Milbrey W. McLaughlin

Learning from Experience: Lessons from Policy Implementation.

The first generation of implementation analysts discovered the problem of policy implementation—the uncertain relationship between policies and implemented programs—and sketched its broad parameters. The second generation began to unpack implementation processes and to zero in on relations between policy and practice. Together, these examinations generate a number of important lessons for policy, practice, and analysis; for example: policy cannot always mandate what matters to outcomes at the local level; individual incentives and beliefs are central to local responses; effective implementation requires a strategic balance of pressure and support; policy-directed change ultimately is a problem of the smallest unit. These lessons frame the conceptual and instrumental challenge for a third generation of implementation analysts—integrating the macro world of policymakers with the micro world of individual implementors.

Teacher Professionalism in Local School Contexts

This study analyzes teacher professionalism as an outcome of collegial interaction in local schools contexts. Evidence from a multiyear study in 16 diverse high schools supports the argument that high school departments, schools, and districts play a role in supporting or undermining teacher professionalism--in particular, a shared technical culture, strong service ethic, and professional commitment. The data suggest that professionalism evolves within active, learning communities of teachers. However, evidence of tension between a strong service ethic and the technical culture that evolves within some high school departments calls for further research on tensions between these two standards of professionalism in teaching.

Listening and Learning from the Field: Tales of Policy Implementation and Situated Practice

Why are policies not implemented as planned? Why are classroom practices so hard to change? The “implementation problem” was discovered in the early 1970’s as policy analysts took a look at the school level consequences of the Great Society’s sweeping education reforms. The 1965 passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), with its support for compensatory education, innovation, strengthened state departments of education, libraries and, subsequently, bilingual education, signaled the substantive involvement of the federal government in local educational activities. ESEA’s comprehensive intergovernmental initiatives meant that implementation no longer was just primarily a management problem, confined to relations between a boss and a subordinate, or an administrator and a teacher, or even to processes within a single institution. Implementation of the Great Society’s education policies stretched across levels of government — from Washington to state capitals to local districts and schools — and across agents of government-legislative, executive, administrative. As federal, state and local officials developed responses to these new education policies, implementation issues were revealed in all their complexity, intractability, and inevitability.

Implementation as Mutual Adaptation: Change in Classroom Organization.

Publisher Summary This chapter presents classroom organization projects that provide particularly, clear illustration of the conditions and strategies that support mutual adaptation and thus, successful implementation. They are especially relevant to understanding the operational implications of the Change Agent study finding for policy and practice not only because mutual adaptation is intrinsic to change in classroom organization, but also because the question of institutional receptivity does not cloud the view of effective implementation strategies afforded by these projects. Overcoming the challenges and problems inherent to innovations in classroom organization contributes positively and significantly to their effective implementation. The amorphous yet highly complex nature of classroom organization projects tends to require or dictate an adaptive implementation strategy that permits goals and methods to be reassessed, refined, and made explicit during the course of implementation, and that fosters learning-by-doing.

What Does It Mean to Be African American? Constructions of Race and Academic Identity in an Urban Public High School

In this article, the authors explore variation in the meanings of racial identity for African American students in a predominantly African American urban high school. They view racial identity as both related to membership in a racial group and as fluid and reconstructed in the local school setting. They draw on both survey data and observational data to examine the nature of racial identity meanings for African American students, their relation to academic engagement and achievement, and how they were fostered by the school context. Findings show that students embraced (and were offered differential access to) different meanings of African American racial identity and that these meanings were differentially related to achievement and engagement.

The Best of Both Worlds: Connecting Schools and Community Youth Organizations for All-Day, All-Year Learning

This article considers ways that schools and community-based youth organizations (CBOs) could build upon each others strengths, respond explicitly to the realities of todays youth, and incorporate the attributes of the learning environments youth find most effective. Our analysis is based primarily on 5 years of field research in more than 60 successful youth organizations in three major urban communities, and it is supplemented by interviews with students participating in a comparative field study of secondary schools. We argue for serious and far-reaching rethinking of relationships among schools and other youth-based organizations in the community. In the past decade, almost unnoticed by educators, CBOs have been creating and maintaining institutions that are highly educational and keenly oriented toward preparation for employment. We call on educators to consider what it might take to enlist and elicit the best of this world to forge all-day, all-year learning opportunities for youth.

Advocacy Organizations and the Field of Youth Services: Ongoing Efforts to Restructure a Field:

The field of youth services has undergone many changes in the past few decades, and advocacy organizations play a pivotal role in reconceptualizing this field by promoting better and more coordinated services to youth in need. This article examines how advocacy organizations bring about new conceptions of youth, influence the organization of the field, and ultimately change the way public policy addresses youth’s needs. The authors first describe the field of youth services, a highly fragmented field that has historically focused on youth as problems and targets for intervention. Next, they describe the current reform movement that instead promotes positive youth development. Focusing on the concept of restructuration, they then highlight some of the ways in which three advocacy organizations in San Francisco and Oakland, California, influence the field, and they propose early indicators that suggest how this field is being reorganized.

Between Movement and Establishment: Organizations Advocating for Youth

Where you can find the between movement and establishment organizations advocating for youth easily? Is it in the book store? On-line book store? are you sure? Keep in mind that you will find the book in this site. This book is very referred for you because it gives not only the experience but also lesson. The lessons are very valuable to serve for you, thats not about who are reading this between movement and establishment organizations advocating for youth book. It is about this book that will give wellness for all people from many societies.

A Temporary, Intermediary Organization at the Helm of Regional Education Reform: Lessons from the Bay Area School Reform Collaborative

The Bay Area School Reform Collaborative (BASRC) was invented in 1995 as an ad hoc intermediary organization. It was created in response to a national challenge from philanthropist Walter Annenberg and his half-billion-dollar gift to American public education. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation responded with

Kappan Classic: Shifts in Reform Influence How and What Teachers Learn:

25 million to support the creation of a San Francisco Bay Area regional education reform initiative. BASRC was charged with the goal of stimulating and supporting education reform in the Bay Area and working to close the achievement gap among students of different race and language backgrounds. During its 10-year history, BASRC pursued its mission by making grants to support schools’ reform work and establishing a regional collaborative of member schools, districts, support organizations, and funders. BASRC’s reform efforts proceeded in two phases. During Phase I of its work (1996–2001), BASRC funded 86 “Leadership Schools” in 6 Bay Area counties. By the fall of 1999 the initial