In response to a rapidly changing educational system and public discourse pushing for school choice and accountability, the City of Chicago announced sweeping changes to its educational system. Renaissance 2010 called for a restructuring of schools and the creation of a new school, effectively dismantling the longstanding traditions which position…

This article introduces the special issue of "REPCS" dedicated to the analysis of the restructuring of higher education in Alberta, Canada. It describes the acceleration of the processes of commodification of education and research and the corporatization of institutional governance under the government that took office in April 2019.…

This phenomenological research study explores the lived experiences of full-time faculty experiencing both organizational and instructional changes within their institution. Higher education organizations are facing increased challenges to sustainability, forcing them to make structural changes within the organization. When organizations adopt new…

Public education in the United States is breaking down on two dimensions: its bureaucratic organization and its conceptualization of the learning process. These breakdowns result from attempts to deliver public education using business models and have failed to support the needs of both students and teachers. This breakdown has been further…

This article provides an account of the undermining of collegial governance at the University of Alberta in relation to the restructuring of the university in 2020 by the senior administration and board on advice provided by the Australian consultancy firm, the Nous Group. The current president of the university has publicly promoted the…

School district consolidation is one of the most widespread education reforms of the last century, but surprisingly little research has directly investigated its effectiveness. To examine the impact of consolidation on student achievement, this study takes advantage of a policy that requires the consolidation of all Arkansas school districts with…

Low-performing, high-poverty, public schools notoriously struggle to attract and retain good teachers. This paper studies a setting where independent organizations, including charities and businesses, take over the management of under-performing schools, while funding remains public. Exploiting the staggered expansion of English Sponsor-led…

We describe the levels, trends, and patterns of school closure and restructuring in the United States from 1991 to 2019 across all sectors using a near census of K-12 schools. Focusing on the years with the best available data, 2014-18, we find that the annual closure rate of charter, private, and traditional public schools (TPSs) were 5.1, 2.9,…

The mixed methods quasi-experimental study aimed to provide a comprehensive understanding of the impact of interdisciplinary teacher teams on sophomore on-track graduation rate. Employing a mixed methods approach, quantitative data from an Early Warning System were combined with qualitative teacher survey data collected from a Chicago suburban…

Last summer, the National Education Association (NEA) developed a New Business Item to explore retrenchment: "The NEA shall make a statistical study on the effect of significant faculty retrenchment at community colleges on future faculty cuts" (NBI 78, 2022). ASA Research (ASA) conducted exploratory research in an attempt to identify…

This study provides the first analysis of closure and restructuring trends for essentially all schools nationwide over the past 30 years. We analyze the annual closure and restructuring rates of all schools across the United States, how these rates changed over time, and what factors predict closure and restructuring. [For the Technical Report,…

"Inquiry-Driven Innovation: A Practical Guide to Supporting School-Based Change" addresses a pressing need for intentional and sustained innovation in education. It is both a practical guide for supporting school-based change and a handbook for effective professional development that empowers and re-energizes practitioners. Throughout…

Background and Aim: China's economic and societal development, education reform, and increasing demand for quality education, independent colleges' advantages waned. Issues like "schools within schools," lack of independence, unclear property ownership, and weak internal governance arose, necessitating restructuring and new directions.…

Research provides ample evidence that positive social relations and access to knowledge are supportive for educational change. However, few studies have examined how personnel turnover and restructuring in school districts influence these processes, specifically as they relate to leaders' access to research evidence and perception of…

Understanding what is meant by pedagogical renewal today, based on the transformative processes that are being carried out, poses a challenge, one that is even greater if the aim is to elucidate the pedagogical benchmarks and hallmarks of secondary schools. This article, which takes the form of a multiple case study, aims to bring to the fore…