"Making good things better" was the theme of the 1985 AASA Small School District Administrators' Conference. The keynote speaker listed four efforts school leadership should take: encouraging people to change, accelerating the growth of people, setting organizational goals, and continuing personal growth. A full day of the conference focused on…

The eight chapters of this theme issue evaluate a large-scale intervention, the New York City Public Schools Integrated Learning Systems Project. The overall evaluation contains ethnographic studies of project schools, statistical investigations of outcomes in terms of student achievement and attitude, comparisons of system costs to other systems,…

The Chicago (Illinois) public school system has been undergoing a major restructuring that has shifted responsibility for running the schools to local school councils. The nine articles of this issue bring together opinions and research of a diverse group of authors with multiple perspectives on the effort. (SLD)

The lead article of this issue, "Taking the Lead: The Role of the Principal in School Reform" (Kathleen Trial), discusses the various roles of the principal: psychologist, teacher, facilities manager, philosopher, police officer, diplomat, social worker, mentor, PR director, coach, and cheerleader. A second article discusses making shared…

All 50 states are moving toward accountability systems that involve setting clear standards of learning, assessing student progress on those standards, and providing a variety of incentives and sanctions for performance. Many educators remain profoundly ambivalent; however, they recognize opportunities for positive change but worry that a narrow…

When the Winnetka public school system reexamined its philosophy, questions were raised about the alignment between theory and practice. This sourcebook represents the thinking of teachers about how the validity of their philosophy of education rests on their ability to analyze what they are, discover how they came to be what they are, and imagine…

The research papers gathered in this volume were presented at the 1992 and 1993 meetings of the American Educational Research Association most were part of the Arts and Learning Special Interest Group programs. Papers focus on the following themes: assessing student learning; women's movement in art education; and art education in various…

These five newsletter issues provide reports from institutions and individuals involved in the Montessori Public School Consortium (MPSC). Each issue contains feature articles, editorials, and field reports on Montessori programs in public schools. Featured topics include: (1) the Montessori Induction Program for new Montessori teachers; (2)…

This issue contains an interview with Elizabeth Fennema in which she explains that decades of research on learning has had a minor impact on what goes on in the schools. She and other researchers decided to try to integrate the study of teaching along with the study of learning. Their desire was to effect real change in the classroom and to…

Controversy surrounding the accountability movement is related to how the movement began in response to dissatisfaction with public schools. Opponents see it as one-sided, somewhat mean-spirited, and a threat to the professional status of teachers. Supporters argue that all other spheres of the workplace have accountability systems and that the…

Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 1997 Arts Assessment, which assessed eighth-grade students only, indicate that public and private schools in the United States are far more likely to offer extensive instruction in music and the visual arts than in either dance or theater. Includes 1 table and web addresses for…

Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 1997 Arts Assessment for eighth-grade students show that female students outperformed male students in every category of assessment for all three art forms assessed: (1) music; (2) theater; and (3) visual arts. In contrast to assessments in other subjects, nonpublic school students…

This newsletter introduces the 1994 NAEP U.S. history assessment, which tested a representative sample of 22,000 4th-, 8th-, and 12th-grade students across the United States. This issue presents a context for understanding the U.S. history assessment. The newsletter is divided into the following sections: (1) "The NAEP U.S. History…

In this theme issue of The "OSSC Bulletin" educators speak out about what they think their schools are doing right. The project goal was to select schools with varied socioeconomic backgrounds from different parts of the state, as well as to include at least one rural school and one innercity school. The two elementary schools, two…

The 12 volumes of the professional journal contain articles on a wide variety of topics on classroom techniques, curriculum design, class activities, and research in English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) teaching at all educational levels. General topics include: communicating with ESL students; current events in the classroom; cultural test bias;…