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Noting a limited amount of empirical research on school-based management, the author describes the main purposes, elements, and shortcomings of school-based management in practice. David draws on research from school improvement to corporate innovation to identify the factors necessary for school-based management to succeed as a reform strategy. In addition to increased authority and flexibility at the school site, significant school improvement requires strong district and site leadership that empowers others and the time and support for school staff to acquire new knowledge and skills and put them to use.
Edmonds' work arose as a counter to research that absolved schools of responsibility for student achievement. This article called for equity, a commitment to bring the skills of poor children up to mastery of basic skills. Edmonds framed these concerns as political--addressing the equitable distribution of goods within a society. He believes in the educability of all children, with the school's treatment of children as a critical factor in students' academic success.
Factors within the purview of schools that could lead to academic success for poor children were enumerated:
The author takes the position that the primary goal of U.S. public schools is to ensure an educated citizenry in a democracy. As a result of losing sight of this goal, schools have become fragmented, without a clearly defined purpose. Glickman states that recapturing this goal will revitalize or renew educators and students. In Part One, he lays out a framework for supporting school renewal, which includes schoolwide participation in the development of a covenant or principles for learning, a charter or rules for governance and participation in that governance, and a critical-study process in which data are collected to aid in setting learning priorities. Part Two focuses on the administrative tasks that a school must accomplish: curriculum development, staff development, coaching work, instructional program development, student assessment, and instructional budget management.
This monograph is a comprehensive review of school effectiveness by two prominent researchers in the field. The authors discuss existing research on correlates of effectiveness, processes for creating effective schools, achievement criteria for determining the success of these efforts, and contextual issues.
The analysis points to the limitations of correlate-oriented prescriptions for improving schools. Instead, the authors place this responsibility with teachers and administrators. Successful efforts will result from the ability of these groups to overcome legal obstacles and to face other profound dilemmas underlying the school reform process. Levine and Lezotte also recommend a dual research emphasis on effective teaching (instructional features) and effective schools (organizational features).
This book was written "to capture what we have learned to date about restructuring schools" and is a good source for obtaining an overview of the most current ideas in educational reform. The author lays out the various ways in which current restructuring reforms challenge the traditional methods of schooling. It contains an extensive reference list of books, articles, and documents on restructuring in particular and educational reform in general.
The authors critically review early school effectiveness literature. They focus on school-level factors, but also keep an eye on the broader context of education (e.g., the district "above" and the classroom "below"). They examine both content--identifiable characteristics of (effective) schools and processes--the ways schools actually operate and change. The authors criticize the many reviews and studies that don't consider the process of becoming more effective. In so doing, these studies convey a tacit assumption that all findings are generalizable to other settings.
Purkey and Smith examine three main types of study: outlier studies, case studies, and program evaluation studies. They include specific critiques of each type's methods, sample size, and data analysis and interpretation techniques. They praise the intuitive logic and common sense underlying most of the existing research. The limitations of the overall literature should not prevent attempts to combine effectiveness factors with each other or with other research (e.g., on classrooms or on school culture) to learn how to make schools more effective.
Eschewing closed lists of effectiveness attributes, the authors discuss clusters of organizational structure variables and of process variables. Given their interest in the process of school effectiveness, they also treat change processes, teacher "ownership" of them, and the role of administrative leadership.
Current reforms and recommendations made by commissions are doomed to failure as long as they avoid confronting existing power relationships that inform and control persons in the educational system. Reformers must also recognize that the education of children is influenced not only by what occurs within a school or classroom but by decisions made within the larger society and its beliefs and needs. While educators share responsibility for schooling, they do not own this process.
Anyone interested in the history of reform and the place of the current movement for restructuring will find this article useful. Tyack notes that the term "restructuring" is vague and all-encompassing and cautions that policy discourse alone will produce little change in schools. In the past century, reformers made calls for changes that are similar to calls for restructuring today: greater decentralization in governance, increased teacher autonomy, collegial decision-making, increased attention to the development of students' abilities to think critically, and more parental involvement. However, long-term historical trends have moved in opposite directions with increased centralization, movement toward large high schools, increased differentiation of the curriculum, the growth of principals and nonteaching staff. The persistence of historical trends despite vigorous attempts to fundamentally alter the character of schools should cause today's reformers to take note and develop different strategies in order to truly make an impact on schools rather than to repeat mistakes of the past.
[Case Studies of Successful Reform]