To help public schools experience free-market competition, Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander and President Bush propose parental choice among private, parochial, and public schools, supported by public financing for program design and tuition grants. Sidebars highlight church/state separation concerns and school choice experiments in…

Proposes steps to address the broad developmental needs of children at risk. Discusses implementation of the President and Governors' Education Summit national performance goals to reform the schools and improve education, especially the goal involving readiness to start school. (BB)

Quantitative and qualitative analyses show that in 24 selected restructuring elementary, middle, and high schools, professional community is strongly associated with technical (measured as authentic pedagogy) and social (measured as social support for achievement) dimensions of classroom organization. The relationships between authentic pedagogy…

Thumbnail sketches of four schools in Edmonds School District (Washington) illustrate ways they have built strong parent and community relationships: parent volunteers in a parent-cooperative school; a family-oriented neighborhood school; a school offering school-based health and social services; and a Cyberschool that provides resources to…

A Virginia science and technology high school restructured its ninth-grade curriculum by clustering three core courses in an integrated program. Students work with resource managers at Mason Neck National Wildlife Refuge to gather data on species inhabiting the area. They prepare well-researched reports and present them to peers, faculty, and…

Examines current proposals and efforts to reform the Russian school system, assessing their prospects for providing an answer to the needs of Russian schools in this era of teacher shortages. The paper discusses new teachers' qualitative and quantitative needs, the teacher education system's response, course organization, and curriculum. (SM)

Evaluates the effectiveness of a field-based doctoral program in educational administration on linking theory and research to the improvement of practice. Evaluation of the theory-practice emphasis at the University of Utah's program suggests that the program is successfully meeting its objective of promoting change in schools. (SLD)

One university, in partnership with educational, business, and community agencies, established an early literacy and learning model to improve literacy among at-risk young children. The initiative was founded on the concepts of collaborative restructuring, reading research, high-performance learning environments, and family involvement. It has…

Research has established that small schools create intimate learning communities where students can be encouraged by caring adults, reduce student alienation, reduce negative effects of low socioeconomic status, and encourage teachers to help students succeed. Strategies for creating small learning communities within large schools and findings on…

Describes the Teacher Education Initiative (TEI) longitudinal study of seven restructuring partnerships, discussing three themes that emerged from the cross-site analysis: the TEI's nine principles are guiding the practices of the professional partnerships; restructuring has affected schools more significantly than universities; and professional…

This case study reports the feasibility of the Partnership Schools Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) model for school improvement in a Title I elementary school. Interviews were conducted and documents were collected for 3 years to study whether and how the school implemented key policy attributes--specificity, consistency, authority, power, and…

If successful school reform rests largely on the capabilities of individual teachers and groups of teachers to deliver high-quality instruction, then a key component of teacher workforce development is teacher learning. One of the prominent ways in which educational leaders shape school conditions and teaching practices is through their beliefs…

The European steel and metal sectors have experienced processes of radical restructuring. Employers within the sector increasingly require employees to have a broader and deeper range of skills, although restructuring has also highlighted the need for workers to gain transferable skills in order to increase their employability. This paper, which…

Higher education faces common worldwide challenges imposed by social and economic factors. Yet, each system has its own challenges and demands that need to be looked at within its own context. Higher education in Saudi Arabia faces three challenges: limitation of places, depletion of resources, and quality measures. Some measures have been…

This monograph uses longitudinal, student-level achievement data provided by the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) to examine differential achievement effects in the 45 privately operated schools, in the 21 schools that were restructured and given additional resources in 2002, and in the 16 schools (known as the "sweet 16") that…