Concluding that the Jersey City Public Schools were educationally bankrupt and in total disarray, the New Jersey State Department of Education took over the district in October 1989 and completely reorganized its central office by reassigning, demoting, or terminating 117 administrators. The newly decentralized system features four school clusters…

To support educational reforms, new assessments must stress the performance of complex, holistic tasks, not snippets of performance in segments, elements, or chunks of complex tasks. Sidebars present helpful guidelines for developing staff and creating an assessment. Assessments can assume numerous shapes, including budgeting activities,…

Discretion and regulatory flexibility must be managed without violating the amended, reauthorized Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Misbehaving disabled students may be removed from their educational placements for 10 consecutive days or less--the same punishment meted out to regular students. Longer-term placements need IEP team…

Those who expect consultants to solve problems for schools operating under the traditional model of fragmentation and teacher isolation will be disappointed. The key to using consultants effectively is developing systematic processes that engage staff in the work of a professional learning community as they consider the ideas presented to them.…

Explains why America has common schools and why they should be preserved. If our nation is to repossess its civic soul, it must recapture the central civic responsibilities of public schools. If American schools are to be defined by the search for literacy, then civic literacy must coexist alongside science, math, English, and cultural literacy.…

Participation in the Freedom Forum's California 3 R's project enabled The Ramona School District to find workable solutions to contentious religious issues without damaging the integrity of those involved. A sidebar outlines Ramona's board policy on student and staff rights and responsibilities, school calendars, religion in the curriculum,…

Reform-minded educators should examine business and medical models to construct a viable, research-based framework to validate proposed curricular programs before implementing them. Pursuing a reliable research base for math reform, several superintendents convinced the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement to let…

Do the "new economy" and "information age" really exist? Effects of the railroad and telephone fell far short of those predicted. The psychology of human behavior may not have changed much. One must maintain a healthy skepticism about predictions concerning any new technology's influence and long-range significance. (MLH)

Managing communities in economic decline takes special management skills, including knowledge of the change process, conflict resolution, organizational decision-making and leadership styles, power-base utilization, and management theory. Planners should consider a multiyear time frame, clear mission, prioritized core services, reallocated…

A former U.S. commissioner of education wonders if privatization and vouchers represent threats, annoyances, or utopias. Private contracting could hinder community involvement and the teacher professionalization movement. Profit-making goals might resolve class size policy in favor of economic efficiency, not student learning. Vouchers will reduce…

Because educators have unrealistic expectations about tests, they use them inappropriately and draw inaccurate conclusions from results. This article debunks five myths about test-score comparisons: valid measurement of school quality; declining international competitiveness; "fixing" schools with more tests; development of new, improved…

Schools have been criticized perennially for their profligate waste of taxpayer money. Currently, there are two separate myths about schools and money: the United States spends more than any other country; and money doesn't matter. U.S. schools have many nonteaching school employees because they provide services that other nations do not. (MLH)

The question of validity, or how high-stakes tests are being used and interpreted, threatens to undermine the entire standards movement. Joint standards developed by three professional associations say decisions affecting students' life chances should not be based on test scores alone. Objectivity and teaching to tests are real concerns. (MLH)

As measured by the number of published articles in U.S. newspapers and wire services in the Nexis database, references to "adequate yearly progress"--the key benchmark for school performance under NCLB--nearly quadrupled between December 2002 and December 2003. State and local news outlets have devoted significant space to their state…

During the past dozen years, the author has spent hundreds of hours discussing the relationship between education and democracy in seminars with groups of school- and university-based educators. Serving the public good in a democracy means serving the common weal, that of both the individual and the collective. The citizens of a democracy must…