At the end of August 2005, Hurricane Katrina laid bare a wide swath of the U.S. Gulf Coast. The devastation left in the wake of this natural disaster and the all-too-slow governmental response to it shocked the nation. Hidden even deeper in the media aftermath of Katrina were the stories of the particularly harsh fury that the hurricane had…

This article explores the use of the methodology of portraiture and the analytic framework of critical race theory (CRT) to evaluate success and failure in urban classrooms. Portraiture and CRT share a number of features that make the two a viable pair for conducting research in urban schools. In combination, portraiture and CRT allow researchers…

The fourth recommendation in ACTE's high school reform position statement is to dramatically improve how and where academic content is taught. Even as advanced academic course-taking and high school graduation requirements have increased, student achievement on national benchmarks has remained flat, and college remediation rates continue to…

When the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) went into effect in 2002, Georgia's statewide accountability system was already well underway. As a result, some schools faced the federal law's most serious consequences as early as 2004. That left Georgia policymakers with a dilemma on which there remains little federal guidance: what to do with…

School decentralization, which has reshaped power relations in the educational system, has empowered teachers and parents. Taking Abbott's approach to professions, the authors examine teachers' perceptions of the implications of parents' empowerment for teacher--parent relations. In-depth interviews with homeroom teachers in affluent urban…

School reform efforts across the US have focused on creating systems in which all students are expected to achieve to high standards. To ensure that students reach those standards and to document what students know and can do, schools collect assessment information on students' academic achievement. More information is needed, however, to find out…

Background/Context: The U.S. federal government has been interested in improving the performance of students who come from low-income homes since the time of Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" initiatives in the 1960s. The current administration strongly supports the belief that good schools can be created and has funded the Comprehensive…

For nearly four decades, school finance has become progressively more central in school reform efforts aimed at improving student performance. At the same time, the focus of many school business officials and policymakers has turned to efficient uses of current resources in lieu of uniform increases in school funding. With regard to improving…

This article focuses on the growing role of the private sector in public education and the implications of this role on issues of social justice and leadership in public schooling. In the USA, until the early 1980s, teachers, school administrators, and professional school staff provided leadership in areas of curriculum and instructional…

Like the African proverb, "It takes a village to raise a child", many educational researchers charge that it takes a comprehensive school reform to raise student achievement. With the passing of the No Child Left Behind legislation in 2002, national officials authorized the Comprehensive School Reform program to support low performing…

When Jerry D. Weast became the superintendent of the Montgomery County, Maryland, public schools in 1999, he spent the summer poring over student-achievement results and demographic trends. Then he created a map to illustrate what he'd found. The map divided the suburban district, just outside the nation's capital, into two distinct areas, which…

In the world of school reform and improvement, attention is seldom paid to the role of the school board. Yet most school districts across the country are governed by an elected or appointed school board whose members are the ultimate architects of the district's plan for increasing student achievement. Therefore, a clear understanding of the…

This phrase, data-driven decision making, is familiar to most schools and districts engaged in comprehensive school reform and improvement. It reminds practitioners that their plans have a greater likelihood of succeeding if the goals and strategies within them are based on solid information and not on hunches or habit. But where can schools get…

To provide decision makers with the information they need to make informed decisions about school restructuring, The Center for Comprehensive School Reform and Improvement recently commissioned a series of papers titled "School Restructuring Options Under No Child Left Behind: What Works When?" Each of the four papers focuses on one of…

First Things First (FTF) is a major comprehensive school reform that includes three central components: small learning communities of up to 350 students and their key teachers who remain together for several years; a family advocate system, in which each student is paired with a staff member who meets regularly with the student, monitors his or…