Dr. Allan Inzerello

Public school superintendents from Nebraska were asked to indicate their priorities toward school restructuring in five areas identified by the researcher. The areas of inquiry included school goals, school curriculum, instruction or methodology, evaluation and school organization. Current literature in each of the areas of school reform was investigated in order to devise survey statements that all public school superintendents could rank order as to their highest priorities toward school restructuring. Of the 311 surveys mailed to superintendents, a total of 191 were returned. The responses represented 61.4% of Nebraska public school superintendents. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the rank order responses of the superintendents in order to develop insight into eight research questions and to determine what priorities school superintendents have toward school reform in Nebraska. Although the responses from superintendents were mixed several trends or themes were discovered. The development of specific student outcomes and strategies to adopt outcome-based education particularly outcomes concerning higher-order thinking and problem-solving appeared to be the highest priority. Superintendents also ranked the use of instructional methods that employ authentic assessment as a high priority as well. Superintendents also expressed local control as a high priority as school attempt to restructure their schools. The researcher recommended that further study include school principals' priorities toward school restructuring in order to discover the level of congruence between these two groups of school leaders.