To an unprecedented degree, this is the era of educational entrepreneurship. Unconventional thinkers have waded into the world of K-12 education, founded influential organizations, and upended conventions. They have developed new models for delivering instruction or recruiting teachers and have applied old-fashioned practices with inspired…

The traditional way for parents to determine which public school their children will attend is as simple as looking at a map. But in some cases, what is the right campus from the perspective of school district planners is not the one desired by students or their parents. As school systems have embraced education reforms in recent years, some…

Neither school reform nor the focus on developing accountability systems that measure and evaluate the success of schooling are new or innovative educational practices. Even before the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001, many states had changed or were changing their accountability and assessment systems. Similarly, individual school…

This Research Brief provides a summary of the following study: Lachat, M. A., & Smith, S. (2005, July). Practices that support data use in urban high schools. "Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk," 10(3), 333-349. The Brief describes the methodology, suggestions for school improvement, and challenges identified in the…

This is the sixth in a series of issue briefs to be written for The Center for Comprehensive School Reform and Improvement during 2006. The impact of organizational culture on student achievement is discussed in this issue brief. Gaining a deep understanding of what a strong, positive organizational culture looks like and how it works can help…

The authors report on an evaluation of a comprehensive school reform initiative in one elementary school intended to provide meaningful and sustainable structure, substance, and support to the school's critical need to improve students' standardized test scores. Serious implementation and communication problems during the year of the evaluation…

Since 1988, considerable state and school/district energies have been devoted to implementing Re:Learning in Pennsylvania. This paper summarizes Re:Learning activities in the school district of Lancaster, in particular, McCaskey High School, which was recognized for the scope and quality of its implementation efforts. Re:Learning is a national…

D. B. Bailey and S. A. Palsha (1992) proposed two modified versions of the Stages of Concern Questionnaire for measuring teacher concerns during a reform effort. Their analysis suggested the use of a 5-factor model with 35 items or 15 items rather than the original 7-stage, 35-item Concerns Based Adoption Model (CBAM). The present study was…

The problems facing public education in the United States today are many. School-based management is one type of reform that takes into consideration the diversity of student populations and builds shared goals among the students, staff, school, and community. This paper summarizes research findings on the components of effective school…

Over the past 10 years, New York has more than doubled its spending on elementary and secondary education, in a fervent attempt to produce greater student achievement and prepare our young people for the fast changing world in which they will have to earn a living. Better results have not been produced as the education system has focused on more…

The California agenda for middle-grade reform is based on 10 regional networks, each composed of 1 foundation school and approximately 10 partnership schools. An interim evaluation of the reform effort, which occurred from 1988-90, is presented in this executive summary of two annual reports, "Technical Report 1" and "Technical…

This paper examines the strengths and weaknesses of the first-year implementation of the school restructuring pilot project in Baltimore City Public Schools. Implemented in 10 elementary, 2 middle, and 2 high schools, the project sought to implement school-based management to enhance student achievement. Data were collected from a survey of…

In Senate Joint Resolution No. 117, Virginia's General Assembly endorsed the process for restructuring education in the middle school grades and requested that the Board of Education determine the appropriateness of designating the middle school as a separate level in the educational structure. The study summarized in this report first considered…

Economic and demographic changes in the United States signal a new mission for education--one in which the schools are responsible for ensuring that all students learn. This paper argues that this changed mission requires a new paradigm for school reform policy, one that shifts from designing controls intended to direct the system to developing…

This paper argues that the realities of school restructuring in Canada are experienced and perceived differently among different teachers, by the same teachers at different times, and between teachers on the one hand and students on the other. Realities of restructuring are often divergent and dissonant in nature. No one group has an inherently…