationally representative sample of kindergartners--the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (Kindergarten Cohort). Five hardship indicators were examined: (1) lack of child health insurance; (2) child has not seen doctor at least…

This report profiles the state departments of education (SEAs) in Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, Nevada, and North Dakota. These SEAs reported in 1996 that they had changed from a departmental structure (e.g., separate units for special education), into cross-cutting teams in the previous five years. Findings indicate that since…

This packet contains three papers from a symposium on organizational change. The first paper, "Kaizen Blitz: Rapid Learning to Facilitate Immediate Organizational Improvements" (Robert B. Gudgel, Fred C. Feitler), describes rapid and dramatic improvement in the organizational performance of a manufacturing firm after use of a series of…

This action research project addressed the problem of missing assignments among fourth- and fifth-graders at a school in northern Illinois. In order to document the extent to which students lacked responsibility for turning in daily assignments, the teacher-researchers kept track of missing assignments for each student and grade book records for 6…

This paper describes how characteristics of complex educational change can hinder efforts to achieve equity. It reports that factors beyond the control of educational leaders may hamper their wish of equality. The article is based on an investigation of large-scale local education areas (LEAs) and how initiatives to reorganize schools were managed…

This paper reports on a project created to improve high school students' academic success. Students in three schools in the suburbs south of Chicago were targeted. Lack of student success was attributed to several probable causes: teacher-student relationships, curriculum relevance and choice, family issues, teacher expectations, lack of…

The current approach to dealing with childhood lead poisoning has led to repeated diagnoses of poisoning because such children are treated and then returned to their hazardous environments. This handbook describes in detail the program requirements for effective childhood lead poisoning prevention programs at the local level based on the…

This collection of 13 articles looks at past practices in education for what they can teach about today. Part 1, "Schools of Tomorrow," includes these chapters: (1) "The Francis W. Parker School: Chicago's Progressive Education Legacy" (M. K. Stone); (2) "Experimental School, Experimental Community: The Marietta Johnson…

This paper reports on the experiences of schools that are attempting to change into dynamic, responsive, data-driven organizations that allow for learning at all levels. It identifies aspects of leadership that appear to be significant and discusses the problems the schools encountered. The sample for the study, conducted from 1995 to 1997, was…