Socio-Cultural and Within-School Factors That Affect the Quality of Implementation of School-Wide Programs

Item

Title

Socio-Cultural and Within-School Factors That Affect the Quality of Implementation of School-Wide Programs

Abstract/Description

The Success for All school restructuring program is currently being implemented in more than 1,100 elementary schools throughout the United States, primarily in urban locations. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of the quality of implementation were conducted in a sample of more than 350 of these schools to examine how the Success for All program and other school-wide restructuring programs can best maintain their integrity and quality as they simultaneously adapt to local school and community contexts. The data collection strategies included surveys, one-on-one interviews, group interviews, focus groups, and school site observations. The analyses examined factors related to quality of implementation in schools where the implementation was identified as high quality, medium quality, and low quality. The within-school factors identified by the quantitative analyses as contributing to high quality implementation were: (1) creation of a supportive culture for institutional changes; (2) overcoming program resistance on the part of a minority of teachers; (3) commitment to implementing the structures of the program; (4) a strong school-site facilitator; (5) less concern among teachers for handling an increased workload; and (6) availability of program materials. The three sociocultural factors that contributed to high quality implementation were lower student mobility, higher school attendance rate, and a greater percentage of the student body being white. Qualitative analyses based on case studies of 25 program schools provide further elaboration on the influence of racial composition of the student body, the factors involved in program resistance, and the importance of each school having a full-time school-site facilitator. Appendixes contain the school facilitator's questionnaire and a list of scale items. (Contains 1 figure, 3 tables, and 32 references.) (SLD)

Author/creator

Cooper, Robert

Date

1998

Publisher

Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed At Risk

Resource type

en Research/Scholarly Media

Resource status/form

en Published Text

Scholarship genre

en Empirical

Language

en

Open access/full-text available

en Yes

Peer reviewed

en No

URL

Item on ERIC (ED426173)

Citation

Cooper, R. (1998). Socio-Cultural and Within-School Factors That Affect the Quality of Implementation of School-Wide Programs (Report No. 28). Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed At Risk. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED426173

Cited in

Scale and Sustainability of Education Innovation and Improvement

Place

Baltimore, MD

Number

Report No. 28

Item sets

OB Citations - Scale and Sustainability of Education Innovation and Improvement

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