The oversight of state education reforms is explored in this paper, with a focus on the motivations of program fixers and the strategies they use to guide implementation. Fifty-seven interviews were conducted with legislators, committee staff, and legislative agency staff to analyze the program fixing process in six states--Arizona, Louisiana,…

Change by school restructuring has followed quickly on the heels of school reform that sought to mandate improvement upon teachers by bureaucratic control and compliance. It did not take long for problems of the reform paradigm to surface as teacher improvement could not be mandated. A complete restructuring of teaching and learning organization…

California's Partnership Academies tangibly reflect not just rhetorical involvement but meaningful direct private-sector participation in the education process. The Partnership Academies and their link to vocational education are compared with other programs like Adopt-a-School and the Boston Compact. The roots of the academy are traced to similar…

Guidelines for transforming and improving the nation's public schools are presented in this book, with a focus on the regional laboratory's program for educational change. The program is organized around "designing schools for enhanced learning" and is based on three principles--a focus on learning, a systemic approach to change, and…

In 1989, the Minnesota Office of Educational Leadership (OEL) was directed to develop a plan for a 2-year research project to determine the effectiveness of a learner outcome-based system of education in improving pupil learning. Ten research and development project sites comprising 17 districts and 5 educational consortia received grants of…

Focusing on the use of advanced technologies in classrooms to reshape the educational environment in which students learn, this report on Phase II of the Learning Tomorrow program contains brief descriptions of the most promising educational practices submitted by teachers in response to two nation-wide calls for Innovation in Practice. The report…

This theme issue includes eight articles that discuss partnerships between schools, colleges, and businesses. The partnerships are members of the National Network for Educational Renewal (NNER). "School-University Partnerships: Fundamental Concepts" (J. I. Goodlad) outlines the concepts, agenda, and structure essential to…

The Schools Reaching Out (SRO) program suggests that the achievement of low-income urban students can be raised through a "paradigm shift" to beliefs in success for all children in school, and the necessity of parent involvement for achieving that success. SRO attempts to change the traditional distant relationship between schools and…

Based on the premise that an understanding of the historical context of educational innovation in American public schools is necessary to selectively choose from the great variety of current reform propositions, this report reviews trends in education from the turn of the century. The first section presents a critique of turn-of-the-century public…

A redefinition of the concept of learning necessitates the development of a "thinking curriculum." Second in a series of nine video conferences, this guidebook describes components of a thinking curriculum, which is characterized by a dual agenda of content and process. Contents of the guidebook include pre- and post-conference…

This report presents the conceptual framework for a public school choice plan for New York City and discusses why school choice represents the best hope for meaningful reform. Public school choice is defined as giving school professionals the freedom to design innovative and distinctive school programs; and giving parents the right to choose, in…

The strategies for school based management and shared decision making are seldom studied together. A written survey administered to practitioners currently using one or both of the strategies provides information for the implementation of shared decision making. Methodological limitations include a sample of 230 site personnel with a response rate…

The application of a social theory perspective to an analysis of the concept of restructuring is the purpose of this report. Restructuring is a conjunctive concept that involves changes in a school district's pattern of rules, roles, relationships, and results. A systemic viewpoint examines the reciprocal interactions between structure and process…

This study analyzes local school council (LSC) meetings in Chicago (Illinois) during their first year of operation. The Chicago School Reform Act of 1988 created a radical shift in authority from the central bureaucracy to the LSCs, empowering the LSCs to set educational policy and govern schools. The councils hire and evaluate the principal,…

Restructuring is a process initiated to substantively change the governance, operation and instruction of public schools or districts identified as failing. There are multiple definitions of restructuring, but the common thread binding all restructuring models is a substantive change of the standard operating procedures of a school or an entire…