In 1995, the Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) school district began an initiative aimed at improving student achievement titled the Children Achieving initiative. This reform agenda introduced 10 components that included local decision making, development of standards, and increased professional development for staff. The Children Achieving agenda is…

This study attempts to identify points of intersection between two layers of educational reform by analyzing how the goals of the program "Children Achieving" overlap with those of the federal Title I schoolwide programs in the Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) School District. Children Achieving was a district-wide comprehensive restructuring…

This paper provides a new outlook on the charter school policy environment, however, by re-examining more closely the layers of legal provisions in states' charter laws. Consistent with the first wave of charter school literature which found charter school politics to be complicated and often working at cross-purposes, the authors provide evidence…