The National Alliance for Restructuring Education and its member states and districts focus on five design tasks:
- Standards and assessments--To set common high standards for what students should know and be able to do in the core subjects and use advanced assessment techniques to measure their progress toward the standards. Requires all but the most severely disabled students to earn a Certificate of Initial Mastery, based on the standards, at about age 16.
- Learning environments--To create curriculum, instructional methods, and professional-development experiences that are tied directly to the standards. Also to integrate technology and school-to-work programs.
- Community services and supports--To redesign the delivery of health and social services to more effectively support students and their families so that children can learn in school.
- High-performance management--To redesign the organization and management of schools, school districts, and state departments of education by adapting state-of-the-art systems developed by the best American firms.
- Public engagement--To find better ways to reach out to the public, listen to what people are saying, and engage them in a real dialogue about the goals for education and how they should be achieved.
Alliance Partners
Site partners:
The states of Arkansas, Kentucky, New York, Vermont, and Washington. The Pittsburgh; Rochester and White Plains, N.Y.; and San Diego school districts.
Nonsite partners:
Apple Computer Inc. Center for the Study of Social Policy Harvard Project on Effective Services Jobs for the Future Learning Research and Development Center, University of Pittsburgh National Alliance of Business National Board for Professional Teaching Standards National Center on Education and the Economy New Standards Project Public Agenda Foundation Texas Industrial Areas Foundation Xerox Corporation
