“Completely honest and highly informative. To look at a legislative body is to observe democracy in the raw—with all its diverse characters and influences and its many conflicts, compromises, and achievements. Dede Feldman, a first-rate observer and chronicler, shows us the insides of the New Mexico State Senate.”—Fred Harris, former U.S. Senator and professor emeritus of political science, University of New Mexico Elected to New Mexico’s state senate in 1996, Dede Feldman faced the challenges that confront state legislators around the country along with some that are uniquely New Mexican. In this forthright account of the workings of New Mexico’s legislature, she reveals how the work of governing is actually accomplished. In New Mexico’s part-time citizen legislature, Spanish may be spoken in the halls of the capitol as often as English, and Native American issues are often pivotal. But each year the Land of Enchantment’s legislators, like those in other states, must balance revenues and expenditures, tangle with lobbyists, and struggle with redistricting and campaign finance reform. State legislatures’ approaches to air pollution, drunk driving, and chronic disease, Feldman’s book reveals, find their way into national law after they’ve been road tested on the highways of various states.

This booklet contains the stories of six teachers who discuss, step by step, how they each handled a specific restructuring challenge in their schools. They describe what strategies worked and what did not, and provide diagrams and checklists to help other teachers. Chapter 1 describes the implementation of a collaborative school-based decision-making project, the Effective Schools Project, at Centreville Elementary School in Fairfax County, Virginia. Chapter 2, "Matters of Time" (Margaret Almony) discusses how time-management techniques were utilized at Ahuimanu Elementary School in Kanehoe, Hawaii, to make time for a Mastery-in-Learning Project and teacher participation in a site-based-management council. Chapter 3, "Seasons of Change" (Laura P. Krich) describes the implementation of a Mastery-in-Learning Project at Diamond Middle School in Lexington, Massachusetts. Chapter 4, "Bringing a New Order to Things" (Jonathan C. Kieffer) describes how Jackson Road Elementary School (in the Montgomery County, Maryland, Public School System) restructured school time to provide for school-based research and faculty collaboration. The fifth chapter, "Pushing Learning beyond the Classroom Walls" (Jeanne Lokar) examines the development of an outcomes-based education (OBE) program at the Richard Mann Building of the Gananda Community School District, in Macedon, New York. The final chapter, "Rising from the Ashes" (Mike Marriam) discusses how failure to initiate a school change facilitated a growth process for Seneca Middle School in Seneca Falls, New York. A glossary and an appendix containing a diagram of systemic school restructuring are included. (LMI)