The push to redesign America’s failing schools is in high gear. With the ever-changing landscape of the 21st century global economy, students face a demand to be much more highly skilled entering the workforce. The focus of Topnotch School District is to prepare students in the areas of math, science, and communication skills in order to ensure them a competitive position in the job market. The district will design its course of study to engage students and motivate them to stay in school. The Mississippi Department of Education began an initiative called the 21st Century School Redesign in 2006. The focus of this initiative was to prepare students to compete in the global workforce. With outsourcing of jobs to other countries increasing, the competition for jobs is immense. Students who choose not to go to college must obtain the skills necessary to compete for the higher skilled positions available. Those who do choose to attend college must have the skills necessary to be successful also. The Mississippi Department of Education used a competitive grant process to choose 13 school districts in Phase I of the redesign initiative. Phase II of the redesign initiative saw 19 additional school districts brought on board. This study focused on Topnotch School District, which entered the redesign initiative in Phase II. The study was designed to understand the issues of the initiative that the administration team faced in the implementation process. In this study, formal interviews and casual conversations were used along with archival documents to determine the issues faced by building principals, central office personnel, business managers, technology coordinators, and vocational directors during the implementation of the initiative. The results of this study suggest that there is a lack of knowledge of redesign on the part of the administrative team. The results also show that communication throughout the process is crucial to success. Additionally, the system and procedures of reimbursement and asset management were questionable and led to a number of mistakes.

Redesigning High Schools for the 21st century became a goal of the Mississippi Department of Education in 2006. The focus of redesign is to ensure that students gain the knowledge necessary to compete in the technological world they will enter after high school graduation. Students who choose not to go to college are to leave high school with the skills that have prepared them for employment. The redesign process incorporates classes of technology in grades 7–9. Grade 7 students will be involved in Information and Communication Technology I. Information and Communication Technology II will include eighth-grade students. Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) courses will be added to the ninth-grade curriculum. During the second year of implementation, Career and Technical Education (CTE) classes will be converted to Career Pathway classes for students in the 10th grade. Using a competitive grant application process, 13 school districts were chosen to participate in Phase I of Redesign. In the second year of implementation, 19 school districts were chosen to begin Phase II of the redesign initiative. This study focuses on the Alcoville School District (a pseudonym), which was chosen as a Phase II school. The purpose of this study was to understand the issues of redesign that were faced by the teachers involved in the implementation process. Emphasis was placed on the knowledge the teachers had of the redesign implementation in this district and the problems they faced as implementation occurred. The results of this study suggested that teachers (a) wanted to be more involved in the planning of redesign, (b) thought there was a lack of training, (c) were concerned with the lack of knowledge of their trainers, (d) were concerned with the difficulty of the curriculum, (e) stated there was no follow-up training offered from the Research and Curriculum Unit (RCU) at Mississippi State University, (f) reported that the RCU was not able to answer their questions, (g) stated there was not a network of Phase I teachers with whom to talk, and (h) reported that the administration did not understand their curriculum or show concern with what they were teaching.