Reconstitution—Three Years Later

Abstract

Part of a larger study monitoring the effects of a systemwide effort to redesign the city's high schools, this article describes the results of an effort to reconstitute the staffs of seven inner-city high schools in Chicago. The article describes the changes made at these schools and places both the changes and the resulting outcomes in the context of changes happening in high schools across the city. The redesign effort utilized two organizing principles: to enhance personalism at all city high schools and to increase the pressure for academic improvement. Center for Urban School Policy staff found that little of the reorganization intended to enhance personalism actually occurred in the reconstituted schools. On the other hand, students did enroll in more challenging, credit-bearing courses, and achieved higher passing rates and higher scores on standardized reading and math tests. Reconstitution did not prove to be a successful school improvement strategy.