Integrating Educational Systems for Successful Reform in Diverse Contexts

Linguistic, ethnic, and economic diversity is a major factor influencing how school reform ought to be accomplished at local, state, and government levels. This book examines the issue of successful school reform in diverse communities. It is the first to synthesize research on educational research on educational reform pertaining to racially and linguistically diverse students. It examines what is needed at the teacher, school, district, state, and federal levels for educational reform to be successful in multicultural, multilingual settings. Conclusions are based on a careful review of hundreds of recent quantitative and qualitative studies relating to educational reform in diverse communities. The authors conceptualize education as an interconnected and interdependent policy system and discuss the key policy, relational, political, and resource linkages that assist in achieving sustainable improvement in schools serving at-risk students.

Amanda Datnow is an Associate Professor of Education at the USC Rossier School of Education. She teaches in the EdD and PhD programs and is also the Associate Director of the Center on Educational Governance. She received her PhD from UCLA and was formerly a faculty member at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto and at Johns Hopkins University. Her research focuses on the politics and policies of school reform, particularly with regard to the professional lives of educators and issues of equity.

Sue Lasky is an assistant professor in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Louisville. She is also a Spencer fellow. Her areas of specialization are in systemic reform and school-family partnerships. Her current research focuses on identifying systemic linkages across the education policy system. She has worked in evaluation at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, where she earned her doctorate and at the Center for Social Organization of Schools at Johns Hopkins University.

Sam Stringfield is a Distinguished University Scholar and Co-Director of the Nystrand Center for Excellence in Education in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Louisville. He is a founding editor of the Journal of Education for Students Placed At Risk (JESPAR), and is currently serving as the acting chair of the Educational and Psychological Counseling Department. His research focuses on designs for improving programs within schools, for improving whole schools, for improving systemic supports for schools serving disadvantaged schools, and international comparisons of school effects.

Charles Teddlie is the Jo Ellen Levy Yates Distinguished Professor of Education at Louisiana State University (LSU). He received his PhD in Social Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is currently a Guest Professor at the Research Institute of Educational Economics and Administration at Shenyang Normal University in China. He also served as the Assistant Superintendent for Research and Development at the Louisiana Department of Education. Teddlie's major writing interests are social science research methodology and school effectiveness research. He has taught research methods courses for over twenty years including statistics and qualitative research methods.