A guiding mantra of the school reform movement, with its appropriate emphasis on student achievement, is the need for a systemic approach to improvement. Critical components of school reform-such as standards development, assessments, and accountability provisions-must be aligned to achieve comprehensive and sustainable progress. As thousands of school districts throughout the country have experienced through state and federal testing and accountability requirements, such efforts are time-consuming and politically difficult, and they require stable, sustained leadership at the district and school levels. School reform is thus characterized by systematic schoolwide improvement strategies that include the entire range of a school's activities from management and professional development to curriculum and instruction. A persuasive argument can be made that such School Boards
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