NIUSI

part of the Education Reform Networks

Governance & Leadership

• A Faceless Bureaucrat Ponders Special Education, Disability, and White Privilege
  The first part of this article critiques categorical approaches to special education, overrepresentation of minority children in special education, inclusion and exclusion, and white privilege. The second part of the article describes the potential of multicultural education, transformation, and participatory leadership approaches to address the issues raised in the critique.
• A new high school design focused on student performance.
  Performance-driven schools create a results-oriented culture, strongly support staff development, build community services and supports for students, help parents support their children's academic progress and develop an inclusive school leadership style.
• A new wave of evidence
  Many policymakers, administrators, and funders ask for evidence that parents' involvement helps student achievements, including test scores. This report provides some useful answers.
• A web of support: The role of districts in urban middle-grades reform.
  Report by the Academy for Educational Development (AED), presents information and strategies for implementing reform efforts in middle-grades schools; in particular, it draws on the perspectives and experiences of 50 district administrators from 35 urban districts who participated in the Urban Middle-Grades Reform Network.
• Beth B. v. Van Clay
  Addresses the intersection of LRE and, Rowley, . School district's recommendation that student with Rett Syndrome be placed in special education ("life skills") classroom, with reverse mainstreaming opportunities, satisfied provision of IDEA requiring FAPE, and LRE provision of IDEA, requiring that district mainstream disabled student to greatest extent appropriate; although regular classroom would be less restrictive than special education classroom, disabled student was only in regular class for about half the day, and her academic and developmental progress was limited, so that student did not receive satisfactory education in regular classroom, and thus, recommended placement did not violate IDEA.
• Biliteracy for a Global Society: An Idea Book on Dual Language Education
  This document asserts that dual language education is a program that has the potential to promote the multilingual and multicultural competencies necessary for the new global business job market while eradicating the significant achievement gap between language majority and language minority students. The appeal of dual language programs is that they combine successful educational models in an integrated classroom composed of both language majority and language minority students, with the goals of bilingualism and biliteracy, academic excellence for both groups, and multicultural competencies.
• Building a new structure for school leadership.
  Presents a conundrum about school leaders: asked to assume responsibilities they are largely unequipped to assume. Charts a way out of this conundrum through an understanding of large scale instructional improvement.
• Building policy from practice: District central office administrators' roles and capacity for implementing collaborative education policy.
  Defines district central office administrators' roles and capacity to support the implementation of school-community partnerships. Findings come from a strategic case study of Oakland, California (1990-2000).
• Caught in the middle: District administrators' experiences in comprehensive school reform.
  Attempts to address a paradox of education reform – that both "more school autonomy and greater central office coordination are necessary" by both reviewing the literature on the district role in supporting school-based change and by drawing on data from an evaluation of the pseudonymous Riverside Public Schools' experience implementing comprehensive school reform.
• Challenges of conflicting school reforms: Effects of New American Schools in a high-poverty district.
  Book describes a two-year, mixed method study examining, first, the differences between classrooms of schools adopting New American Schools (NAS) designs and the classrooms of non-NAS campuses and, second, the relationships between classroom conditions and student achievement within a high-poverty, urban Texas school district.
• Character Education through Story: K-6 Lessons To Build Character through Multi-Cultural Literature
  This resource manual integrates literature and social studies with an emphasis on character development. Using children's literature as a catalyst for investigating representative cultures, the manual's curriculum writers crafted multicultural, integrated, thematic lessons for the K-6 classroom that can be used throughout the year.
• Children's Literature at the Turn of the Century: Toward a Political Economy of the Publishing Industry
  Outlines the beginnings of a political economy of the children's literature publishing industry. Focuses on the ways that changes in the ownership and structure of the industry are altering the underlying culture of the book publishing industry and concomitantly, the ways that books are conceived, commissioned, and marketed.
• CIRCA 2000: Curriculum Intervention for Reading Comprehension & Achievement
  Presents an essay that is the result of group-centered activities by graduate students and a faculty mentor in a leadership training program for prospective educational administrators in California. Notes that the class produced some forward-moving and future-thinking core recommendations for reading improvement and achievement in multicultural settings.
• Cognition and policy implementation: District policy-makers and the reform of mathematics education.
  Analysis of ideas about instruction that district leaders construct from the mathematics reform to identify dominant patterns in their understandings. Focuses on the forms of the mathematics reforms rather than epistemological and pedagogical functions.
• Community Leadership in a Pluralistic Society
  Describes the characteristics of effective leadership and leaders, observing that good leadership entails the judicious balancing of stability and change, the incorporation of diverse opinions including those of subordinate as well as dominant individuals and groups, and the ability to learn from school discord and failure. Asserts that good leaders are people who live in, between, and beyond their indigenous groups.
• Community Organizing for School Reform, Washington, DC: A Recovering Plantation
  Because the District of Columbia (DC) is a federal district, its governance is peculiar. The DC public school system is plagued by poor management, internal strife, unstable leadership, low student achievement, shrinking enrollment, and declining community confidence.
• Connecting districts to the policy dialogue: A review of literature on the relationship of districts with states, schools, and communities.
  Presents a literature review focused on the role districts play in reform, how they interact with their respective partners and community, and what factors contribute to (or hinder) the achievement of reform goals. The quality of the studies is analyzed at two levels: district-state relations and district-school/ teacher relations.
• Contradictions and control in systemic reform: The ascendancy of the central office under Children Achieving.
  Describes the implementation of Children Achieving, Philadelphia's systemic reform initiative of 1995-2000, from the central office perspective. Identifies key beliefs and assumptions underlying the theory of action of the reform and describes how an initial emphasis on decentralization gave way to more central office prescription over the course of the reform.
• Creating pathways of change: One school begins the journey.
  Discusses how a school influenced the community members’ perceptions. The school: 1) created a school identity, 2) experienced a “community of the mind”, and 3) developed the sense of the school as a human agency.
• Critical Issue Bibliography (CRIB) Sheet: Lessons from the Field.
  The CRitical Issue Bibliography (CRIB) Sheet describes resources that highlight institutional practices that have been instrumental in the creation of multicultural campus environments. These lessons from the field of multicultural education can help other institutions in developing and implementing policy.
• Determining Policy support for Inclusive schools
  This document was designed to help teams of policy-makers, practitioners, and advocates implement inclusive practices. There are six sections in this guide, each representing a policy area.
• Developing Globally Literate Leaders
  Suggests a need to reexamine core competencies of executives and developing world-class organizations. Provides 12 steps to achieving globally competent leaders.
• Developmental Outcomes of College Students' Involvement in Leadership Activities
  Using longitudinal data from 875 students, assesses whether student participation in leadership education and training programs has an impact on educational and personal development. Results indicate that leadership participants showed growth in civic responsibility, leadership skills, multicultural awareness, understanding of leadership theories, and personal and societal values.
• Diversity Within Unity: Essential Principles for Teaching and Learning in a Multicultural Society
  Discusses 12 essential principles to help schools teach democratic values in a multicultural society. Derived from findings of the Multicultural Education Consensus Panel to review and synthesize research on diversity, principles are organized into five categories: Teacher learning; student learning; intergroup relations; school governance, organization, and equity; and assessment.
• Early Years and Race Equality: Possibilities and Limits for Race Equality Work
  Notes the importance of moving to an antiracist approach in education, identifying early learning goals and exploring possible antiracist activities (taking seriously all forms of name-calling, using Persona Dolls to help children confront racism, and taking a strategic approach to addressing racism). Stresses the need for creating policies for equality that include policy statements, implementation programs, and monitoring mechanisms.
• Financing education in the twenty-first century: What state legislative trends of the 1990s portend.
  Reviews of school finance legislation, analyzes five year trends in funding and discusses future funding ideas.
• From the capital to the classroom: Year 2 of the No Child Left Behind Act.
  Report from the Center on Education Policy describes the implementation and effects of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) during calendar year 2003, the second year of the Act's existence.
• Gathering Strength: Canada's Aboriginal Action Plan. A Progress Report = Rassembler nos forces: Le plan d'action du Canada pour les questions autochtones. Rapport d'etape.
  Gathering Strength is an integrated government-wide plan to address the key challenges facing Canada's Aboriginal people.
• High student achievement: How six school districts changed into high performance systems.
  Highlights six school districts – most of which enroll a large proportion of high-poverty and at-risk students – that posted impressive gains in student achievement. Data based on site visits and interviews.
• Implementation Strategies for Creating an Environment of Achievement
  Convinced of the educational benefits of campus diversity, Mt. Holyoke College (Massachusetts) developed policies and practices to foster the academic and social skills needed for success in a diverse society.
• Implementing IDEA: A Guide for Principals
  Implementing IDEA: A Guide for Principals is offered as a tool for ensuring that all children with disabilities learn, and that principals have the supports they need to implement IDEA.
• Inquiry at the crossroads of policy and learning: A study of a district–wide literacy initiative.
  Presents result of 100 classroom observations and interviews with teachers, district administrators and staff developers on the implementation of the Balanced Literacy Program in NY District #2; focus was the relationship between policy and practice.
• Leadership Academies - Module 1, Building Leadership Teams
  The academies in this module promote inclusive systems and schools by coaching Building Leadership Team members in both leadership skills and team collaboration.
  download the document here .
• Leadership Academies - Module 2, Mining Data
  This module is designed to help building leadership teams learn the skills required to mine data and use it to make decisions. As principals and teacher leaders become confident in their ability to query their data, they will become strong role models and coaches for the entire faculty.
• Leadership Academies - Module 3, Inclusive Schools
  This module introduces the inclusive model of education, which proposes that, with support structures in place, all students are able to successfully learn in the general education classroom. Rather than teach students with special needs separately, general and special educators collaborate to address the needs of all students to allow them to learn together.
• Legares v. Camdenton R-III School District
  The, Legares, court held that Missouri has a higher standard for special education services per state law, than is required by the "appropriateness" standard for IDEA. This decision was overturned by a statute passed months after the decision was rendered.
• Management and Motivation: An Analysis of Productivity in Education and the Workplace.
  Motivation as a form of business/human resource development can be tailored into greater productivity for teaching professionals with the development of a strong organization and a positive work environment.
• Methods and Resources for Elementary and Middle-School Social Studies
  Designed for preservice elementary and/or middle school teachers, this methods and resources volume compiles well-researched information on social studies education. It uses the standards recommended by the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) as a foundation, thoroughly discussing the core disciplines and thematic strands.
• Multicultural Career Counseling: Ten Essentials for Training
  Critical areas in which career counselors need training are as follows: demographics, world of work, career and multicultural counseling competence, career counseling process, multicultural counseling theories, career development models, career assessment, barriers to career development, culturally sensitive career centers, and continuing professional development. (Contains 49 references.) (SK).
• Newcomers and the Environment: ESL Textbook with Teaching Guide--Answer Key [and] ESL Textbook. Advanced Level
  This advanced level teaching guide, answer key, and English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) textbook package, provides nine career and personal profiles of immigrants to the United States from a variety of countries presently working in the field of environmental protection and regulation. A glossary translates numerous more specialized, environment-related vocabulary into six languages other than English, including Russian, Hmong, Serbocroatian, Somali, Vietnamese, and Spanish.
• No Pot of Gold at the End of the Rainbow
  By 1993, New York City's multicultural and innovative Children of the Rainbow curriculum had been discontinued and the education chancellor fired. This article examines the curriculum's development and implementation and the controversies surrounding it.
• Pathways to Inclusive Practices:Systems Oriented, Policy-Linked, and Research-Based Strategies that Work
  This guidebook was developed for parents, practitioners, administrators, and policy-makers seeking to make schools and classrooms more responsive to the educational needs of all students,including those with disabilities.
  Download the document here .
• Practices for English Language learners: An overview of instructional practices for English Language Learners: Prominent themes and future directions
  Anyone involved with schools — especially urban schools — knows firsthand how often discussions of bilingual education generate more heat than light. In such a politically charged context, it is often difficult to know where to look for up-to-date and fair summaries of what research is discovering about best practices.
• Principals of Inclusive schools
  Inclusive schools need principals who are familiar with the research literature and know that inclusive services and supports produce educational benefits for students with and without disabilities, teachers, and families.
  Download the document here .
• Quality and cost.
  Examines a mixed-methodology study of collaborative leadership using cost containment strategies.
• School Counselors' Universal-Diverse Orientation and Aspects of Their Multicultural Counseling Competence
  Explores the relationship between school counselors' universal-diverse orientation (UDO) and their self-reported multicultural counseling knowledge and awareness. It was hypothesized that after accounting for the number of previous multicultural counseling courses taken, school counselors' UDO would contribute significant amounts of the variance to their self-perceived multicultural counseling knowledge and awareness.
• School principals as standards-based educational leaders: looking across policy contexts.
  Compared the work of principals/heads in two policy contexts. Context 1, standards for student performance were common and well-established, and authority was devolved to the school level for reshaping the school to meet those standards.
• Science standards: What district policy-makers make of the hoopla.
  Explores districts' response to state science standards. Adopting a cognitive perspective on the implementation process, the authors examine the ideas about science education that district policy makers construct from science standards.
• Sources of leadership for inclusive education: Creating schools for all children.
  Study examined leadership for inclusion in three schools according to leadership functions. Found that multiple people in the schools from parents, paras, and teachers contributed leadership for the success of the program.
• Structural influences on the internal allocation of school district resources: Evidence from New York state.
  Examines the potential for inconsistent resource allocation decisions to be made at different administrative levels of school districts and schools.
• Supporting Multiracial and Multiethnic Children and Their Families. Viewpoint
  Discusses ways early childhood programs can support all children and families, especially multiracial and multiethnic children and their families. Asserts that early childhood professionals need to consult with interracial and interethnic families as well as seek advice and leadership from other early childhood professionals involved in these relationships.
• Supporting school leaders.
  Describes and gives examples of administrative mentoring programs in schools in the United States and outlines benefits of the program for schools, administrators and superintendents.
• Teachers' Responses to Policy Implementation: Interactions of New Accountability Policies and Culturally Relevant Pedagogy in Urban School Reform
  This paper explores how new accountability policies interact with culturally relevant teaching at the classroom level. When teachers are under the constraints of accountability and student testing policies, are they able to adopt and practice culturally relevant pedagogy in their classrooms? Previous research indicates that high-stakes accountability systems connected with standardized testing are viewed as having negative effects on teachers, the teaching profession, and curriculum and instruction.
• Teaching for Our Times: Focus on Learning, Volume Two
  The articles in this book were written by faculty and staff at Bunker Hill Community College (MA), each author addressing the issue of learning by incorporating their experiences as educational leaders. In this second volume of Teaching for Our Times, the focus is on what makes and shapes learning.
• The Challenge of Educating English Language Learners in Rural Areas
  Rural school districts are experiencing an influx of language minority students. Rural communities generally have little experience with people from other cultures and have fewer resources and bilingual people.
• The Counselor as a Member of a Culturally Proficient School Leadership Team
  The paradigm presented in this chapter is predicated on certain assumptions about the future of schools and schooling as well as the role of the school counselor. These assumptions include: the cultural and demographic profile of school counselors will continue to be different from students; the counselor will have an ever-present role on school leadership teams; although the traditional high school will continue, alternative programs will proliferate; and the counselor will have career, personal, and civic functions, and the cultural proficiency model will be inextricably linked with these functions.
• The district's role in building capacity: Four strategies. Policy Brief.
  Explores the promises and challenges of four major capacity-building strategies that researchers at the Consortium for Policy Research in Education observed in twenty-two districts in California, Florida, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, and Texas over a two-year period.
• The district's role in instructional improvement
  Describes findings from a Consortium for Policy Research study of the role of central office staff members in shaping and supporting instructional reforms in three large urban school districts.
• The impact of organization on the performance of nine school systems: Lessons for California.
  Study of nine school districts with different models of management.Three are top-down (U-Form); three are totally decentralized (all Catholic, known as H-form); and three are "in-between" (M-form). Concludes that M-form school districts (Seattle, Edmonton, and Houston) have better student achievement.
• The Perceived Influence of Culture and Ethnicity on the Communicative Dynamics of the United Nations Secretariat
  Investigates managerial perceptions in the United Nations Secretariat with regard to communicative dynamics in an organization founded on the precepts of cultural and ethnic diversity. Finds several pillars of deep diversity at the Secretariat, including multicultural and multiethnic understanding; an inclusive charter or mission; managers' commitment to that charter or mission; linguistic diversity; and respect and appreciation of similarities and differences.
• The promise of urban schools.
  Discusses issues impacting urban schools with implications of policy change.
• The Reflective Principal
  This booklet was developed as part of the activities of the Principal’s Project, a federally funded grant from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs.
• The Role of Adult Literacy & Numeracy in Lifelong Learning and Socio-Economic Well-Being: ALNARC National Research Program, June 2001-June 2002. Feature
  An Adult Literacy and Numeracy Australian Research Consortium (ALNARC) program comprised four projects designed to integrate new research with analysis of past practices and provision. Preliminary themes were the perception of a "policy void" in regard to literacy and numeracy skills; professional development's tie to workplace practice and understanding of and compliance with reporting mechanisms; and problems when literacy and numeracy are collapsed as one.
• The Theoretical Foundations of Professional Development in Special Education: Is Sociocultural Theory Enough?
  This article reviews sociocultural, multicultural, and critical pedagogical theories and suggests that an adequate and sufficient theoretical framework for professional development in special education must explicitly and directly address issues of power, discrimination, and relative status that underlie dilemmas of practice. It offers vignettes of such dilemmas, with reference to the 1998 Council for Exceptional Children's professional standards.
• The Transition of Gambian Children to New York City Public Schools
  The paper describes the typical school life of a Gambian child and notes that most students finish schooling at the age of 16. The deplorable conditions in boarding school are also described.
• Three school districts recognized.
  Presents three award-winning school districts that have successfully used proactive community relations programs in keeping positive impressions in front of the public. Profiles are provided along with summarized program descriptions.
• Transformational Leadership, Student Achievement, and School District Financial and Demographic Factors
  This paper explores whether or not there is a statistically significant relationship between superintendent leadership styles and selected financial and demographic factors in Texas school districts. Specifically, it examines the relationship between superintendent leadership styles and (a) student achievement as evidenced by district ratings, and (b) selected school district financial and demographic factors.
• Urban Teacher's Views on areas of need for k-12/university collaboration.
  Examined urban teacher's and site administrator's attitudes about problems and needs in culturally and linguistically diverse urban classrooms, investigating teacher's beliefs about the most pressing needs for school-university collaborations in education. Using data from teacher surveys, representative from the university and school district worked to develop a community education partnership that addressed the listed needs.
• Why Do Some Curricular Challenges Work while Others Do Not? The Case of Three Afrocentric Challenges
  Compares three cases in Atlanta, GA, New York state, and Washington, DC, in which advocates fought to have an Afrocentric curriculum implemented in public schools' social studies and history classes. Examines the influences of six local organizational factors on the proposed curricular changes.