Across the country, policy-makers, educators, and the public are calling for improved academic achievement and school accountability. To achieve these goals, new models of school reform continue to be developed, implemented, and evaluated. All aim to improve student learning, and most rely heavily on family and community involvement to ensure success.

Research-based school reform programs fall into two main categories: curricular and comprehensive. Curricular programs tend to emphasize improved learning in one or more academic disciplines and usually "fit" well into conventional school activities. Examples of curricular reform programs include removal of students from the classroom for focused instruction and the infusion of new content areas (such as prevention) into existing academic disciplines. In contrast, comprehensive programs tend to focus on changing or modifying school governance and organization (though they may also target revisions to curricular content).

School-community partnerships play an integral role in both types of reform models. Research-based curricula such as Core Knowledge, designed to improve students' cultural literacy, and Reading Recovery, designed to improve reading skills, promote parent involvement. Other programs, such as the multidisciplinary curriculum Different Ways of Knowing, promote both parent and community involvement.

Most comprehensive school reform models also emphasize the value of bringing together parents, educators, students, and community members to define a coherent vision or mission for a school. For example, programs such as Accelerated Schools, Community for Learning, and School Development have specific parent and community involvement components. In addition, many comprehensive models focus on expanding the notion of "classroom" to include students' larger learning environment. Programs within these models often promote linkages between schools and medical, psychological, and social services.

Although each possesses a distinct set of features, all high-quality school reform programs share the common goal of promoting high academic achievement among students. Building strong and enduring school-community partnerships is an effective strategy for improving both learning and health-related outcomes among young people. As your planning team works to develop and implement a comprehensive prevention plan at your middle school, be sure to determine whether or not the school is already instituting a school reform program. If so, it is imperative that you become part of that initiative. Yet even if your school is not implementing a reform program, coordination with any and all education reform efforts in your school is vital to the success of your prevention activities.

To learn more about these and other school reform models, please visit:
The Catalog of School Reform Models.

References

Wang, M.C., Haertel, G.D., & Walberg, H.J. (1998, April). Models of reform: A comparative guide. Educational Leadership, 66-71.