In this report, the Commission on General Education in the 21st Century--a panel of University of California faculty and administrators--issues a call for renewed attention to general education in research universities, highlighting specific reforms for University of California campuses. In addition to analyzing the historical, institutional, and…

Community-based interagency collaboration among schools and other public service agencies is one reform idea for addressing the complex conditions of children with a high level of needs. This paper presents findings of a study that explored the workings of one community-based collaboration, referred to as the Community-Based Collaboration for…

The 1988 Education Reform Act precipitated major educational change in the United Kingdom. This book is a compilation of papers originally presented at the 1994 Centre for Educational Development Appraisal and Research (CEDAR) conference at the University of Warwick (England). The papers focus on changes that have occurred and are occurring in the…

Most American visitors to Japanese senior high schools have observed only the very best public academic schools in the nation. Two-thirds of Japanese students attend other schools. This book presents findings of a case study that focused on the 12th-grade experience in a Japanese public general high school. The data were supplemented by visits to…

In November 1995, Sir Sandford Fleming College, in Ontario, Canada, developed a proposal to establish centers of specialization, or clusters of related curricula or programs that are unique in a region, and to suspend or curtail existing programs due to funding shortages. Feedback was requested from the college community, with college-wide staff…

This book provides a conceptual basis for viewing the school as an ecology of people and events that goes beyond the school walls. The book argues that everything that goes on in school is inextricably linked to the home--from patterns of thought and behavior to attitudes toward school. The book also provides strategies for parents, teachers, and…

This study was undertaken to investigate how individual teachers' opinions and beliefs serve as a basis for classroom practice and curriculum decision making. United States history teachers are not passive transmitters of knowledge; they bring their own experiences, beliefs, attitudes, and ways of looking at the world to the classroom. The…

In the early 1990s, several states developed legislation that permitted the creation of a limited number of charter schools. At the beginning of 1997, there were 428 charter schools operating in the United States. This document is the first-year progress report of the 4-year National Study of Charter Schools, sponsored by the U.S. Department of…

As of November 1996, at least 25 states had passed charter-school legislation empowering agencies of state government to enter into agreements with private individuals and groups to operate public schools. This is a guidebook for government agencies given the power to permit individuals and groups to operate autonomous public schools under state…

Recently, school-community relationships have gained popularity as a way to increase resources for schools. This paper presents results of a case study that examined the interorganizational relationship between a public school and a community-based program. Specifically, the study explored the elements involved in the implementation and…

This paper presents findings of a study that examined the leadership factors that emerged during the planning and implementation of a neighborhood schooling program for special education students with mild and moderate handicapping conditions in 12 schools in an urban school district in a community in the southwestern United States. Leadership is…

In October 1989, the government of New Zealand responded to results of a 1987-88 study on school management by passing legislation that shifted control of education from a central bureaucracy to local boards of trustees. Using a question-answer format, this document presents a model of the decentralization process as it analyzes the 1989 plan in…

This essay examines the importance of university organization to its creative capacity, in particular how the research policies and organizational structure affect the creative capability of scientists. The argument opens by exploring possible measures of institutional success and creativity. There follows a discussion of creativity and insight in…

Findings from a study on the curriculum and organization of Dade public high schools are presented in this report. An honor student mentor group conducted a literature review and held discussions with assistant principals, English department heads, teachers, and students. From this research they concluded that problems in the schools are…

The relationship of the middle-level writing curriculum to four influences on English language arts teachers' writing practices and instructional programs are explored in this report. The four variables include school organizational structure, philosophical commitment to middle-school programs, policy structure, and teacher characteristics. The…