There is growing concern that almost 20 years after the 1988 Education Act, top-down, large-scale reform has stalled. The policy mix of choice, competition, markets, regulation, accountability and leadership seems not to have closed the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged areas and individuals, while most variations in school performance can…

The educational policy implementation process is examined in this book, which shows how policy implementation has evolved through several stages during the past 25 years. The first two stages primarily addressed macro-implementation issues of whether and how policies initiated at higher levels of government became implemented in school districts…

The 6 National Education Goals were developed in 1989 after extensive discussions with over 100 education groups by Presidential representatives and the nation's governors. Public education must be lifelong, focus on prevention, be flexible, include rewards for high performance and consequences for failure, attract and retain talented…

The Chicago School Reform Act mandated that schools develop and implement their own school improvement plans (SIPs) to meet systemwide goals and expected outcomes. This paper examines the implementation of SIP initiatives in 14 Chicago public schools. Data were derived from interviews with principals and advisory committee chairpersons and from…

The Memphis Restructuring Initiative's first-year data-gathering efforts have yielded implications for policy and practice. This article discusses findings and implications in seven areas: opportunity to choose, goals and directions, professional development, "constructivist" teaching and learning, authentic assessment, disjunctures…

Findings of a study that examined the outcomes of longterm institutionalization of school reform are presented in this paper. Project Excellence, implemented in 1984 in a secondary school in Cochrane, Ontario, involved a comprehensive change in curriculum, instruction, and professional roles. An initial evaluation of the program, conducted during…

This report offers insights on the experiences and techniques used in the Dearborn Public Schools effort to integrate Title VII and Chapter 1 programs prior to their reauthorization. The school system is located near metropolitan Detroit, Michigan, and has over 14,500 students representing 24 languages, many from the Middle East, Romania, and…

Bronx Community College created a three-year College Discovery (CD) master plan for 1998-2001 to help restructure its counseling programs and support services and enable CD students to acquire an associate's degree level of education. The first area of restructuring is in the role of the director of College Discovery and Counseling. General…

As part of the Directory of Innovations Series, this volume provides information about programs and practices for educational improvement and school restructuring. It provides brief overviews of about 150 high school or district-wide programs with descriptions of the following: (1) goals; (2) location; (3) demographics; (4) how it works; (5) how…

This qualitative study of teachers'"sensemaking" about changing professional relationships and inclusive education involved interviews and observations of three teachers over the course of a school year. The teachers, one each from regular and special education and a "collaborating teacher," were employed in an urban upper elementary school in the…

This article addresses school reform and the challenges presented to educational leaders working toward social justice which is not limited to only academic achievement. Social justice as used here is education for emancipatory social change resulting in freedom to, that is, the opportunity for individuals to pursue work they value, and,…

Peakview is a new school that is implementing a number of organizational and teaching strategies advocated by the school restructuring reform movement. Among those strategies is the infusion of more than 80 networked microcomputers and related technology and software. This evaluation study examined the impact of the technology on the school…

In 1989, a long-term partnership began between International Business Machines (IBM) Corporation and the Austin Independent School District (AISD) to form Project A+ (later named the A+ Coalition), a program designed to be a catalyst for educational improvement by identifying fundamental changes needed to enhance education and to marshal community…

Today’s schools are complex systems with complex problems. Addressing those problems often requires significant change efforts. However, many school administrators don’t know how to select a focus for these efforts or how to lead staff through such changes--and even if they did, the job is too large for one person. One solution to this dilemma is…