When former U.S. congressman and Obama administration chief of staff Rahm Emanuel marched triumphantly into the Chicago mayor's office in 2011, he promised to revamp Chicago Public Schools (CPS) in ways that had barely been contemplated in 16 years of mayoral control over the city's sprawling public-school system. This article discusses and…

Following his previous article in this journal on the centralisation of power in English education post the 1988 Education Reform Act ("The Era of Centralisation", "FORUM", 50[2], pp. 255-261), the author considers the apparent turn to school autonomy central to the Conservative Educational Revolution. He argues that the power…

A substantial body of evidence has shown that past reforms have largely failed to improve schools in urban areas. After reviewing some of the major reforms that have been undertaken over the last 20 to 30 years the authors conclude that prior efforts failed to address the numerous ways in which poverty influences student academic outcomes and…

"Finnish Lessons" is a first-hand, comprehensive account of how Finland built a world-class education system during the past three decades. The author traces the evolution of education policies in Finland and highlights how they differ from the United States and other industrialized countries. He shows how rather than relying on…

Like their counterparts in law and medicine, teachers are professionals whose habits and techniques and strategies--whose "practices"--must be derived and customized and refined from a panoply of available prospects. So, while there are surely some pedagogies they might gather under the umbrella of "worst practices," one effective teacher's "best…

School reformers have made forward strides in the last ten years, and public debate has acquired a bipartisan cast. But just how successful have reform efforts been? The editors of "Education Next" assess the movement's victories and challenges. Two essays are presented in this issue's "Forum": (1) "A Battle Begun, Not Won" (Paul E. Peterson,…

William Lowe Boyd's extraordinarily wide scope of intellectual interests is well represented in a rich mix of publications and presentations during his career. His work ranges from analyses of choice in education to matters of productivity, children's services, comparative school reform, educational leadership, school-community relations,…

This paper presents an array of structural configurations that invite new consideration of the necessary conditions for developing systemic school reform; first by reviewing the current literature, and then by examining thirty-six existing partnerships as structural configurations, an exploratory typology for the analysis of successful…

This study demonstrates the understandings that result from teachers' explanations of how they learn when they encounter everyday situations that evoke their learning. The study renders these explanations as a framework for further research on teacher workplace learning in informal settings. The framework emerged from a constant-comparative…

The authors examine the psychometric properties of the Collective Teacher Efficacy Scale (CTES), an instrument designed to measure collective teacher efficacy. Specifically, a multilevel confirmatory factor analysis is used to determine the factor structure of the CTES, comparing one- and two-factor models. The mediating role of the CTES factors…

As the mixed achievements of charter schools come under more intense political inspection, the conceptual underpinnings of current charter school reform remain largely unexamined. This article focuses on one moral-political concept centrally related to school reform and policy, the concept of justice. Using examples from the state of Ohio, the…

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) targeted substantial School Improvement Grants (SIGs) to the nation's "persistently lowest achieving" public schools (i.e., up to $2 million per school annually over 3 years) but required schools accepting these awards to implement a federally prescribed school-reform model.…

This summary report by the Center on Education Policy (CEP) pulls together findings from a wide array of studies on student motivation by scholars in a range of disciplines, as well as lessons from programs around the country intended to increase motivation. It is intended to start a conversation about the importance of motivation and the policies…

School reform initiatives designed to improve school quality require strong leadership, strategic planning, data analysis, and systemized performance accountability. Utilizing school reforms includes rethinking curriculum and instruction to improve quality and promote equality, restructuring school operations with a focus on both the students and…

Choice schools provide a unique laboratory where variation in governance and management structure is predicted. We examine the results from principal surveys from traditional and choice public schools, and compare challenges faced by principals and their leadership practice. Analyses show that while differences across school types are small, there…