Corporate school reformers like to call themselves just "reformers" and counterpose themselves to the "status quo." There is no doubt that the corporate/foundation crowd has successfully captured the media label as "education reformers." However, this political branding has little to do with reality or the substance of the issues under debate.…

It is imperative that career and technical education (CTE) utilize research-proven pedagogy. Pushing on relevance to arrive at rigor provides an opportunity for "limited" and "perpetual duration" real-world learning experiences to be implemented within every contemporary CTE program. This study describes how secondary CTE programs are currently…

One of the most vexing questions about charter schools--when low-performing ones should be shut down--is receiving new attention, amid concerns that lax and inconsistent standards for closing them will undermine the public's confidence in the sector. Over the past few years, a growing number of researchers, policymakers, and charter school backers…

A mainstay in NCLB and the Obama administration education plan is turning around low-performing schools. This study utilized surveys and interviews with school leaders from four turnaround urban high schools in Texas to understand student outcomes before and after school restructuring and reconstitution. Although some organizational changes were…

There are three hypotheses for this research: 1. High school mathematics students in urban public schools, who are provided interactive technology resources during normal course work, will experience a multiplier effect of enhanced learning in mathematics. They will have an increase in positive dispositions indicative of their identity development…

This article examines the emergence of a dialogue among urban youth about their educational condition, and the opportunities for learning and collaboration that ensue. The study is based on observations and interviews with eight students in a community-based program that supports the engagement of young people in school reform. Notably, the…

This groundbreaking volume considers the ultimate fate of the comprehensive high school as individuals enter the twenty-first century. Contributors consider whether the question of the high school's seeming demise is exaggerated and why it is experiencing the many problems that it does. Essays focus on the United States, the United Kingdom,…

An Indianapolis-based nonprofit organization has crafted a sweeping plan for reworking the 33,000-student Indianapolis school system that would place the district under the control of the city's mayor, pare down the money spent in central administration, and give principals broad authority to hire and fire teachers. The reform plan created by the…

As the number of charter schools has grown nationally, there is increasing discussion of the consolidation of such schools into charter districts in which all schools would be charter schools from which parents would have the freedom to choose the school that they wished their student to attend. A major question is how such a charter school…

In 2003, leaders at the School District of Philadelphia, district CEO Paul Vallas and chairman of the School Reform Commission James Nevels, enlisted the help of the Microsoft Corporation in a bold effort: reshape the archaic 19th-century high school model to better prepare students, especially urban students, to live and work in the 21st century.…

Colleges and universities across the country are seeing their bond ratings drop and their budgets shrink. Employers complain that college graduates are not prepared for the workplace, and many students find themselves saddled with considerable debt and no job to show for it. These are trying times for parents, for students, and for institutions.…

Persistently low-achieving public schools around the country have received $5.8 billion from the federal School Improvement Grant (SIG) program, in addition to districts and state funds, and other supplementary federal funds. Despite all of these sources of funding, most of the schools receiving them have failed to make a dramatic difference in…

With the demands on schools to prepare its students to be globally competitive in the 21st century, schools are forced to examine new ways to meet those demands. One of the new reform ideas is that of restructuring traditional high schools into small schools within schools. Through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the North Carolina…

In 2007, two years after Hurricane Katrina, several education and child advocacy groups began discussing the depleted conditions of the New Orleans public school district. These groups came together to discuss how to create a sustainable education reform movement post Katrina. New Orleans-based community groups and outside university researchers…

Leading intellectual figures in the school reform movement, all of them favoring approaches centered around the value of competition and choice, outline different visions for the goal of choice-oriented educational reform and the best means for achieving it. This volume takes the reader inside the movement to empower parents with choice, airing…