Summary

Combined with the larger Prospects study, three years of Special Strategies data have provided an unusual glimpse into the practical, day-to-day and year-to-year workings of "promising programs" in the lives of at-risk students and their schools. The picture that emerges simultaneously provides cause for hope and cause for worry.

The troubling news is that many of the schools serving Americas most disadvantaged students are, as Kozol (1991) and Natriello, McDill, and Pallas (1990) point out, in the troubling situation of needing to succeed in schools that are not conducive to their success. Even when Special Strategies researchers visited schools nominated as providing exemplary implementations of some of Americas most promising educational programs, they often saw, at best, uneven implementation of programs.

Clearly, the good news is that at some schools, often located in very disadvantaged contexts, educators are using"promising programs" to significantly improve the academic lives and performances of many students placed at risk. Where the faculty and administration had considered diverse options and chosen a program matched to local needs, where principals and central administrators sustained a focus on full implementation plus intelligent local adaptation, where technical assistance and staff development were continuing and targeted to specific issues and problems, and where the curriculum was demanding, the effects on students achievements were dramatic.

In some regards, Special Strategies replicated several previous studies. The Follow Through studies (Stallings & Kaskowitz, 1974) and Innovations Up Close (Huberman & Miles, 1984) indicated that some programs, well implemented, can make a positive difference in students lives. Goodlad (1970) found much the same variation in implementation levels within and among schools implementing "promising programs" that was found in Special Strategies, though with less evidence of positive effect. Much evidence of conditions positively affecting implementation similar to those found in Special Strategies can also be found in Fullans The New Meaning of Educational Change (1991). Against this backdrop, what is new in Special Strategies is the strength of evidence that some programs, well implemented, appear to help students make dramatic academic progress; that pursuing schoolwide change may well be worth the effort; that intensive early intervention may yet be the best bet; and that after a third of a century of research on school change, we still have not provided adequate human and fiscal resources, appropriately targeted, to make large-scale program improvements a reliably consistent reality in schools serving students placed at risk.

While the future holds ample reasons for deep concern, we choose to end this overview of Special Strategies on a positive note. We now know a great deal about the necessary conditions for positive school change. We know that some programs, well implemented, can make dramatic differences in students' academic achievement. We know that programs have emerged during the 1980s and 1990s that may offer additional, valid options to schools serving large numbers of students placed at risk. We know that many of these programs are continuing to evaluate and develop themselves in ways that should further improve their impacts. Assuming that funding for long-term examination of the processes and effects of these and other programs comes forward, the 21st century can dawn with all students having the potential and the programmatic support to succeed in school.