The primary purpose of this study was to determine if there was a difference between self-contained and departmentalized classroom organization on the Kentucky Core Content Test (KCCT) in reading and mathematics for students in fourth and fifth grade. A secondary purpose of this study was to consider how these organizational structures affect the…

For a great portion of the history of the American education system, multiage education was the norm in one-room schoolhouses throughout the nation. The current graded, curriculum-centered approach in the U.S. appeared during the mid-nineteenth century with the rapid economic development and massive immigration into the country. Concurrently, some…

This article shares findings from an exploratory case study about an advanced school leadership development program designed specifically for practicing principals and administrator-trained teachers. The program was designed to help a high-need rural district transform its principalship from school management into learner-center leadership while…

This study identified the enabling conditions related to building instructional capacity created by the councils in three high-performance schools in an urban district. The authors collected the data through observation, interview, and document mining. School-level data were sorted inductively into themes through constant comparative analysis.…

A school improvement effort that provided individually tailored reports on school effectiveness to 93 schools across the Commonwealth of Kentucky is analyzed. Dilemmas confronted by the individualized school reports explain why so little change was generated. The background for the research project from which the individual school reports were…

This paper focuses on school-level differences and their implications for educational policy reform. It presents studies of two distinct educational reforms--a local community-based collaborative-services initiative and a state educational-accountability program--to illustrate important organizational features that vary across school levels. Both…

Describes a research project conducted in Kentucky that developed and tested the Kentucky Teacher Inventory, a set of teacher evaluation instruments that could be used to determine career path advancement and to examine teacher attitudes and use of that information as a means to promote school effectiveness. Effective knowledge utilization is…

The 2000-2001 Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS) Profile outlines institutional characteristics and facts. It includes strategic plans, goals, history, enrollment rates, KCTCS districts and colleges by district, and information about the Board of Regents and Foundation. Profile highlights include: (1) fall 1999 credit…

The Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) was passed in 1990 as a result of a Kentucky Supreme Court order to establish an efficient and equitable system of public education. This report is a guide to the implementation of school-based decision making, which is the most immediate of the reform initiatives being implemented. A review of the role of…

The 1994 and 1995 School-Based Decision Making (SBDM) Surveys were conducted in the fall of each of those years for the Study of Education Policy. This report compares the 1994 and 1995 responses to three questions: (1) What do people think of the effectiveness of SBDM? (2) Who is involved in the SBDM decisions? and (3) What are councils doing?…

This document for school-council members in Kentucky provides guidelines for school-based decision making (SBDM). In 1990, the Kentucky State legislature passed the Education Reform Act (KERA), which mandated SBDM in Kentucky schools and recommended the formation of school councils composed of the principal, three teachers, and two parents. The…

The Louisville Public School District is probably the only large public school district which has systematically begun change on a "systems" basis. Top school officials first made a wide-ranging assessment of the most pressing problems in the district, developed and stated their premises, and then planned two programs. The primary…

Kentucky has witnessed many changes in educational administration. An assessment of those changes, with a focus on school boards, was done. School boards are not efficient bodies and this is not a problem. If efficiency was the top concern, then minimizing time and costs would be dominant and schools would suffer. School boards are not…

This bulletin is a product of the Local School Units Project, a cooperative effort of the Office of Education, the National Professional Advisory Committee, the Works Progress Administration which funded the project, and the Office of Education Professional Advisory Committee. Its work could not have been completed without the support of the chief…

Teachers in 12 Kentucky schools were surveyed to determine their attitudes toward school based decision making (SBDM). The 228 subjects included teachers at SBDM schools as well as non-SBDM schools. A Likert scale survey instrument, designed to solicit information specific to the adopted Kentucky SBDM legislation, was administered to teachers in…