Lessons From New American Schools' Scale-Up Phase

Prospects for Bringing Designs to Multiple Schools

Susan J. Bodilly, Brent R. Keltner, Susanna W. Purnell, Robert Reichardt, Gina Schuyler Ikemoto

ResearchPublished 1998

New American Schools was established in 1991 to help schools transform themselves into high-performing organizations. This report is a formative assessment of the first two years (1995-1997) of the scale-up phase, during which NAS partnered with 10 jurisdictions to implement design-based programs for improving student performance. A series of lessons emerged from this analysis: (1) The effort at school reform is complex because of the multiple actors involved. (2) Design teams do not accomplish implementation by themselves but only with the cooperation of schools and districts. (3) Teachers found stable school and district leadership and clear signals about the effort's priority to be important. Perhaps the most important lesson is that there still are no silver bullets for ensuring the implementation of reforms, but several districts have made significant progress in the two-year period.

Topics

Document Details

Citation

Chicago Manual of Style

Bodilly, Susan J., Brent R. Keltner, Susanna W. Purnell, Robert Reichardt, and Gina Schuyler Ikemoto, Lessons From New American Schools' Scale-Up Phase: Prospects for Bringing Designs to Multiple Schools. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1998. https://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR942.html.
BibTeX RIS

The research described in this report was supported by New American Schools and conducted by RAND Education.

This publication is part of the RAND monograph report series. The monograph report was a product of RAND from 1993 to 2003. RAND monograph reports presented major research findings that addressed the challenges facing the public and private sectors. They included executive summaries, technical documentation, and synthesis pieces.

This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited; linking directly to this product page is encouraged. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial purposes. For information on reprint and reuse permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions.

RAND is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.