Beyond Comprehensive School Reform: Managing and Mediating Environments to Support Systemic School-Level Improvement

This paper examines the efforts of two external school-reform programs to expand their systems of intervention to include districts and states. An analytic framework is put forth that highlights the implications of this strategy for the ability of interveners to promote improvement and to survive as organizations. The framework draws attention to interactions among interveners’ designs for change, the environments in which they operate, and their organizational capabilities. Findings suggest that working with districts and states, on the one hand, presents interveners with opportunities to attain high-profile adoptions and to exert a measure of control over environmental influences, yet, on the other hand, demands an expansion of an intervener’s enterprise that can quickly overwhelm organizational resource.

1012_aera2008glazerpeurach.pdf