This study examines patterns of literacy instruction in schools adopting three of America's most widely disseminated comprehensive school reform (CSR) programs (the Accelerated Schools Project, America's Choice, and Success for All). Contrary to the view that educational innovations seldom affect teaching practices, the study found large…

This article develops a conceptual framework for studying how three comprehensive school reform (CSR) programs organized schools for instructional change and how the distinctive strategies they pursued affected implementation outcomes. The conceptual model views the Accelerated Schools Project as using a system of cultural control to produce…

Proponents of school restructuring often promote the purported benefits of professional forms of management that call for staff cooperation and collegiality, teachers' participation in school decision making, and supportive leadership by school principals. A theoretical perspective on organizations known as contingency theory refers to such…

This study explored whether and how teachers' mathematical knowledge for teaching contributes to gains in students' mathematics achievement. The authors used a linear mixed-model methodology in which first and third graders' mathematical achievement gains over a year were nested within teachers, who in turn were nested within schools. They found…

This study assessed the effects of a change in principals (management succession) on school level basic skills achievement using longitudinal data on 149 San Francisco Bay Area Schools. The findings indicate that changes can affect school achievement, but that leadership effects develop slowly and are conditioned by a schools' socioeconomic…