ABSTRACT
A so-called “second wave” of educational reform in the 1980s was initiated in 1985 and 1986 with the release of a set of reports that included those issued by the Holmes Group, the Carnegie Task Force on Teaching as a Profession, the Education Commission of the States, the National Governors Association, and the Public Information Network (Carnegie Task Force on Teaching as a Profession, 1986; Education Commission of the States 1986; Holmes Group, 1986; National Governors Association, 1986; Public Information Network, 1985). Unlike earlier reports, such as A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983), which emphasized greater external specification of school processes and outcomes, these new reports stressed the need to improve schools by both improving the status and power of classroom teachers and decentralizing school decision making (Darling-Hammond & Berry (1988).2
