The researchers gathered qualitative and quantitative data at sites representing six urban program types and six suburban/rural program types. Some categories, such as Chapter 1 schoolwide projects, were required by the Request for Proposals to be in both the urban and the suburban/rural contracts, so the total number of strategy types investigated was ten.
A multi-criterion sampling scheme for programs brought together a final sample of programs that had unusually promising histories of effectiveness, and programs that figured prominently in national school reform efforts. For example, Chapter 1 schoolwide projects were relatively new in 1990 and had not developed a research track record. Yet clearly they were important given the 1988 funding reauthorization that encouraged the development of such efforts. Similarly, the research base on the Coalition of Essential Schools was not well developed, but as the major high school restructuring initiative in the country, it justified study. After all criteria were met, the strategy types discussed below were selected for longitudinal study.
These diverse strategies differ along several dimensions. For this and the Final Report we have chosen to present the various programs or designs as they differ within a two-dimensional space.2 The first dimension has to do with the intended scope of the strategy reform. Several of the strategies are intended to change entire schools. These include the Comer School Development Program, Success for All, the Paideia program, the Coalition of Essential Schools, Chapter 1 schoolwide projects, and extended year schoolwide projects. By contrast, Reading Recovery, Metra/Peer Tutoring, computer-assisted-instruction (CAI) laboratories, and Chapter 1 after-school and summer programs leave the majority of the traditional school day intact and provide services that are physically or temporally separate from the regular classroom.
The second dimension is concerned with the original source of program
development. Chapter 1 schoolwide projects, most summer programs, and peer-tutoring
programs are developed locally, often at the specific school. By contrast, the Comer
School Development Program, Success for All, Paideia, the Coalition of Essential Schools,
Reading Recovery and the hardware, software, and integrated designs of
computer-assisted-instruction laboratories are developed externally to the local school by
program researchers and developers. All of the external programs offer or require levels
of expert technical assistance, typically in the form of visiting consultants. Both of the
Metra/Peer Tutoring schools in Special Strategies experimented with externally
developed components integrated into locally developed programs.
In practice, both dimensions often become fuzzy. Reading Recovery is now experimenting with schoolwide formats, and many forms of CAI are delivered not in special laboratories but in regular classrooms. Similarly, externally developed reform efforts typically strive to develop local expertise and invariably make some adaptations to local constraints. Locally developed schoolwide projects often use an amalgam of externally developed components.
Each program is briefly described below, further in Appendix A, and in yet greater detail in the First Year, Second Year, and Final Reports.
