Download or read book New American Schools After Six Years written by Thomas Keith Glennan and published by Rand Corporation. This book was released on 1998 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report provides a background for these monographs. It tales advantage of RAND's unique perspective to describe the evolution of New American Schools and its strategy for reform during its first six years operation.
Download or read book Bold Plans for School Restructuring written by Samuel C. Stringfield and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-11-12 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two powerful forces are driving American's demands for better schools -- one longstanding force is idealistic and the other is "new" and economic. The current group of young Americans is in danger of being the first full generation to consistently make less money and enjoy fewer worldly rewards than their parents. The intersection of idealistic and pragmatic forces has produced an era of calls for reform in U.S. education that is unparalleled -- calls that have resulted in the creation of the New American Schools Development Corporation (NASDC). The chapters in this book highlight the path traveled by NASDC -- a private, non-profit corporation charged with creating new, "break the mold" school designs for the 21st century -- and describes the first three years' accomplishments of nine NASDC development teams.
Download or read book Implementation and Performance in New American Schools written by Mark Berends and published by RAND Corporation. This book was released on 2001 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a private nonprofit corporation, New American Schools (NAS) began in 1991 to fund the development of designs aimed at transforming entire schools at the elementary and secondary levels. This report describes trends in implementation, school performance, and related factors for a sample of NAS schools. It is based on a three-year longitudinal study of these schools.
Download or read book Implementation in a Longitudinal Sample of New American Schools written by Sheila Nataraj Kirby and published by Rand Corporation. This book was released on 2001 with total page 99 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New American Schools (NAS) a private nonprofit corporation, began in 1991 to fund the development of designs aimed at transforming entire schools at the elementary and secondary levels. After competition and development phases, NAS currently is scaling up its designs to form a critical mass of schools within partnering districts. During this phase, RAND's research activities include monitoring the progress of a sample of NAS schools in seven partnering jurisdictions through the 1999-2000 school year. An earlier report provided an overview of the progress in implementation and performance in a longitudinal sample of schools three years into the scale-up phase. The current report provides an update on the progress in implementation one year later in a longitudinal sample of schools adopting one of seven designs. It is based on a variety of data gathered from the schools: principal and teacher surveys conducted during the 1996-1997, 1997-1998, and 1998-1999 school years, and data provided by districts on school demographic characteristics. New American Schools (NAS) was founded in 1991 as a private, non-profit organization dedicated to whole-school reform. NAS's mission is to help schools and districts significantly raise the achievement of large numbers of students with whole-school designs and the assistance design teams provide during the implementation process. NAS is currently in the scale-up phase of its effort in which the designs are being widely diffused in partnering jurisdictions across the nation. An earlier report, Implementation and Performance in New American Schools, by Berends, Kirby, et al. (2001) provided an overview of the progress in implementation and performance in a longitudinal sample of schools three years into the scale-up phase. This report provides an update on the progress of implementation a year later. These schools adopted one of seven NAS designs and are located in one of seven jurisdictions that chose to partner with NAS at the beginning of the scale-up phase. The study focused on three research questions: What was the level of implementation in NAS schools four years after scale-up and how has this changed over time? What factors impeded or facilitated the implementation of NAS designs in these schools? Among schools that dropped the NAS designs, what factors contributed to this decision? The report makes clear that several factors need to be aligned for designs to be well-implemented in schools: strong principal leadership, teachers who support the designs and have a strong sense of efficacy, strong district leadership and support, and clear communication and assistance from design teams. Without strong implementation, the promise of these designs to help schools improve is unlikely to be met. These are sobering and important lessons for federal, state, and local efforts aimed at comprehensive school reform.
Download or read book New American Schools written by and published by . This book was released on 200? with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Web site of New American schools (NAS), a provider of professional services and investment in K-12 education. Includes information on NAS, its mission and services, news and events, resources and publications, and more.
Download or read book Tested written by Linda Perlstein and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2007-07-24 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The pressure is on at schools across America. In recent years, reforms such as No Child Left Behind have created a new vision of education that emphasizes provable results, uniformity, and greater attention for floundering students. Schools are expected to behave more like businesses and judged almost solely on the bottom line: test scores. To see if this world is producing better students, Linda Perlstein immersed herself in a suburban Maryland elementary school. The resulting portrait -- detailed, human, and truly thought-provoking -- is marked by the same narrative gifts and expertise that made Not Much Just Chillin' so illuminating. The school, once deemed a failure, is now held up as an example of reform done right. Perlstein explores the rewards and costs of that transformation, through the experiences of the people who lived it. Nine-year-olds meditate to activate their brains before exams and kindergartners write paragraphs. Teachers attempt to address diverse needs at the same time they are expected to follow daily scripts, and feel compelled to focus on topics that will be tested at the expense of those that won't. The principal attempts to keep it all together, in the face of immense challenges. Perlstein provides the first detailed view of how new education policies are modified by human realities. Tested will be talked about, thought about, written about -- and will almost certainly play an important role in the national debate as the federal education law come up for renewal.
Download or read book Assessing the Progress of New American Schools written by Mark Berends and published by Minnesota Historical Society. This book was released on 1999 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report presents a data-collection plan for addressing these questions: (1) What were the New American Schools (NAS) like before they implemented their restructuring design efforts? (2) How have these evolved over time? (3) Are the critical components of the NAS designs being implemented across a wide array of schools? (4) Do the NAS designs extend beyond changes in school organization and governance, and permeate classrooms to change curriculum and instruction? and (5) What is the progress of the schools being assisted by NAS design teams in improving student and school performance? The report takes the findings from the first question and relies on data from partnering school districts and retrospective accounts provided by principals. NAS design teams partnered with schools that had many academic and social challenges, and the researchers compared these schools' climates with a national sample. The 1994-95 school year (the year before designs began assisting schools in their restructuring efforts) baseline data reveal that NAS schools were performing at or below the district average on mandated tests. NAS principals reported greater problems related to diverse student populations--poverty, difficulties with the English language, racial-ethnic tension, lack of school readiness, student and teacher absenteeism, verbal abuse, and disrespect of teachers--than did principals in the national sample. Future RAND reports will document the effect of the NAS designs on students' educational opportunities and performances. (DFR)
Download or read book Facing the Challenges of Whole School Reform written by Mark Berends and published by Rand Corporation. This book was released on 2002-04-03 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: About a decade ago, New American Schools (NAS) set out to address theperceived lagging performance of American students and the lacklusterresults of school reform efforts. As a private nonprofit organization,NAS's mission was-and is-to help schools and districts raise studentachievement levels by using whole-school designs and design team assistanceduring implementation. Since its inception, NAS has engaged in adevelopment phase (1992-1993), a demonstration phase (1993-1995), and ascale-up phase (1995-present). Over the last ten years, RAND has been monitoring the progress of the NASinitiative. This book is a retrospective on NAS and draws together thefindings from RAND research. The book underscores the significantcontributions made by NAS to comprehensive school reform but also highlightsthe challenges of trying to reform schools through whole-school designs.Divided into sections on each research phase, the book concludes with anafterword by NAS updating its own strategy for the future. This book willinterest those who want to better understand comprehensive school reform andits effects on teaching and learning within high-stakes accountabilityenvironments.
Download or read book Reinventing America s Schools written by David Osborne and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From David Osborne, the author of Reinventing Government--a biting analysis of the failure of America's public schools and a comprehensive plan for revitalizing American education. In Reinventing America's Schools, David Osborne, one of the world's foremost experts on public sector reform, offers a comprehensive analysis of the charter school movements and presents a theory that will do for American schools what his New York Times bestseller Reinventing Government did for public governance in 1992. In 2005, when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, the city got an unexpected opportunity to recreate their school system from scratch. The state's Recovery School District (RSD), created to turn around failing schools, gradually transformed all of its New Orleans schools into charter schools, and the results are shaking the very foundations of American education. Test scores, school performance scores, graduation and dropout rates, ACT scores, college-going rates, and independent studies all tell the same story: the city's RSD schools have tripled their effectiveness in eight years. Now other cities are following suit, with state governments reinventing failing schools in Newark, Camden, Memphis, Denver, Indianapolis, Cleveland, and Oakland. In this book, Osborne uses compelling stories from cities like New Orleans and lays out the history and possible future of public education. Ultimately, he uses his extensive research to argue that in today's world, we should treat every public school like a charter school and grant them autonomy, accountability, diversity of school designs, and parental choice.
Download or read book The New Immigrants and American Schools written by Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-01-26 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This six-volume set focuses on Latin American, Caribbean, and Asian immigration, which accounts for nearly 80 percent of all new immigration to the United States. The volumes contain the essential scholarship of the last decade and present key contributions reflecting the major theoretical, empirical, and policy debates about the new immigration. The material addresses vital issues of race, gender, and socioeconomic status as they intersect with the contemporary immigration experience. Organized by theme, each volume stands as an independent contribution to immigration studies, with seminal journal articles and book chapters from hard-to-find sources, comprising the most important literature on the subject. The individual volumes include a brief preface presenting the major themes that emerge in the materials, and a bibliography of further recommended readings. In its coverage of the most influential scholarship on the social, economic, educational, and civil rights issues revolving around new immigration, this collection provides an invaluable resource for students and researchers in a wide range of fields, including contemporary American history, public policy, education, sociology, political science, demographics, immigration law, ESL, linguistics, and more.
Download or read book Small High Schools on a Larger Scale written by Joseph E. Kahne and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Increasingly, researchers, policymakers, school leaders, and concerned citizens are recognizing that high schools in the United States are in need of major reform. Current research shows that high schools are not preparing students for college, work, or life, and that they are leading to increased alienation among students. In a much-noted speech to the National Governors Association, Bill Gates described high schools as obsolete. He continued, "By obsolete, I don't just mean that our high schools are broken, flawed, and under-funded, although a case could be made for every one of those points. By obsolete, I mean that our high schools, even when they are working exactly as designed, cannot teach our kids what they need to know today." Analysis by Greene and Winters indicates that the national graduation rate for the class of 2002 was 71 percent for public school students, and that only 34 percent of students who entered ninth grade in public schools left school with both a regular diploma and the qualifications to attend a four-year college. The problem is especially severe in large urban high schools, which disproportionately serve students of low socioeconomic status and students of color: of students enrolled as ninth-graders and scheduled to graduate in 2002, only 52 percent of Latino and 56 percent of African-American students ultimately earned a regular diploma. The likelihood of graduating with the abilities and qualifications to even apply to a four-year institution is 40 percent for white students, 23 percent for African-American students, and 20 percent for Latino students. Chicago's public schools reflect these trends. Only 54 percent of the 2000-2001 freshman class graduated in four years. In addition, eleventh-graders in Illinois scored higher than eleventh-graders in Chicago on the 2004 Prairie State Achievement Exam (PSAE). Roderick, Nagaoka, and Allensworth found that only 6.5 percent of 13-year-olds in Chicago's public high schools in 1998 or 1999had graduated from high school within six years, and only about 3 percent of male African-American and Latino students did so. Spurred by such statistics, some educational reformers have proposed that the creation of small schools provides a possible response to impersonal, incoherent, and ineffective "shopping mall" high schools, reversing a 50-year trend based on arguments that small rural schools are less effective than larger comprehensive high schools that can provide students with greater opportunities through an appropriately differentiated curriculum. Reform focused on smaller, more personal schools has been spurred by educators, researchers, and by foundation funding. Energized by these efforts, the city of Chicago and numerous other urban districts are emphasizing the creation of small schools as a key part of their high school improvement strategies. The document includes four appendixes: (A) Description of the Sample; (B) Rasch Analysis; (C) Description of Hierarchical Linear Models for Teacher and Student Survey Measures and Student Outcomes; and (D) Description of Teacher and Student Survey Measures. [This report was written with John Q. Easton. Commentaries are provided by Joseph McDonald and Henry May.].
Download or read book Bold Plans for School Restructuring the New American Schools Designs Ed438132 U S Department of EducationIh electronic Resource written by and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1991, the New American Schools (NAS) Development Corporation was founded by a group of business and foundation leaders interested in investing in innovative designs for school transformation. This book describes the first 3 years of development and evaluation of 9 NAS whole-school restructuring designs. The designs were very diverse, as were their implementation sites, which included many small schools, some very large urban schools, and schools serving American Indian students. Following an introduction, "Bold Plans for School Restructuring: Nine Designs from New American Schools" (Sam Stringfield, Steven Ross, Lana Smith), the chapters are: (1) "Sharing the Vision: Creating New American Schools" (David T. Kearns, John L. Anderson); (2) "Audrey Cohen College System of Education: Purpose-Centered Education" (Audrey Cohen, Janith Jordan); (3) "ATLAS Communities: Authentic Teaching, Learning, and Assessment for All Students" (Cynthia J. Orrell); (4) "The Co-NECT Design for School Change" (Bruce Goldberg, John Richards); (5) "The Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound Design" (Meg Campbell, Emily Cousins, Greg Farrell, Mieko Kamii, Diana Lam, Leah Rugen, Denis Udall); (6) "The Modern Red Schoolhouse" (Rob Heady, Sally Kilgore); (7) "Reform at All Levels: National Alliance for Restructuring Education" (Robert Rothman); (8) "Roots and Wings: Universal Excellence in Elementary Education" (Robert E. Slavin, Nancy A. Madden, Barbara A. Wasik); (9) "Community Learning Centers" (Wayne B. Jennings); (10) "Los Angeles Learning Centers: An Initiative of Los Angeles Unified School District, United Teachers Los Angeles, and Los Angeles Educational Partnership" (Judy Johnson, John McDonald); and (11) "Lessons Learned: RAND's Formative Assessment of NAS's Phase 2 Demonstration Effort" (Susan Bodilly). (Contains contact information for New American Schools and Design Teams, along with reference notes in some chapters and an index.) (SV) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software.
Download or read book The Dimensions of Time and the Challenge of School Reform written by Patricia C. Gandara and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the education reform movement matures into its second decade, it is clear that many promising efforts have fallen short in their attempts to create real school change. One reason for this is that the process of school reform is much more complex than most reformers realized or were willing to acknowledge. The Dimensions of Time and the Challenge of School Reform points to another problem--the problem of time--and its role in both the success and failure of school reform efforts. The importance of understanding the role that time plays in both learning and instruction and finding ways to provide time for teachers grappling with change and students learning to accommodate a new language and culture are important themes in this book. This book is directed to policymakers and practitioners as well as to academics in that it combines theory with the "real world" experiences of many who have been active in the school reform movement and who have learned, through trial and error, how to think about time in innovative ways. -- Back cover.
Download or read book Assessing the Progress of New American Schools written by and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 58 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a private nonprofit corporation, New American Schools (NAS) began in 1991 to fund the development of designs aimed at transforming entire schools at the elementary and secondary levels. Having completed its competition, development, and demonstration phases, NAS currently is scaling-up its designs to form a critical mass of schools within several partnering districts. The purpose of this report is to describe the baseline characteristics, such as school demographics and performance, of a large number of NAS sites in the early implementation stages of NAS's scale-up phase. During this phase, RAND's research activities include monitoring the progress of a large sample of NAS schools in eight jurisdictions from the 1994-1995 school year through the 1999-2000 school year. This report provides a description of the schools' demographics, climate, and test scores. The next step in the RAND analysis is to report on trends in implementation, school performance, and related factors.
Download or read book Creating the New American School written by Richard DuFour and published by Solution Tree. This book was released on 1992 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book details the characteristics of schools that continue to provide their students with a good education. It integrates two important bodies of research in its findings: (1) the research on effective schools and the characteristics of effective schools; and (2) studies of effective business practices and the leadership behind those practices. Drawing on this research, the book makes 10 recommendations for those interested in moving a school toward excellence: (1) people improvement is crucial to school improvement; (2) excellent schools have a clear vision of their goals; (3) the day-to-day operation of excellent schools is guided by a few shared central values; (4) excellent schools have principals who are effective leaders; (5) the shaping of organizational culture and climate is critical to the creation of an excellent school; (6) the curriculum reflects the values of the school and provides a focus that helps teachers and students "stick to the knitting"; (7) excellent schools monitor what is important; (8) teachers in excellent schools are leaders within their classrooms; (9) excellent schools celebrate progress toward their vision; and (10) excellent schools are committed to continual renewal. (Contains 122 references.) (RJM)
Download or read book The Prize written by Dale Russakoff and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2015 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As serialized in the New Yorker, a roiling, behind-the-scenes look at the high-pressure race to turn around Newark's failing schools, with Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Governor Chris Christie, and Senator Cory Booker in eyebrow-raising leading roles
Download or read book Charter School City written by Douglas N. Harris and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-07-15 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the wake of the tragedy and destruction that came with Hurricane Katrina in 2005, public schools in New Orleans became part of an almost unthinkable experiment—eliminating the traditional public education system and completely replacing it with charter schools and school choice. Fifteen years later, the results have been remarkable, and the complex lessons learned should alter the way we think about American education. New Orleans became the first US city ever to adopt a school system based on the principles of markets and economics. When the state took over all of the city’s public schools, it turned them over to non-profit charter school managers accountable under performance-based contracts. Students were no longer obligated to attend a specific school based upon their address, allowing families to act like consumers and choose schools in any neighborhood. The teacher union contract, tenure, and certification rules were eliminated, giving schools autonomy and control to hire and fire as they pleased. In Charter School City, Douglas N. Harris provides an inside look at how and why these reform decisions were made and offers many surprising findings from one of the most extensive and rigorous evaluations of a district school reform ever conducted. Through close examination of the results, Harris finds that this unprecedented experiment was a noteworthy success on almost every measurable student outcome. But, as Harris shows, New Orleans was uniquely situated for these reforms to work well and that this market-based reform still required some specific and active roles for government. Letting free markets rule on their own without government involvement will not generate the kinds of changes their advocates suggest. Combining the evidence from New Orleans with that from other cities, Harris draws out the broader lessons of this unprecedented reform effort. At a time when charter school debates are more based on ideology than data, this book is a powerful, evidence-based, and in-depth look at how we can rethink the roles for governments, markets, and nonprofit organizations in education to ensure that America’s schools fulfill their potential for all students.
