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…

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…

The prevailing mental model of schooling is a series of linear events resulting in an educated individual. To make a school a learning organization requires systems thinking, interconnected team learning, and the collective intelligence of shared and personal vision. (SK)

Provides an overview of research in educational implementation studies and presents guidelines on what works, and what does not, regardless of ideological bent toward educational change. (MMU)

One study of corporate culture and another of the Network of Restructuring Schools identified factors related to innovations: (1) they vary in quality and uniqueness; (2) they are hampered by conflicting expectations, traditions, and inertia; and (3) they can be nurtured by school culture. (SK)

Urges renewal and revitalization to sustain middle school reform. Discusses the nature of middle school reform as an ongoing process of refining middle school concepts, practices, or programs to make them better for students. Highlights articles in this issue. (JPB)

Describes Pathways to High School Success, a restructured high school program created by the Rochester City (New York) School District to allow students to earn a diploma in 3, 4, or 5 years. (PKP)

A key provision of No Child Left Behind is the opportunity for students to transfer from a low-performing school to a high-performing one. Drawing from a case study of school reform in Charlotte, North Carolina, this article examines the implementation and early outcomes of NCLB's voluntary transfer option for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School…

Comprehensive school reform (CSR) projects are being funded throughout the United States in a determined effort to improve the performance of public education. The multidimensional nature of comprehensive school reform presents unique challenges for explaining widely discrepant outcomes among schools. These challenges are addressed in a study of 8…

While national professional organizations have masterfully crafted standards in an effort to guide school reform and curriculum, a vast chasm has developed between implementation and assessment. Many of these standards, which are inquiry-based and liberating to teachers and students, are, in actual practice at the state level, neither of these.…

The passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2001 brought new urgency to the task of turning around low-performing schools. While many schools have been identified as needing improvement under NCLB, only a small percentage have failed to make progress for long enough--six years--to be subject to restructuring, the most serious consequence…

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…