New American Schools' Concept of Break the Mold Designs: How Designs Evolved and Why

摘要

Business leaders created New American Schools, a private nonprofit corporation, in 1991 to develop 'break-the-mold' designs for schools serving grades K-12. The notion of a design was meant to convey a coherent and comprehensive set of school-level practices that unified a school behind a goal of high performance by all students. These practices would cover all grades, all students in the school, and all important functional areas of the school. The founders of NAS sought both to support the development of designs by design teams and to ensure the designs were adopted or adapted throughout the country by schools seeking to transform themselves. Adoption would be supported by assistance provided by the design teams associated with each design. Since this beginning, NAS as an organization has changed significantly (Glennan, 1998). In addition, the designs developed by NAS and the teams have changed significantly as they have tried to implement their designs in hundreds of schools in ten districts that partnered with NAS for this purpose. These changes to designs are the subject of this report.