For the past four years, the Center on Education Policy (CEP), an independent nonprofit research and advocacy organization, has been conducting a comprehensive and continuous review of NCLB, producing the annual reports contained in the series "From the Capital to the Classroom" as well as numerous papers on specific issues related to…

Problems that beset urban education in general are analyzed, and solutions are discussed and evaluated by a policy working group of the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges. The most acute problem in American education involves the unmet needs of disadvantaged students, who are heavily concentrated in urban school…

The purpose of this paper is to help educators and other interested individuals find their way through the plethora of reform reports published in the early 1980s. The early historical context of the reports is set out through a discussion of secondary education and proposals for reform since the 19th century. This is followed by a discussion of…

The Pilot State Dissemination Program of the National Center for Educational Communication, carried out in three target states by field agents, is evaluated as to goals, procedures, and outcomes. The seven parts of Volume I, and their chapters, are as follows: Part I, Goals: Alternative Goals of Extension-Retrieval Projects; Part II, Field Agent…

This paper contributes to an emerging body of literature on school districts as active partners in education reform. Using qualitative methods, it details the first three years of a major districtwide initiative in San Diego City Schools as reformers sought to orient central office bureaucracy around an instructional agenda. This paper both…

Tells the story of a partnership that involved university researchers, school administrators, and preservice and inservice teachers in the African and African American Curriculum Program. Examines commitments that brought in participants, tensions encountered, and areas of learning about curriculum reform and collaboration. (SM)

Examines one community's efforts to fundamentally alter a high school's structure, curriculum, and instructional practices to provide greater educational opportunities for all students. The program used heterogeneous grouping in tandem with curricular and pedagogical changes. Student surveys indicated that the program was moderately successful in…

This article addresses how teacher preparation programs can best respond to the broad, complex calls for reform in ways that are locally meaningful and honor academic integrity, but that are also true to the intent of the reform mandates. The authors begin with an overview of some of the federal and state initiatives that are presenting challenges…

Educators often ignore the political requirements of urban reform in their focus on the research and models that guide it. Conversely, political scientists frequently miss the differences among reforms in their focus on coalitions and resources. Integrating Clarence N. Stone's concept of "civic capacity" with an educator's view of reform…

Critics of the Federal Title I and Chapter 1 compensatory education programs to increase the academic skills of disadvantaged children suggest that the return for the Federal investment has been small and that designers have not created programs that work. When the compensatory education programs were conceived, their promise was immense. During…

The story of the Dropout Prevention Initiative (DPI) of the New York City Schools illuminates the obstacles, incentives, and inventions that can come into play in a large city school system's effort to strengthen its effectiveness for at-risk students. The Board of Education commissioned an external evaluation of the DPI in 13 comprehensive high…

This collection of papers analyzes various urban school reform strategies. There are 13 chapters in five parts. After "Introduction: Rethinking Urban School Reform" (Louis F. Miron and Edward P. St. John), Part 1, "The Courts and Urban Schools," contains (1) "School Desegregation is Over in the Inner Cities: What Do We Do…

This report describes an evaluation study of the Houston Annenberg Challenge, which was a school reform initiative designed to improve the quality of Houston's diverse urban schools by promoting an academically rich and purposeful education for all students. The study examined academic achievement, comparing Annenberg schools with other schools in…

This bulletin presents the results of a study on the special problems of education for Indians in Oklahoma. During the months of April and May of 1922, a committee of Oklahoma educators, under the direction of the Bureau of Education, conducted a series of educational tests and measurements in public schools in various parts of the State. The…

A collaborative project of Bank Street College and the Newark Public Schools, the New Beginnings initiative was designed to bring about progressive restructuring of kindergarten classrooms. This study used a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods to examine the impact of the initiative on curriculum, professional development, and…