Education Reform

School reform efforts of the 1980s and 1990s were systemic models but were not successful in enhancing student achievement. Most reform models of this type are directed at restructuring and not improving student achievement. Michael Fullan (2000) argues that neither topdown nor bottom-up reform efforts have been successful and espouses that what is needed is a coming together of both to increase achievement (p.583). Many reform efforts have been generated at the federal (Dewey, 6-12), state, and local levels, but none have produced profound change in more than a few schools. Most reform models lack longitudinal data that support their programs, and programs that do have longitudinal data have shown mixed results. Proponents of whole school reform models indicate that the poor showing is due to lack of support and faculty implementation.

School leaders must implement a standards-driven system they have no control over, and the success of the reform efforts to enhance student performance depends on school professionals. School leaders should take the following steps to successfully implement standards-driven models: (a) be the champion for standards, (b) focus on developing capacity, (c) help connect standards with the goals and commitments teachers already have, (d) use data to focus on reform, and (e) enlist district-level support.

According to many educationists and researchers, higher education is no longer affordable in our society. Lecture format, no longer works in the Internet age. Americans live in a steady state of dissatisfaction with their higher education. The challenges of high schools are numerous and efforts to reform them occupy educators the world over. In developing countries, much reform focuses on expanding opportunities to attend secondary school. (Spillane, Halverson and Diamond, 23-28)

Progressivism in education also included the “administrative progressives” who sought to make schools more efficient by means of standardized testing and curriculum differentiated for different abilities, whether vocational or college preparation. This emphasis on differentiated curriculum for efficiency's sake led progressive education in the 1940s and 1950s to the life adjustment movement. Undergirding life adjustment was the theory of vocational educator Charles Prosser that only 20% of students would be ready for college and 20% for vocational work, so that schools should prepare the remaining 60% of students for everyday life by teaching skills such as parenting and health. In the 1950s, critics of the life adjustment movement claimed that schools had become too child centered, were “dumbing down” their curriculum, and needed to return to extensive academic preparation. Thus was born a “back to the basics” movement, which continues today. The preference for basics over life skills was reinforced by a national event that started yet another push for extensive school reform: Sputnik.

Elementary and Secondary Education Act

Besides its effect of forcing schools to desegregate or risk losing federal money, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965 reformed schools most notably by means of its Title I funding, which provided a billion dollars a year to high-poverty schools and disadvantaged children. The ESEA directed funds toward programs for children with disabilities, bilingual education, ...