Chapter 1: The Less Traveled Road to School Improvement: The US Department of Education, Regional Education Laboratory Program, and SERVE

This chapter introduces Unfinished Business: A Regional Education Laboratory Retrospective on School Improvement by discussing the first 40 years of federal intervention in education, specifically the regional education program of the US Department of Education; the first 20 years of SERVE, including SERVE leadership and governance and the SERVE culture; and what it means to travel the less traveled road to school improvement. Data sources include publicly available documents, historical and evaluative, each subjected to content analysis.

The author outlines federal intervention in education and the regional education laboratory program framed by successive US Secretary of Education accomplishments and failures. The regional education laboratory for the Southeastern states, SERVE, is grounded in its larger context as one of 10 regional education laboratories currently funded by the Institute for Educational Sciences. The leadership and governance priorities of first four executive directors and their boards of governors, including an example of a SERVE program logic model, is discussed. Surfacing the operational culture of the four offices and field work of SERVE professionals lays the groundwork for the concluding section discussing what it means to have been part of SERVE in its first 20 years and its implications for downstream school improvement interventionists.