Implicit Models of School Improvement: A Mixed Method Analysis

There is a persistent belief that public schools are profoundly in need of improvement (Berliner & Biddle, 1995). Given substantial research on teaching literature (Borman, Hewes, Overman, & Brown, 2003; Hertling, 2000), it is not clear why more progress has not been made. Perhaps an answer may be found in the complexity of the educational literature, which provides a confused map toward accomplishing school improvement. Educational leaders are left in the position of relying on either imprecisely formulated or idiosyncratic and implicit models of school improvement without clear guidelines to follow for specific contexts. Models appear as ex post facto, reflecting an approach to educational reform on the part of administrators that may be best thought of as implicit