oundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council, 69 percent of 8th graders are still performing below the proficiency level in reading (School Reform News, 2000). A report issued on October 11, 2000 by a subcommittee of the House of Representatives, stated that the addition of 13 federal education programs and $10 billion in spending over the past four years have failed to improve students' reading and science scores (New York Times). The conclusions of these reports appear to be that increased spending on education is not enough to improve student performance. The solution to educational excellence needs to be outside of conventional measures of investments in America's schools (School Reform News, 2000). What is called for are new models of reform.
Research regarding educational reform has indicated that there are factors that are continually found in successful situations. These factors include a supportive structure and organization, leadership, and teacher empowerment, support and reflection (Dyson & O=Sullivan, 1998, pp. 242-244). Allen (1995) points out that although definitions of school reform differ, the term really refers to concepts or proposals that institute fundamental change in a system. In addition, the category of reforms refers to people who embrace wholesale change (Allen, 1995).
The educators under discussion in this paper generally are in favor of wholesale change. The most conservative of the group is the late Albert Shanker, longtime president of the American Federation of Teachers who believes that the basic cause of America's educational problems is the lack of explicit standards with testing systems related to those standards (James, 1996). Shanker (1990) also suggested monetary incentives for schools that achieved the greatest improvement. On the other hand, Darling-Hammond and Kohn are against reform based on isolated skills tests. Kohn does not hold with the standards movement and states ...