WASHINGTON Report: Reform initiative fails to revolutionize U.S. schools

WASHINGTON -- Launched a decade ago by education-reform minded leaders of government and industry, the New American Schools initiative was meant to kindle a revolution in American education.
Ten years later, however, rather than igniting change, it has largely conformed to the norms of the education establishment, according to a new report by historian Jeffrey Mirel.
"The Evolution of the New American Schools: From Revolution to Mainstream" traces the development of this venture from its 1991 origins in the "American 2000" education-reform initiative of President George Bush, Education Secretary Lamar Alexander and Deputy Secretary David Kearns.
New approach: Then called the New American Schools Development Corporation, the new private organization pledged to cast aside traditional education ideas and apply a no-nonsense, business-savvy approach to the design and deployment of "break-the-mold" schools.
The NAS initiative embraced whole-school reform, the creation of models and designs that are meant to transform entire schools. But although billions of dollars in federal education funds now subsidize the implementation of whole-school reform designs developed by NAS and others, the evidence is mixed as to whether these designs yield stronger student achievement, the new study says.
"Its founders had a clear, bold, gutsy idea," said Chester E. Finn Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, which published the report.
"They would leap over the conventional wisdom, sidestep the government and break free from establishment clutches, thereby jump-starting an education renaissance in America. Alas, we learn from Jeff Mirel's careful account that very little of this actually happened."
By 2001, NAS reform designs were in place in more than 3,500 schools but, along the way, the organization shed its revolutionary mandate, Mirel argues.
Dominant philosophy: According to the report, NAS allied itself early on with established educators who embraced the ideas and practices of the progressive education movement, which has long been the dominant paradigm of American education.
The report describes how NAS and the whole-school approach to school reform have became fixtures of the U.S. education landscape and raises questions about how desirable that is.
For Memphis, Tenn., one of the most promising NAS sites, that question was answered this year. After the district's six-year involvement with whole-school reform, the school superintendent abandoned the strategy.
Mirel is an education historian at the University of Michigan. The report is available for download at www.edexcellence.net. For a free copy call (888) TBF-7474.