Although analogous and vague definitions of school climate may help in determining whether low-achieving students are experiencing a more positive or negative school climate, more clarity is needed to render the climate construct more observable, measurable, and malleable. Tagiuri conceptualizes climate as the total environmental quality within an…

School-Based Management/Shared Decision Making is a city-wide program supported by New York City Schools in collaboration with Bank Street College, based on the belief that students, parents, school staff, and communities have unique needs, and that these needs can best be addressed by these persons. Participating schools formed teams of…

A group of 442 New York district jurisdictions (which are overwhelmingly rural but have some "metropolitan" county locations) with 2,500 or fewer pupils are subdivided by size (1,100 or fewer pupils, 210 rural or metropolitan sites; 1,100-2,500 pupils, 212 rural or metropolitan sites; and 20 small city or metropolitan sites of 2,500 or…

Teachers at the Ganado Primary School in rural Arizona established an instructional team to form a "School-within-a-School" (SWAS). The school is located on the Navajo reservation and serves 450 K-2 students who are predominately "at risk" and limited-English-proficient. Over a period of 8 months, the faculty researched and…

This report analyzes turnover among members on core planning teams (CPTs) in the 41 Phase I Chicago (Illinois) public schools participating in the Project CANAL model for school-based management. The analysis covers two periods of time: Year 1 to the beginning of Year 3, and Year 2 to the beginning of Year 3. Overall, substantial turnover was…

The opinions and experiences reflected in this report are those of exceptional teachers chosen in a national competition, "Thanks to Teachers," sponsored by Apple Computer, Inc., the National Foundation for the Improvement of Education, the National Alliance of Business, and Group W Television. The report is divided into four sections: (1) the…

This booklet examines the premises, practicalities, history, and politics of merit pay for teachers. A discussion of the current context of the merit-pay debate focuses on the claims made for merit-pay programs and the assumptions behind the proposals. Following an analysis of similarities and contrasts among merit-pay plans, the author gives…

This guide provides a description of "Crisis: Urban Education," a series of four half-hour documentaries, aired on public television stations and produced by Thirteen-WNET, that explore the human side of the educational crisis. The series described in this guide presents the latest thinking of school reform experts, and highlights bold and…

An analysis of the IBM/NEA Mastery in Learning (MIL) school renewal system, an electronic network that involves school faculties in collegial interaction with researchers and other educators in school reform, is the purpose of this paper. Developed by IBM (International Business Machines) and NEA (National Education Association), the MIL is a…

Four school boards in Ontario, Canada, were selected for intensive case studies to examine the models, policies, procedures, and practices used to stimulate, support, coordinate, and assess the effectiveness of curriculum changes within their jurisdictions. The data collection consisted of (1) documents such as organizational charts,…

Six school-based improvement programs distributed throughout the United States were studied in order to determine how effective these plans have been and what factors help or hinder them. The programs studied shared three central features: 1) focus on the school as a whole; 2) involvement of teachers in designing improvements; and 3) incorporation…

The initial conceptualization and subsequent development of the Effective Schools Pilot Project in the Kansas City (Missouri) Public Schools is described in this paper. Five K-6 schools and one school containing a kindergarten and grades 5 and 6 were the locus for the project that involved school-site teams working in collaboration with both…

The 1985 legislation (PA 84-126) creating Local School Improvement Councils (LSIC) and annual local school budget hearings laid the foundation for meaningful citizen involvement in the Chicago Public Schools. This legislation had two components: (1) annual school site budget hearings required in each school in which citizens, parents, and teachers…

This paper takes a distributed perspective on leadership practice in schools. Drawing upon empirical evidence from two contemporary studies of successful school leadership and the international research base concerning distributed leadership, the paper argues that leadership practice is a distributed entity that is mediated through human…

Explores British and American policy analysts' disparate perceptions about utility of major educational reforms (school-based management, school choice, and national standards). The Tories got carried away with their ideological agenda and have alienated teachers and the public. American educators are debating centralization/decentralization, but…