BOOK REVIEW. Development Planning and School Improvement for Middle Managers Co-authors: Marilyn Leask and Ian Terrell,London, UK: Kogan,Page 1997.x + 246 pp. ISBN 0 7494 2038 3

The longitudinal impacts on school change and student achievement of implementing varied Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) models was investigated in 12 elementary schools in diverse geographic locations. Each school was individually matched and compared to a demographically similar control school on measures of school climate, teacher satisfaction, observed classroom teaching methods, and student achievement on a battery of 4 individually administered reading tests. Data were analyzed for all CSR-control school pairs combined and separately for pairs representing 4 different CSR models (Balanced Early Literacy Initiative, Core Knowledge, Direct Instruction, and Success for All). Although results varied across location (rural versus urban) and models on different measures, overall CSR advantages were evidenced for teacher attitudes, school climate, and student achievement. Observations of teaching strategies further revealed their general conformity to the CSR models' pedagogical emphases (e.g., direct instruction, ability grouping, higher order questioning). The implications of the findings are discussed relative to processes of enacting and sustaining educational change using whole-school reform approaches.     

Voluntary organizations and the contribution to social justice in schools: learning from a case study

Partnerships are seen as vital to the functioning of many social institutions and the contribution that the private and voluntary not‐for‐profit sector organizations can make to the provision of statutory services is particularly valued. The Church of England Children’s Society Genesis project worked for nearly 5 years in one urban, secondary school with a remit to promote inclusion. Despite much recorded good work, Genesis was not continued after its contract ended. The school had a series of head teachers and was in special measures for part of the period, but key problems centred around the extent of the project’s contribution to the school’s core business and the absence of a positive management of the multi‐professional project by the school. The evaluation examines ways of proceeding which are of relevance to more complex projects. The paper also reviews the place of voluntary and non‐profit making organizations in meeting current challenges to collaborative, multi‐agency working and proposes a more robust, directive, and managerialist approach to make the most efficient and effective use of the resources and expertise of voluntary and statutory agencies (Inter‐agency Czar and Stalinist environment!). Genesis has gone on to work more successfully in six further schools having absorbed the messages of the evaluation of this first enterprise.