Explores the intersection of two central issues in American education today: school reform through restructuring and alienation from school of many children of color. A tough look at the impact of teachers' and administrators' beliefs and practices.

Make good decisions about your own restructuring effort by seeing what has and what hasn't worked in other schools.

This book provides a more comprehensive discussion of collaborative school efforts than any other single source currently available. Specifically, multiple disciplinary perspectives are presented, addressing the complexity or "promises and pitfalls" of school collaboration efforts. The book is organized in terms of major considerations in school collaboration initiatives—the organizational structure; the change process; inter-agency and intra-school collaborative efforts; and implications for instruction, leadership, and leadership preparation. Also, the book informs the design of educator preparation programs emphasizing collaborative schools and cross-disciplinary teaching. The chapters address many issues regarding school collaboration, such as which organizational structures will enhance collaborative efforts; which change processes are important in building school collaboration; the costs (in effort, energy, time, or other resources) of collaborating with other external agencies; how teachers' work can be redesigned to enhance collaboration between teachers and the anticipated outcomes for teachers and students; how educators can overcome their separate role socializations to build collaborative work relationships within schools; and the implications of school collaboration for teaching and learning, school leadership, and leadership preparation. The closing chapter offers five synthesizing issues or dilemmas for school collaboration.

American education is undergoing rapid change. Concern over poor student performance, the ability and motivation of teachers, and the inefficiency of school bureaucracy have led to numerous recommendations for changing the structure of American education. These vary from small changes in the current structure to wholesale privatization of public schools. The contributions in this book discuss a wide range of proposals, including greater school choice, charter schools, promoting contact with the business community, public-private partnerships, and more. Several chapters assess the current research on choice and restructuring. Overall the consensus is that proposed reforms have a good chance of yielding significant benefits.

This new book presents the findings of a five-year, federally funded study that examined the connection between school restructuring and student achievement. Investigating twenty-four elementary and secondary schools from twenty-two districts across the country, the researchers found that restructuring efforts fail when there is too much focus on structure and technique and not enough attention paid to the intellectual quality of student and teacher work and to the vitality of the school community. Using a wealth of examples, the authors provide a vivid picture of the conditions under which innovations in a school's organization contribute to student achievement - extending learning beyond rote memorization of isolated facts to thinking, disciplined understanding, and complex communication.

This paper examines the role of technology in restructuring education by analyzing how it influences seven important relationships in the educative process: (1) teacher-student relationships; (2) student-content relationships; (3) teacher-content relationships; (4) student-context relationships; (5) teacher-context relationships; (6) content-context relationships; and (7) educational system-environment relationships. After a brief historical overview of the uses of technology in education, the paper discusses the nature of systems in education and examines the process of restructuring through systems change in the seven pairs of relationships as they exist today and as they might change in a restructured educational system. How educational technology can empower teachers and students is then discussed with emphasis on how electronic technology is transforming the way information is communicated and processed. A brief discussion of the role of the teacher in evaluating the worth of content--i.e., selecting the best of culture for sharing with students--concludes the report. (ALF)

This study posits that global change is being driven mainly by financial forces, new patterns of economic growth and market ideology. It then goes on to examine the forces opposing such globalizing processes, such as religious and ethnic/social movements throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America.