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 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.

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.

The restructuring of schools systems across the world has been controversial. Have reforms been driven by a desire to cut educational budgets or the need to improve the quality of educational provision? This book explores the restructuring movement, with a particular emphasis on how decentralisation of power has affected the quality of education. It provides a broad and international picture of educational reform.

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

Education reform has become part of a political imperative in a number of developed countries around the world. The simultaneous movement to reform schooling and the administrative structures which deliver educational services therefore needs to be studied in order to lay bare its fundamental assumptions. This movement has been labelled "restructuring" and "reform", although the words carry different meanings in different countries.; The authors question why this reconstruction occurred at the same time in different places. What common themes are emerging in the restructuring movement? And in the 1990s, where will the movement lead schooling and what essential changes will it effect? They explore these questions by examining developments in the USA, Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.