This monograph reviews recent trends in school reform and proposes "learner-based accountability" as a new paradigm for conceptualizing and implementing school reform. The first chapter notes both an economic mandate for school change and a mandate for increased equity. It identifies key findings of the school effectiveness movement and…

The North Central Regional Educational Laboratory has developed principles for culturally responsive education, along with a series of tools to help educators respond to the needs of students from a variety of cultural backgrounds. This selective listing of promising programs and practices has been developed to provide examples of professional…

This document is the first volume of two that jointly report on schools engaged in systemic reform. "Volume I: Lessons Learned" provides an indepth analysis of restructuring efforts across 10 schools participating in the Every Student Succeeds (ESS) and other state-reform initiatives. Based on a 3-year study, the volume synthesizes the…

This document, the second of two volumes, contains individual profiles of 10 schools that participated in California's Every Student Succeeds (ESS) reform initiative. The ESS initiative created a network of schools to promote change efforts aimed at improving learning for at-risk students. The first phase of the study looked broadly at school…

This paper presents findings of a study that described the existing nature of school-based management (SBM) structures and procedures associated with school-development planning in Western Australia. It also examined the impact of SBM on the curriculum and professional activities of teachers. Data were obtained through analysis of official policy…

This book serves as a resource guide to help people engage in a healthy, informed discussion of restructuring possibilities. Its focus is on creating readiness for school restructuring, which differs from both renewal and reform. Each chapter is similar in structure and designed to stand on its own. Each is short enough to be quickly read and then…

This book provides insights into one of the nation's largest and most comprehensive school-restructuring movements, the Accelerated Schools Project. Since its inception in 1986, the focus of the movement has been on transforming schools with students at risk of dropping out into schools with high expectations of all students. This is accomplished,…

This essay explores higher education governance and resource allocation and makes a case for a new system of governance that goes beyond the traditional belief that all fields of knowledge are always and everywhere equally valuable and the mystique of department-centered governance. In an opening section the essay argues that the decline in the…

Site-based management, parental choice, and accountability for the efficient, effective, and economic use of public resources in England and Wales were key themes of the 1988 Education Reform Act. The 1993 Education Act opened the way for greater choice in the marketplace by encouraging specialization and/or selection by aptitude/ability in…

This paper discusses the findings of a United Kingdom study that examined the impact of the 1988 Education Reform Act (ERA) on a group of parents whose children would be most affected by the changes. Between the fall of 1989 and the summer of 1992, five rounds of interviews were conducted with the same sample of 138 parents from 11 different…

Focus groups are conducted each year to gather information to help Research for Better Schools (RBS) in its planning process. This document reports on the latest round of focus groups held in spring and fall 1992. Eight focus-group sessions composed of parents, teachers, and students were conducted at one elementary and one high school in…

This paper examines collaboration and consultation relative to the current restructuring and inclusion movement in education. It presents the advantages of the collaborative consultation model for serving special students, particularly those with speech and language impairments and outlines the role of the speech language pathologist in…

Schools represent a major social investment in Australia. Assessment of Australian schools' performance depends on how one defines what they should be doing and on how well they can be expected to do it. In the official account, schools are of "high quality and modest cost" when compared with their own past and other school systems. An…

"Strong leadership" is almost always listed as an attribute of successful schools. To learn the views of outstanding school leaders, each regional representative of the U.S. Department of Education (USED) convened a meeting of 25-30 local educators well known for their leadership in sustained school-improvement efforts. The groups were composed of…

Preparing educators for the challenges of an empowered school community demands collaboration among teacher educators, practitioners, and the community. This paper proposes a theoretical model of empowerment which supports university-school-community ventures. The model, which embraces intra-university collaboration and university-school-community…