A blueprint for structuring the school environment around teacher learning and collaboration as a foundation for equitable learning and student engagement. In "Learning Together," Elham Kazemi, Jessica Calabrese, Teresa Lind, Becca Lewis, Alison Fox Resnick, and Lynsey K. Gibbons share findings from their decade of experience in…

"The Creative Classroom" presents an original, compelling vision of schools where teaching and learning are centered on creativity. Drawing on the latest research as well as his studies of jazz and improvised theater, Sawyer describes curricula and classroom practices that will help educators get started with a new style of teaching,…

This practical resource highlights the critical importance of diagnosis and design in the work of leading and managing for school improvement. The authors maintain that today's school leaders and managers, under intense pressure to improve student learning, cannot simply adopt and implement pre-packaged reforms manufactured outside the school.…

"Against the Odds" offers an in-depth look at the Mapleton, Colorado, school district's transformation of two traditional high schools into seven small schools, each enrolling fewer than four hundred students. This even-handed account chronicles both the heartening successes and frequent frustrations of a district-wide embrace of the…

An all-too-popular explanation for why black students aren't doing better in school is their own use of the "acting white" slur to ridicule fellow blacks for taking advanced classes, doing schoolwork, and striving to earn high grades. Carefully reconsidering how and why black students have come to equate school success with whiteness,…

In 1988, the Chicago public school system decentralized, granting parents and communities significant resources and authority to reform their schools in dramatic ways. To track the effects of this bold experiment, the authors of "Organizing Schools for Improvement" collected a wealth of data on elementary schools in Chicago. Over a…

Critical Small Schools: Beyond Privatization in New York City Urban Educational Reform features the most current empirical research about the successes and challenges of the small schools movement and the implications of such for urban public educational policy. Situated in a climate of hierarchical reform, many of the principles of the original…

Education finance has emerged as one of the most pressing public policy issues of the new century. Americans spend more than $500 billion a year on elementary and secondary education, yet neither policy-makers nor practitioners seems to know how to align these resources with student learning goals. In fact, spending increases have outstripped…

This book was written for use in university courses and inservice programs directed toward the improvement of secondary education. Part I contains an introduction and overview of an improvement design, including descriptions of proposals that have been made for school improvement, and experiences of school practitioners in improvement programs. In…

Five models of organizational decision-making are described, and a case study of the rational model as seen in the budget process at Stanford University during the 1970s is presented. Several issues are addressed to help administrators who are interested in increasing the organization's rational decision-making. The five models are as follows: the…

A current educational trend involves looking for ways to make the most efficient use of the time students spend in school. As schools embrace curricular reform, those on the front lines are reevaluating traditional beliefs about how schools are structured. This book contains a collection of articles that present information necessary to making a…

This book studies the role of the global education movement and its impact on educational change and reform. The volume discusses the importance of global education and considers the following topics: the influence of research on practice; global education as a social movement; meaning and activity; competing demands and the use of time in…

The characteristics and structures of school-focused inservice teacher education are explored by educators and researchers in 16 essays. An introductory article gives the rationale for more and better school-focused inservice education, particularly because of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (Public Law 94-142). School-focused…

During the past two decades federal, state, and local school leaders have attempted to institute major changes in educational programs and organizational arrangements. Recent assessment studies reveal that the great majority of change efforts did not meet intended objectives. As a result, policy formulators have developed serious reservations…

The articles in this report describe efforts at using varieties of process consultation to stimulate renewal in urban schools. Process consultation is a strategy for improving the group and intergroup procedures used by school personnel to reach their educational objectives and to solve their own problems. Emphasis is on the ways teachers,…