This booklet recounts an educator's musings on what education could be for his 2-year-old granddaughter. It describes the shift in pedagogical paradigms away from the diagnostic-prescriptive approach, with its focus on identification of problems and deficiencies, toward education design, with its concern for human potential and human differences.…

States have used a variety of strategies to address financial and educational bankruptcy in public school districts and schools. The results of these intervention strategies are ambiguous. Four approaches that have been used are: (1) district takeovers; (2) mayoral control; (3) third-party partnerships; and (4) reconstitution of schools. In all,…

The Illinois Community College Board created this document that discusses accountability and productivity in Illinois Community Colleges in the fiscal year 2003. This report includes results of 131 academic, 889 career and technical education, and 54 adult and developmental education programs. The summaries include both program strengths and the…

To assess the progress of students in large urban school districts and to learn more about major reform initiatives taking place in urban schools, a study of 13 large districts was conducted. Of the 13 districts studied, 10 showed increases in the percentage of elementary school students in the highest poverty schools meeting the district or state…

Gareth Morgan's "Images of Organization" introduces readers to "holographic organization" and explores his concepts of connectivity and redundancy, simultaneous specialization and generalization, minimum critical specification, and self-organization. This paper attempts to put these concepts into operation successfully by using data, surveys,…

This report focuses on the nature of restructuring in a sample of Washington State schools, and the degree to which those changes improved student learning. The research attempted to distinguish between simply changing school or classroom practices and the broader concept of restructuring a school. A restructured school was defined as one that has…

The College of Education at the University of Idaho (UI) is embarking on the first year of a project to restructure its teacher education program and refocus it to reflect national standards and place K-12 students at the center of preservice learning. Teacher education students are being prepared to meet the needs of school students through an…

This paper reports on empirical research carried out during a two-year period in which the British government introduced a new framework for the reorganization of schools. The research assessed the views of the governors and managers of grant-maintained (GM) schools with regard to their interpretations about the future governance of their schools.…

Following substantial changes throughout the Australian education system, primary schools are no longer in the protected position of having a regulated flow of clients, a predetermined curriculum, and marginal levels of staff development. This book reviews the impact of this change on Australian primary schools, the people who are involved with…

This guide is designed to help districts and schools, participating in the federally sponsored Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration Program, meet the evaluation requirements of the program as well as their own needs for useful evaluation information. Much of the information is applicable to any local jurisdiction engaged in school reform that…

This book is part of a series of case studies that demonstrate better ways to educate Ohio's students. The case study is part of the Transforming Learning Communities (TLC) Project, designed to support significant school-reform efforts among Ohio's elementary, middle, and high schools. The text presents a case study based on a middle school in…

This book is part of a series of case studies that demonstrate better ways to educate Ohio's students. The case study is part of the Transforming Learning Communities (TLC) Project, designed to support significant school-reform efforts among Ohio's elementary, middle, and high schools. This report describes the implementation of an innovative…

This book is part of a series of case studies that demonstrate better ways to educate Ohio's students. The case study is part of the Transforming Learning Communities (TLC) Project, designed to support significant school-reform efforts among Ohio's elementary, middle, and high schools. This report describes the implementation of an innovative…

This book presents two qualitative case studies conducted in two small-town New England high schools. It is dedicated to parents, educators, and community members who are committed to school improvement. The 10 chapters are divided into 3 parts. Part 1, "Understanding the Often Problematic Relationship between Parents and Schools,"…

The practice of reforming failing schools through school reconstitution is one of the latest challenges for school system directors of evaluation and accountability. Failing schools are typically identified in terms of student test performance. However, evaluating the impact of reconstitution in terms of test score gains may not be an appropriate…