This book is intended to serve as a sourcebook that provides descriptions of some of the best and most popular school- and classroom-improvement programs in America. It offers a comprehensive framework for selecting and adapting these programs to address a local school's particular needs. It was also designed to help school leaders understand and use major research-based school-improvement programs. Part 1 contains one chapter--"School Improvement: A Program Perspective," by James H. Block--which shows administrators how school-improvement programs can serve as fundamental tools for school improvement and change. Part 2 describes some major school-improvement programs. Each chapter describes the program's innovation, how it works, how well it works, and where it is headed. The chapters include: (2) "Cooperative Learning" (David W. Johnson and Roger T. Johnson); (3) "Critical Thinking" (Robert J. Marzano); (4) "Interactive Learning and Hypermedia Technology" (Robert Bortnick); (5) "Mastery Learning" (Thomas R. Guskey); (6) "Assessment as a School Improvement 'Innovation'?" (Richard J. Stiggins); (7) "Direct Instruction to Accelerate Cognitive Growth" (Douglas Carnine, Bonnie Grossen, and Jerry Silbert); (8) "Instructional Alignment" (S. Alan Cohen); (9) "Mastery Teaching" (Madeline Hunter); (10) "Peer Coaching: Quality through Collaborative Work" (Pam Robbins); (11) "Teaching for Literacy" (Peter Winograd and Connie Bridge); (12) "Writing Across the Curriculum" (Carol Dixon and Harold Horn); (13) "Learning from Accelerated Schools" (Henry M. Levin); (14) "Early Childhood Education" (David P. Weikart); (15) "Effective Schools: The Evolving Research and Practices" (Lawrence W. Lezotte); (16) "Invitational Education" (William W. Purkey); (17) "Outcome-based Education: From Instructional Reform to Paradigm Restructuring" (William G. Spady); (18) "The Quality School" (William Glasser); and (19) "The School Development Program" (James P. Comer). The third part provides guidelines for selecting and integrating some of the programs. Chapters include: (20) "Selecting School Improvement Programs" (Susan Toft Everson); and (21) "Integrating School Improvement Programs" (Thomas R. Guskey). Twenty-four figures are included, as well as a subject and author index. (Contains 434 references.) (LMI)