Comprehensive School Reform

Comprehensive school reform (CSR) has provided the primary paradigm for improving low-performing public schools in the latter part of the 20th century and early 21st century. New strategies for improving schools have emerged out of failures of the past. CSR is no exception. During the 1980s, federal regulations and commercial programs inadvertently created confusing and often unproductive learning experiences for many young students in U.S. public schools. Federal regulations governing the funds designed to help struggling elementary school students from low-income families required detailed tracking to ensure that only eligible students received supplemental services. To meet those requirements, schools routinely pulled students out of their regular classroom to receive services from a reading specialist. Unfortunately, coordination between the specialist and the teacher rarely occurred, and the content and strategies in the special tutoring sessions were seldom in sync with those found in the students' regular classroom. Students receiving services from the specialist often missed academic instruction in other subjects while working with their tutor. Not surprisingly, researchers rarely found any significant gains in reading as a result of these efforts. The reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in the early 1990s allowed schools serving mostly students from low-income families to establish a schoolwide program allowing federal funds to be used for programs available to all students, regardless of their particular circumstance or academic performance. Thus emerged the first effort to improve student learning through a more comprehensive and coherent set of practices at the school level.

CSR subsequently emerged as a strategy for improving individual schools by providing coherent and all-inclusive models for high-performing schools. Models were expected to address all the basic elements of schooling—curriculum and instruction, assessment, staffing, class schedules, community partnerships, and professional development activities—in ways that were complementary and reinforcing.

The first iteration of CSR appeared in 1991, when business leaders of major corporations established a nonprofit corporation, the New American Schools Development Corporation (NASDC), to support the nation's commitment to incorporating world-class academic standards in all public schools, for all students. Corporate leaders and politicians argued that such radical change in expectations for educators and their students required radically different models for schooling—schools that “broke the mold.” Corporate leaders sought to apply the basic research and development principles from business to the task of reinventing public schools throughout the nation.

NASDC received almost 700 applications for support in developing “break the mold” designs. Universities, business corporations, think tanks, city or district coalitions, and teacher organizations applied. In 1992, NASDC selected 11 of the proposals and made a 3-year commitment to support development and piloting of each of the designs. In the first year, design teams created their specifications—in terms of both the model they envisioned and the process for implementing it. Teams selected sites in several locations to pilot their design in the second and third year.

Designs varied in their assumptions about the process for changing school practices leading to differences in the degree to which they provided prescriptive expectations, scripted instructional materials for teachers, changed organizational structure, provided unique expectations for academic content, or required technological supports. On the other hand, less variation was seen in the instructional strategies supported by the designs—informed as they were by similar and more robust bodies of research. Most included interdisciplinary approaches to instruction, encouraged interactive activities, and included performance assessments in addition to, or instead of, standardized assessments.

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