This volume presents specifics of the School Development Program holistic model in action, a plan that received the 1996 Heinz Award for improving the quality of American education. Topics discussed include children’s psychosocial development, group dynamics of effective school communities, teacher preparation and school/university partnerships, appropriate alignment of classroom content to standardized tests, increased student engagement and learning time, research and evaluation, community health, government initiatives, and school/business partnerships.

The prize-winning PBS correspondent's provocative antidote to America's misguided approaches to K-12 school reform During an illustrious four-decade career at NPR and PBS, John Merrow—winner of the George Polk Award, the Peabody Award, and the McGraw Prize—reported from every state in the union, as well as from dozens of countries, on everything from the rise of district-wide cheating scandals and the corporate greed driving an ADD epidemic to teacher-training controversies and America's obsession with standardized testing. Along the way, he taught in a high school, at a historically black college, and at a federal penitentiary. Now, the revered education correspondent of PBS NewsHour distills his best thinking on education into a twelve-step approach to fixing a K–12 system that Merrow describes as being "addicted to reform" but unwilling to address the real issue: American public schools are ill-equipped to prepare young people for the challenges of the twenty-first century. This insightful book looks at how to turn digital natives into digital citizens and why it should be harder to become a teacher but easier to be one. Merrow offers smart, essential chapters—including "Measure What Matters," and "Embrace Teachers"—that reflect his countless hours spent covering classrooms as well as corridors of power. His signature candid style of reportage comes to life as he shares lively anecdotes, schoolyard tales, and memories that are at once instructive and endearing. Addicted to Reform is written with the kind of passionate concern that could come only from a lifetime devoted to the people and places that constitute the foundation of our nation. It is a "big book" that forms an astute and urgent blueprint for providing a quality education to every American child.

Writing with wit and precision, Miller shows why the system of higher education has been particularly resistant to reform. Unraveling stereotypes about conservative, liberal, and radical reform efforts, Miller looks at what has acutally happened when theories about education have been put into practice. What did Matthew Arnold do as a school inspector to promote the study of "the best that has been thought and said in our time"? ...

The Education Reform Act introduced in England and Wales in 1988 brought about enormous changes in schools, both as management units and as educational institutions. This book, first published in 1992, was the first to look at the effects of the Act in all its aspects on the basis of empirical evidence gathered from schools over the first three years of the Act's implementation. It looks at how change is being achieved in the Local Management of Schools, the influence of the market on schools, the introduction of the National Curriculum and the place of Special Needs provision in the new education scene. This book will be of interest to all who want to know about educational reform in Britain. It will also be of interest to those in the fields of education policy, educational management and sociology of education.

Addler addresses the controversy of what should be taught in our schools. He suggests that is should serve and be made available to all. He begins with a stinging critique of Allan Bloom and offers his advice for the best education.

Ambitious programs of education reform have been introduced by many governments around the world. Reforming Education is an important study of large-scale education reform in five different settings: England, New Zealand, the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Manitoba and the US state of Minnesota. The book looks at a variety of reforms covering: school choice; charter schools; increased testing of students; stricter curriculum guidelines; and local school management. Drawing from theoretical and empirical work in education, political theory, organizational theory and public administration, Reforming Education provides a clearly developed conceptual framework of analyzing reform programs. The author reviews the political origins of the reforms, the process of adoption into law, the implementation processes used to support the reforms and the results of the reforms for students, schools and communities.