Amaya Garcia of New America talks with Kappan about grow-your-own programs, in which school districts partner with teacher preparation programs to recruit and prepare community members, often current students or school staff, to teach in local schools. A recent 50-state scan shows that there is a great deal of variety in how these programs are…

Although many proposals were disappointing and the New American Schools Development Corporation (NASDC) did not achieve its multimillion dollar funding goal, the contest sparked an unprecedented collaborative process across the nation. The evaluation and selection processes were problematical, as judges seemed to favor well-known educators with a…

From a businessman's viewpoint, the New American Schools Development Corporation (NASDC) offers a singular opportunity to help this nation create a Saturn-like experience for education, school by school. As Saturn revolutionized the way cars are built, NASDC can revolutionize the way children are taught. The 11 winning projects have real potential…

The Co-Nect (Cooperative Networked Educational Community for Tomorrow) project is a winning K-12 design with 3 components: a restructured school community featuring self-managing clusters of students, teachers, administrators, and community members; a radically transformed curriculum based on key-concept projects and seminars; and a flexible and…

Our current education system is based on Fordism, a mass production model that separated narrowly skilled workers and centralized resources. Michael Hammer's principles of flexible design (which include developing a cross-functional perspective, organizing around outcomes, encouraging worker self-sufficiency, combining information processing with…

Only by providing schools with a choice of valid, well-supported models of schooling can we make the change process manageable for school personnel and satisfy the conflicting demands of the public. Education professionals have the expertise to sort through the many puzzle pieces of school reform and assemble coherent, detailed schooling images…

Provides background information on the Hudson Institute's "Charter Schools in Action" project that studied 50 charter schools in 10 states. Examines innovative ways charter schools organize and support themselves, and presents five lessons from the charter-school movement. Public schools would benefit by becoming more consumer-oriented,…

Implementation costs for comprehensive school change designs (like the New American Schools models) vary widely. This article discusses the rationale and cost of each design element: principals and vice principals, instruction facilitators, classroom teachers, education specialists, struggling student strategies, professional development, teacher…

The application of an educational planning model designed for involving a representative sample of school patrons in decision making is described with reference to the case of Gilbert, Arizona. The article focuses on the first of the model's three phases: prioritizing goals, curriculum development, and program design and evaluation. (MJL)