Offers perspectives on meaningful restructuring, drawn from years of experience with the nonprofit Community Training and Assistance Center in Boston. Relying on remedial reforms or additional program layers is generally counterproductive. Meaningful (systemic) restructuring moves simultaneously from the top of the hierarchy downward and from the…

The traditional seven-period high school schedule is undergoing intense scrutiny. New schedules are reducing class preparation time; permitting students to move ahead, attend alternating full-day vocational and academic programs, and perform community service during regular school hours; and allowing teachers more productive instructional modes.…

Based on the author's experience with the Atlas Community Project, this article identifies six different types of knowledge needed to mount a comprehensive reform effort: technical, resource, local, process, strategic, and organizational. Efforts to promote comprehensive changes do not necessarily make the reform processes markedly more successful…

Examines effects of three variables (staff involvement level and quality, individual attitudes and perceptions, and management style) on change processes in 20 British elementary schools. Survey data indicated that only five schools made demonstrable progress in managing real cultural change. However, 11 others recognized they needed to do so.…

Studied teacher support of New American Schools (NAS) school reforms and factors related to the implementation of NAS designs through survey data from at least 5 teachers from each of 155 schools and 155 principals. Teacher views of the adequacy and communication by designs are related to teacher support for the design and implementation. (SLD)

Presents an overview of the articles in this special issue and defines scaling up and externally developed school reform. Key elements for successful scaling up are highlighted. (MMU)

Collective bargaining must be transformed and encapsulated so that more effective vehicles can be used to pursue professional and school-reform goals. Trust agreements, waivers, and a season for bargaining are options needing further exploration. A professional union should reform both its contract language and its attitudes. The adversarial model…

Studied the views of Israeli principals about school decentralization and restructuring policy. Findings from a survey of 50 principals shed light on the potential of the reforms, the hardships principals face implementing them, and the complexity of implementing decentralization policies. (SLD)

Describes the reasons for renewed interest in the K-8 school model, including dissatisfaction with middle schools, research linking improved academic achievement with K-8 grade configuration, and parent support. Includes examples of districts that have converted middle schools to K-8 schools. Identifies the challenges districts face in moving to…

This article will follow Gerda Lerner's line of thinking in regard to the conceptualization of women in history, since women as a group are not necessarily "visible among those making decisions." The challenge, according to Lerner, is to examine the traditional sources in social studies history for "androcentric bias... [and] seek…

The articles in this issue represent the growing body of literature in the field of education focused on problems of race. More specifically, these articles draw on the theoretical tenets of the New Race Group of Legal Studies or what is more commonly referred to as the critical race theory (CRT) movement. The author's goals in this article are…

The comprehensive school reform (CSR) models build consistency throughout a district while addressing the needs of individual schools. The high-quality CSR programs offer a most effective option for urban education reform.

This article examines the restructuring of administrative staff in universities through empirically documenting such processes and providing a theoretically founded interpretation and analysis of change. The empirical material is drawn from a context of Norwegian universities the last two decades. Two major changes can be observed in this period.…

The purpose of this article is to discuss an approach to analyzing the interactive effects of multiple reform efforts within a school or school district. The approach resulted from an intensive study of reform in one district in a state characterized by a strong accountability system. First, the authors present a brief history of educational…

This article reports on findings from a longitudinal study of leadership in the context of a region-wide school renewal effort entitled the Bay Area School Reform Collaborative (BASRC). BASRC's theory of action is multifaceted, incorporating a focus on distributed leadership, continual inquiry into practice, and collective decision-making at the…