This paper reports on an ethnographic study of administrators, faculty, parents and community members in one remote Michigan school district. The purpose of the study is to describe and explain how Michigan's educational reform perspective--arguably similar to the education reform perspectives of many states--encountered the educational…

Restructuring of schools by means of revising the school calendar from the traditional 9-month calendar to a year-round calendar is one reform idea proposed to meet the diverse abilities and needs of students. Considering the sweeping changes influenced by No Child Left Behind and the trend toward excellence in education, this research focused…

The "Access to Democracy" project has two broad goals. It is an effort to understand community beliefs, attitudes and conditions that shape educational outcomes for community youth, and it is a way to focus community discussions on efforts that support higher educational attainment for residents. This report focuses on the lessons…

An ethnographic study examined school-community relationship and its effect on program implementation in six rural South Dakota towns serving as sites for the South Dakota Head Start/Public School Transition Demonstration Project (SDTP). SDTP is part of a national project to test whether providing continuous comprehensive services to Head Start…

Analysis of state-mandated strategic planning in a small, rural elementary school in northern New South Wales (Australia), reveals that although student outcomes were enhanced as a result of programs developed by staff, there were difficulties implementing corporate modes of management in a rural working-class community with deep racial, class,…

The study documents what happened in 10 rural communities when a federal educational funding program (Experimental Schools) in 1972 provided 5-year grants for demonstration projects designed both to improve the school system and, through the schools, to address a variety of community needs. The study employs two strategies to document the ways in…

When the Experimental Schools (ES) program began in 1972, schools in conservative and traditional River District, Wyoming, had just undergone a controversial consolidation. The ES program was perceived by new administrators as a source of necessary unity, useful outside help, and financial incentives. School trustees were "favorable but…

With the reorganization of the Experimental Schools Council, administrative support and power were mobilized and the Experimental Schools (ES) project in New Hampshire's North Country Supervisory Union began to accomplish its goals in its third year. The project was hampered by the independence of the three districts included in the loose…

The planned Experimental Schools (ES) project changed drastically before it was implemented in Willcox, Arizona, a diverse, multicultural community open to new ideas and outside innovations. As planned by a core of interested principals, teachers, and staff, with help from federal personnel, the project originally called for changes (in…

The federal Experimental Schools (ES) project was not successful in the rural school district of Quilcene, Washington. The ES project was not helped by the pervasive and powerful social split between "public employees" and "locals." Each group had its own world-views, values, symbols, and life styles, and the school provided an…