This paper examines the issues surrounding decisions to discontinue the use of Comprehensive School Reform models by participating schools.
As part of a large, federally funded study of CSR implementation and its effects on student achievement, we engaged in a longitudinal case analysis and survey study of schools implementing one of four CSR reforms – Accelerated Schools (AS), Core Knowledge (CK), Direct Instruction (DI), or Success for All (SFA) – in Florida and Texas. Over the course of the three-year study, we found that 65 of 200 schools (33 %) in our study for which longitudinal data are available ultimately dropped or switched their respective CSR designs. This seemed like an alarming number of schools dropping their reform designs, and this paper examines the issues surrounding the decision to discontinue reforms.
