ABSTRACT
A national study of restructuring schools conducted by The Center on Organization and restructuring of Schools (CORS) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that restructuring is most likely to succeed when changes in school organization are motivated by three principles: intellectual quality, community, and sustained effort (Newman, et al., 1995). Schools have tried various organizational reforms to improve student learning. Many have proved helpful—cooperative learning, detracking, higher academic standards, new forms of scheduling, personalization, performance-based assessment, school-site and shared decision-making, teaming—but the results ultimately have been disappointing because the primary effort has been directed to these technical aspects of schooling. The CORS study found that specific organizational reforms are more or less successful depending on the degree to which they reflect the three principles of intellectual quality, school community and sustained effort.
