Despite evidence supporting the importance of school climate, little is known about how practitioners understand and use data from climate surveys to guide schoolwide improvement. The expanded use of school climate surveys underscores the importance of understanding how schools and districts are utilizing this evidence both to drive improvement…

Every day in America more than 50 million children go to neighborhood public schools. Parents send them off with every hope they will be safe while there. And yet, as has been the case in too many cities, violence shatters that hope. The Council of Educational Facilities Planners International (CEFPI) seeks to lead in the effort to bolster schools…

In this paper the authors extend an earlier study that developed images of what schools are like as social entities. That study found that elementary schools correspond to the rational bureaucratic image, whereas secondary schools are more loosely coupled systems. The study was limited by a small sample. In this paper the research was extended to…

Educational researchers and policy analysts concur increasingly that the organizational design and culture of schools can either enhance or hinder the effectiveness of school reform efforts. This book offers a series of essays that may help parents, educators, and policymakers understand and solve school organizational problems that get in the way…

This paper, one of the nine-booklet Teacher Quality Series, offers guidelines for educational leaders who have the responsibility of making policy to improve the school as an organization in which teaching and learning take place. Various organizational schemes that encourage staff to share understandings and techniques, help each other to…

Asserts that achievement and cost measures of school districts' effectiveness are useful but insufficient performance critera. Focusing on British Columbia, Canada, this paper demonstrates a surprising negative relationship between cost and achievement and seeks a third element--school ethos or goodness--as a potential predictor of school…

Reviews hierarchical linear models that have been developed to address problems of the measurement of change and the unit of analysis in educational research. Introduces a three-level hierarchical model that should constitute the basic paradigm for future quantitative research on student learning. (Author/BJV)

The National Governors' Association Task Force on Parent Involvement and Choice believes that public education's current structure cannot deal effectively with the nation's diversity and demand for compulsory education. Key recommendations include adopting legislation that allows families statewide choice of schools and junior and senior…

Reports on a review of research into the effects of organizational structure on the acquisition of knowledge. Asserts that the opportunity to learn has two dimensions: (1) the amount of exposure; and (2) the quality of exposure. Concludes that teachers and students make decisions about these dimensions, which are affected by inducements and…

This speech addresses reform in the middle grades. The ideas were prompted by mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act. The speaker focused on eight fundamental questions, suggesting that the questions should have less to do with the techniques of implementation than with provoking discussion about a school system's or school's values, priorities,…

This handbook is the result of more than 2 years' deliberations by The Commission on the Restructuring of the American High School. The Commission emerged from a partnership of the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The report focuses on revitalizing education…

Scheduling concerns such as how to keep instructors teaching in the areas for which they are qualified and how to allow for elective offerings in a student's schedule led North Cache Middle School, a year-round education school serving grades 8 and 9 in Richmond, Utah, to explore a number of solutions. Seven solutions are examined along with…

Children who are raised in poverty currently run grave risks of educational failure. This paper approaches the issue, not through concentrating on special problems of, and programs for, the educationally at-risk, but through focusing on the educational problems of young people generally and on the effect that schools, not programs, play in…

This study sought to determine characteristics of schools and districts that enjoy the public's strong confidence and to explore how these characteristics are created and retained. A screening procedure produced useable data from 181 "high-confidence" public schools, 30 private schools, and 45 school districts. As part of a preliminary…

This report comprises the results of a panel commissioned by the New York State Board of Regents to review the status of knowledge on learning styles and group tendencies in learning behavior. The panel commissioned background papers, and debated various aspects of learning style as they relate to education. Of particular note was the role of…