This article describes how the Chicago schools system has been bedeviled by the social conditions faced by the city's inhabitants, and now by attempts to use privatization and school closures as the "solution" to those problems. The article describes how teachers in the Chicago Teachers' Union combined with community members to challenge…

A group of New York City public school teachers, angry about the depiction of public schools in 'Waiting for Superman," decide to make their own film about the realities of the current education reform movement. They persevered even though they had no budget when they started and lacked a background in filmmaking. "The Inconvenient Truth…

Students learn or progress at their own paces. Each needs different amounts of support, at different points in a school career and at different times of the school year. Some need very little help to stay on track, while others are facing serious challenges in learning, in their behavior, or at home, and need significant interventions. It would…

Where dominant models of urban school reform often regard immigrant communities as obstacles that must be managed or reduced, the two projects analyzed in this study ("Alianza" and the Project) regard the community as a powerful source of knowledge and as partners working towards educational improvement (Nygreen, 2009). This paper…

The idea that one of the Catholic Church's most respected religious orders might run a public school sounded odd, maybe even, as Francis Cardinal George, head of the Archdiocese of Chicago, conjectured, illegal. But a decade ago several trends in American education, and in the Catholic Church, made a Catholic-operated public school seem…

The National High School Center's "Eight Elements of High School Improvement: A Mapping Framework" provides a cohesive high school improvement framework comprised of eight elements and related indicators of effectiveness. These indicators of effectiveness allow states, districts, and schools to identify strengths and weaknesses of their current…

The author never worked "with" a boss before working with Ted at Brown University. She had always known of Ted--he was Dean at Harvard Graduate School of Education when she was a student there, just beginning her teaching career. Ted arrived at Brown University in September 1984. She was working at Brown in President Howard Swearer's…

This report provides an overview of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program and the author's plan for evaluating it over a five year period. It also presents a brief summary of the main findings of the four distinct topical reports that the author and his colleagues have completed for 2006-07--the baseline year of the evaluation. Those four…

This report, the third annual report on the Restructuring and Collaboration Fund (R&CF) of the Higher Education Funding Council for England, summarizes the progress and projects being funded through the R&CF that had been approved before the end of December 2000. Section 1 is a summary table listing all projects and grant allocations…

The Massachusetts charter movement facilitated Boston's development of pilot schools (in-district charters), which posed a dilemma for staff, students, board members, and codirectors of Fenway Middle College High School. A year later, a coalition of pilot school leaders is glad they stayed in the system and pursued high-level educational…

One way of garnering grant funding to support restructuring projects is to establish a districtwide grants development office. This article describes a low-cost grants office in the Norfolk (Virginia) Public Schools that employs one administrator and one part-time clerical support person. An overview of the grants development and proposal writing…

This article describes how the Coalition of Essential Schools Northwest/Small Schools Project (CESNW/SSP) works with schools and districts to help them shape and then implement a coherent strategy that will lead to a redesigned high school system. The author highlights efforts taking place in two multiple high school districts: (1) Cascades School…

For nearly a decade, the Chicago High School Redesign Initiative (CHSRI) has worked to improve educational opportunities for Chicago adolescents by opening and supporting small high schools across the city. While the overall results of the initiative have been mixed, several CHSRI schools have successfully improved students' outcomes. This latest…

The AED Center for School and Community Services has applied decades of research to pioneering successful approaches to school reform. It has also evaluated--and helped to advance--some of the most exciting initiatives in American education. In the tradition of AED, the Center defines "education" broadly. Recognizing the interdependence of many…

This booklet is the fourth in a series of "hot topic" reports, that address current educational concerns. The booklet examines questions relating to grade configurations, its purpose being to increase awareness and understanding of the issues surrounding grade span. It explores the ways that schools have addressed concerns associated…