Describes the debate over how and when the community college movement spread from the Midwest to California. Presents evidence that the University of Chicago's William Rainey Harper was working in 1900 to convince three California colleges to drop their upper division and become junior colleges. Considers the role of David Starr Jordan in the…

As Chicago has discovered, small schools make pursuit of systemic school improvement more manageable. To succeed, restructuring must begin with a group of like-minded teachers. Schools must be constructed vertically, allow considerable choice, and be autonomous. Sidebars show individual students' attitudes toward gangs and deteriorating school…

A technological revolution is erupting all about us. A millionfold rise in computation and communications cost effectiveness will transform all industries and bureaucracies. The information revolution is a decentralizing, microcosmic electronic force opposing the centralizing, controlling Industrial-Age mentality persisting in schools. Television…

During 3-year period, Arizona junior high school's site-based team developed and implemented 10-step process for becoming middle school. They assessed the school and community, researched school reform, built a team, developed a mission statement, set goals and empowered staff members, established teaching teams, trained staff members and parents,…

Discusses the use of technology in education, the restrictions placed on student achievements through current policies, and describes efforts by the National Alliance for Restructuring Education to restructure schools, including the Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow project. Student performance, performance assessments, and new school organizations are…

Teachers' ability to act as full professionals is significantly limited by textbook programs in state and local curricula as well as the use of standardized achievement tests. Curriculum reform and upgrading of teacher professionalism go hand in hand. (SK)

Graded school concept, born of administrative practicality and puritanical traditions, has promulgated its lockstep curriculum, its simplistic child development assumptions, and its sexist, isolationist teaching methods since the mid-1800s. Most natural learning environment calls for heterogeneous multiage groupings, within which other groupings…

Explains the Republic of Belarus's new educational system, stressing its universal and democratic values, national-cultural foundation, scientific character, humanistic and ecological orientation, social and practical activities, encouragement of talent and erudition, and compulsory basic (nine-year) education focus. Describes types of educational…

Some school systems are taking fresh approaches to school change, experimenting with using teams within school as change vehicles, rather than relying on innovative individuals or attempting to convert whole faculty at once. Principal is usually a key team member. Established practices are usually challenged once a team has been built and charged…

Analyzes the evolving U.S. principalship between 1960 and the present, focusing on three influential roles: program manager, instructional leader, and transformational leader. Assesses these roles in light of contextual changes, particularly developments in national and state educational policy. Unfortunately, a strong administrative leader image…

To determine whether reform initiatives should be adopted by rural schools, the standards of equity and quality should be applied. Specific criteria for implementing the standards can be derived from the problems and strengths of rural schools, in terms of input, process, and outcome indicators. (SK)

Recounts a fictitious high school's steps to build support for whole school change. To create a framework for change, Farragut High developed a vision statement of organization characteristics and a profile of current school characteristics and assembled people to coordinate the change process. A hands-on leadership role for the principal was…

This paper compares academic performance of American students with that of other countries; addresses responses to poor performance, such as outcome-based approaches to learning and use of national standards; outlines practices being adopted by schools to promote reform; identifies curriculum reform principles; and discusses implications for…

Summarizes results of an in-depth study of 25 elementary and middle schools in 11 districts in the United States, Canada, and Australia. Some schools were actively restructuring; others were going through the motions of school-based management with little instructional change. The most successful SBM plans were those that empowered new decision…

After 1987, Gorbachev's initiatives provoked strong educator discord over the extent of desirable national education policy change and the rewriting of the nation's history. Classroom teachers and low-level administrators pushed for greater decision-making authority at lower levels. By 1989, these differences had settled into a pattern of ongoing,…