Where dominant models of urban school reform often regard immigrant communities as obstacles that must be managed or reduced, the two projects analyzed in this study ("Alianza" and the Project) regard the community as a powerful source of knowledge and as partners working towards educational improvement (Nygreen, 2009). This paper…

This article profiles the 5-year-old Bronx Lab School, a shining achievement in Chancellor Joel Klein's aggressive program of creating new, small schools, almost 400 of which have opened over the past seven years. It's unprecedented anywhere in America. Bronx Lab--which shares the building with similarly sized schools focused on areas such as…

This article presents the author's reflection on his experiences of teacher evaluation implemented in South Africa and his interest in researching this contentious topic in South Australia. He is of the opinion that his research will serve as a source of knowledge generation to teachers with respect to: a) "greater personal, professional and…

This book's title, "I Used to Think... And Now I Think...", is borrowed from an exercise often used at the end of teacher professional development sessions, in which participants write down how what they've learned has changed their thinking. The resulting essays model the ongoing process of reflection and growth among those deeply committed to…

This article argues that processes of disconnect and capture have affected Nepal's efforts to decentralise its education system, leading to a failure to engage the very stakeholders--parents and communities--that the reforms sought to reach. Specifically, disconnect occurred in the development and implementation of the latest…

For 70 years, the Union City School District used a line-item budget system, a top down approach that was regarded by many as "deaf, dumb, and blind." This antiquated central administration process gave school leaders and staff little, if any, input into the distribution of resources for their schools, resulting in a redundancy of allocations,…

The rhetoric of education today tends to divide the world in two: between those who favor "reform" and those who don't. Many who consider themselves reformers say they stand in opposition to the "status quo." Some of them speak of the need to challenge the "education establishment," or the education bureaucracy. Many also describe their policies…

The United States education system depends on legislation and funding at the federal, state and local levels. Public understanding of assessment therefore is important to educational reform in the USA. Educational reformers often invoke assessment information as a reason for reform, typically by citing unacceptable achievement on some measure or…

Since their inception more than 150 years ago, Catholic schools in the Diocese of Scranton were autonomous, locally managed entities. This completely changed on July 1, 2007 when the schools were reorganized into geographically determined regions, each governed by Central Office. This change replaced local authority over, and responsibility for, a…

Kansas City (Missouri) Public Schools is at a crossroads. The district has struggled for decades with poor academic achievement, dwindling enrollment and budget, and short-term superintendents--27 in the past 40 years. Most recently, after a two-year stint during which he helped the district get its financial house in order, closing nearly half of…

Proposals for school reform often focus on large and sometimes controversial systemic changes, such as charter schools, accountability standards, and changes to the way teachers are hired, fired, and compensated. Although these reforms may offer great opportunity to improve student outcomes, they may also be costly, face substantial implementation…

For many years, England has been the epitome of high-stakes accountability, often playing leapfrog with the USA. It represents an extreme of centralized surveillance, with schools organized as a quasi-market and supervised through a punitive combination of external inspection, the use of test data to name and shame schools, and ultimately closure…

With the restructuring of the senior secondary education system in Hong Kong in 2009, the senior secondary curriculum was overhauled substantially by the conversion of the two-year Certificate Level and the two-year Advanced Level to a new three-year senior secondary level. This process entails changes to the contents and organization of various…

Droves of school turnaround providers are chasing the massive federal infusion of funds flowing into failing schools. They arrive armed with glossy materials, impressive sounding claims, and, often, citing their prior relationships or experiences with one's school to support their promises of great service and impressive outcomes. But, are their…

Professional school counselors' leadership capacity may well play a pivotal role in educational reform in the twenty-first century. Crucial to the success of this vision, supported by the American School Counseling Association, is the perspective of system-level supervisors of school counselors. This exploratory qualitative study employed in-depth…