Mark Berends, Susan J. Bodilly and Sheila Nataraj Kirby, RAND
2002
In this 222-page book, three members of RAND's education research team (Mark Berends, Susan J. Bodilly, Sheila Nataraj Kirby) summarize the findings from seventeen RAND studies of New American Schools (NAS), its school designs, and comprehensive school reform in general. It's a fine piece of work that probes the difficulty and complexity of the "comprehensive school reform" idea, the immense challenges of implementing it, the unreadiness of many of the NAS designs, the risks of "scaling up," the resistance to change among schools and school systems, the mixed results so far in terms of student achievement, and the inadequacy of typical outcome measures when it comes to capturing all this. Perhaps the most sobering line in the book: "Externally developed education reform interventions cannot be 'break the mold' and still be marketable and implementable in current district and school contexts." This volume is worth your while. The ISBN is 0833031333. You can obtain a copy for $28 or download each chapter in PDF form at http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1498.
