School-Based Student and Family Services: Community and Bureaucracy

Abstract

The Center on Organization and Restructuring of Schools (CORS) studied 24 elementary, middle, and high schools selected because they had engaged in substantial amounts of organizational restructuring. Among the innovations found in these schools were heterogeneous grouping, block scheduling, team teaching, site-based shared decision making, and locating of health and social services in the school to serve students at risk. Although these innovations were important in a number of ways, in general they did not explain differences between schools that were more or less successful in promoting student learning (Newmann, Marks, & Gamoran, 1995).