The Conservative Government's education reforms of the past 6 years in England and Wales, beginning with the Education Reform Act of 1988, embody a strategy designed to pursue the following 5 themes: quality, diversity, increased parental choice, and greater school autonomy and accountability. The government's rationale for reform makes no…

Year-round education (YRE) has been brought increasingly to the forefront of the debate over educational reform. Although the results of year-round school studies are mixed, three specific elements are evident in successful programs--reduced curriculum review, increased instructional time, and improved student outcomes. This report introduces the…

Findings from a study that explored teachers' and principals' views on restructuring are presented in this paper. Methodology involved interviews conducted with 14 elementary, middle, and high school teachers and with 15 public school principals in New York, Illinois, and Tennessee. Three issues that will affect the future directions of…

Findings from a study that examined the perceptions of different educational stakeholders about the context of schools and educational change are presented in this paper, which views educational change from within a transformational framework. The focus is not only on goals, but also on the beliefs and expectations of the stakeholders in the…

National restructuring organizations are described in this paper, with a focus on those that work across districts to support multiple aspects of school restructuring, rather than within-district or state organizations. Data were derived from interviews with individuals in each program and from program descriptions and secondary sources. Section 1…

Schools increasingly are ineffective institutions for a growing number of children and youth. Problems of the schools are connected with other institutional problems within the family and the health care system. As a society, Americans have tended to wait until children's needs and problems have reached epidemic proportions and then have provided…

The California agenda for middle-grade reform is based on 10 regional networks, each composed of 1 foundation school and approximately 10 partnership schools. Background information on middle-grade reform implementation as of 1988-89 and recommendations for improvement are provided in this interim evaluation, the first in a series of two reports.…

Schools must move away from individualism and toward more participation and shared decision making to meet the needs of society. Eight schools in Maine School Administrative District #4 adopted site-based management in an attempt to do this. Several important goals must be set in restructuring schools. First, students must enter the marketplace…

Findings of a study that examined the working conditions that teachers face in an urban school district in the southern United States are presented in this paper. A survey mailed to 1,329 teachers in 15 secondary and 68 elementary schools produced an approximate 50 percent response rate per school. Interviews were also conducted with the union…

Without a deliberate emphasis on designing and using technology to improve the organization of schooling, even the best learning technologies will have limited long-term impact on our educational system. Research has identified two key conditions of good schooling: students can learn well when they are actively engaged with multiple resources and…

This publication outlines the ways in which school districts are implementing school reform. Information in this resource directory is based on a survey of national affiliate districts and members of the National School Boards Association's (NSBA) Federal Relations Network. Section 1 discusses school reform, the role of school boards in improving…

This lecture examines the failure of the United States to produce literate, mathematically competent high school graduates and criticizes "cyclic faddism" as a ploy of desperate educators who keep going back to methods that have been tried and found wanting. Bright spots in education are cited, including the achievement of Jaime…

Issues in school choice as a method for achieving educational reform are discussed in this booklet. The first part provides a brief historical background of the school choice movement, including an analysis of the issues being debated over the marketplace theories and the general philosophy behind school choice. The second part highlights a few of…

Questions that must be addressed to ensure successful implementation of financial delegation to the schools are presented in this paper. The features necessary to successfully introduce increased financial delegation to the schools are described. Key questions are presented to help readers evaluate their own plans. The questions involve the…

This paper discusses a series of questions that state policymakers can use to assess the systemic nature of their education reform efforts. Suggestions are offered for identifying the evidence of scope, coherence, and balance of reform. To assess the scope of reform, a first step is to determine if the performance-based standards provide the…