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[Acknowledgements]Education Reforms and Students At Risk - October 1996
Education reform has marked America's social and political landscape since the publication in 1983 of A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education). Presidents, congressional leaders, state and local policymakers, educators, parents, and business leaders have all endorsed reforms in schools, and a wide-ranging array of reform efforts are underway currently in thousands of schools across the nation. Despite this attention to reform, however, no substantial knowledge base has existed for identifying and implementing particular effective reforms. For this reason, in 1991 the Congress requested the Department of Education's Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) to investigate education reform. This study, focusing on education reforms for students at risk, was 1 of the 12 that were funded by OERI later that year.
The American Institutes for Research (AIR) and the Johns Hopkins Center for the Education of Students Placed at Risk (CRESPAR) collaborated on all aspects of this study -- from the planning and convening of a national conference and the commissioning of expert papers on key topics, to the conduct of case studies of 12 model and 6 replicate school sites nationwide and the preparation of reports, books, articles, and practical guides for education practitioners. In carrying out this work, AIR and CRESPAR drew heavily upon the findings of their past evaluative studies of dropout prevention and Title I (formerly Chapter 1) programs to identify model sites and to probe beneath the veneers of particular curriculums, collaborative arrangements, and school-based management structures. Our primary aim was to reveal the essential mechanics of effective reforms for students at risk. Secondary aims included documenting the incentives for and barriers to implementing and sustaining these reforms and their effects on students.
In Volumes II-IV of this final report, we present detailed documentation for our case study sites, an overview of our research design and methodology, and a compilation of our field instruments and developed products. In this first volume, we review our findings and present their implications for policy, practice, and needed future research.
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