Urban school reformers for decades have tried to improve educational outcomes for underserved and disadvantaged students, with the assistance of constantly evolving federal and state policies. In recent years, education policies have shifted from targeting individual students to developing universal standards for teaching and learning, and comprehensive school reform (CSR) has emerged as an effective key model. The federal CSR program seeks to support the implementation of comprehensive school reform, especially in high-poverty schools, and to improve efforts to help all children meet challenging academic standards. Schools that receive federal CSR funds must adopt approaches that comply with the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). This book provides a series of studies and reflections on CSR by leading experts in the field.

This book synthesizes and analyzes the complex map of educational reforms in Latin America in the first two decades of the 21st century. The book offers insights into the agendas, processes and political economy of educational reforms in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru. Written by renowned contributors from each country, chapters present systematic, critical and reflective accounts of an intense period of education reforms. The book fills a gap in educational research and provides a systematic study that compares the cases analyzed. The first broad, comparative collection of its kind, the book is well-suited to courses in international and comparative education policy.

When it comes to motivating people to learn, disadvantaged urban adolescents are usually perceived as a hard sell. Yet, in a recent MetLife survey, 89 percent of the low-income students claimed "I really want to learn" applied to them. What is it about the school environmentâ€"pedagogy, curriculum, climate, organizationâ€"that encourages or discourages engagement in school activities? How do peers, family, and community affect adolescents' attitudes towards learning? Engaging Schools reviews current research on what shapes adolescents' school engagement and motivation to learnâ€"including new findings on students' sense of belongingâ€"and looks at ways these can be used to reform urban high schools. This book discusses what changes hold the greatest promise for increasing students' motivation to learn in these schools. It looks at various approaches to reform through different methods of instruction and assessment, adjustments in school size, vocational teaching, and other key areas. Examples of innovative schools, classrooms, and out-of-school programs that have proved successful in getting high school kids excited about learning are also included.

In 1989, Chicago began an experiment with radical decentralization of power and authority. Intertwining extensive narratives and rigorous quantitative analyses, this book tells the story of what happened to Chicagos elementary schools in the first four years of this reform. }In 1989, Chicago began an experiment with radical decentralization of power and authority. This book tells the story of what happened to Chicagos elementary schools in the first four years of this reform. Implicit in this reform is the theory that expanded local democratic participation would stimulate organizational change within schools, which in turn would foster improved teaching and learning. Using this theory as a framework, the authors marshal massive quantitative and qualitative data to examine how the reform actually unfolded at the school level.With longitudinal case study data on 22 schools, survey responses from principals and teachers in 269 schools, and supplementary system-wide administrative data, the authors identify four types of school politics: strong democracy, consolidated principal power, maintenance, and adversarial. In addition, they classify school change efforts as either systemic or unfocused. Bringing these strands together, the authors determine that, in about a third of the schools, expanded local democratic participation served as a strong lever for introducing systemic change focused on improved instruction. Finally, case studies of six actively restructuring schools illustrate how under decentralization the principals role is recast, social support for change can grow, and ideas and information from external sources are brought to bear on school change initiatives. Few studies intertwine so completely extensive narratives and rigorous quantitative analyses. The result is a complex picture of the Chicago reform that joins the politics of local control to school change.This volume is intended for scholars in the fields of urban education, public policy, sociology of education, anthropology of education, and politics of education. Comprehensive and descriptive, it is an engaging text for graduate students and upper-level undergraduates. Local, state, and federal policymakers who are concerned with urban education will find new and insightful material. The book should be on reading lists and in professional development seminars for school principals who want to garner community support for change and for school community leaders who want more responsive local institutions. Finally, educators, administrators, and activists in Chicago will appreciate this detailed analysis of the early years of reform.

The recent emphasis on educational reform has led to many books on initiating school improvement, but relatively few focus on how to sustain reform efforts so that improvements have a lasting impact.

An examination of six of the most controversial school reform initiatives in the US: school desegregation; school finance reform; special education; education of immigrant children; integration of youth services; and enforcable performance mandates.

High schools continue to be places that isolate, alienate, and disengage students. But what would happen if students were viewed as part of the solution in schools rather than part of the problem? This book examines the emergence of "student voice" at one high school in the San Francisco Bay area where educators went straight to the source and asked the students to help. Struggling, like many high schools, with how to improve student outcomes, educators at Whitman High School decided to invite students to participate in the reform process. Dana L. Mitra describes the evolution of student voice at Whitman, showing that the students enthusiastically created partnerships with teachers and administrators, engaged in meaningful discussion about why so many failed or dropped out, and partnered with teachers and principals to improve learning for themselves and their peers. In documenting the difference that student voice made, this book helps expand ideas of distributed leadership, professional learning communities, and collaboration. The book also contributes much needed research on what student voice initiatives look like in practice and provides powerful evidence of ways in which young people can increase their sense of agency and their sense of belonging in school.