School restructuring as a policy agenda: Why one size may not fit all

Recent studies of school restructuring have suggested that a school's shift toward communal norms is likely to be accompanied by particular types of technical reform. The result has been the emergence of a prescriptive agenda of reform practices in the school-improvement literature, despite evidence that the usefulness and effectiveness of instructional practices vary across contexts. The study presented here examined the relationship between school restructuring (defined in terms of the use of "restructured" practices) on mathematics achievement across categories of school socioeconomic status. The findings raise questions about the suitability of defining restructuring in terms of any specific reform agenda and indicate the need for caution regarding the broad implementation of such an agenda in disadvantaged schools.