In July 1991, New American Schools (NAS) was established to develop designs for what were termed break-the-mold schools. Its initial goal was to create designs to help schools enable students to reach high educational standards. This simple goal has evolved into something considerably more complex. The notion of a whole-school design remains at the core of the New American Schools mission. Experience made clear, however, that designs by themselves were unlikely to effect change in schools. NAS and its design teams began work to develop design team capabilities to assist schools to implement the designs, terming this design-based assistance. Experience also made clear that the character of the school district influenced a school's success in implementing the designs. Thus, in the last two years, NAS has devoted increasing attention to helping jurisdictions develop what it terms a supportive operating environment. This evolution in the NAS program reflects an awareness that NAS initiative is only one of many factors affecting school performance in participating jurisdictions. For example, building and district leadership, teacher quality, union support, and community support also play major roles in shaping those outcomes. RAND, in its role as evaluator of the NAS initiative, will continue to carry out a variety of studies of the NAS initiative in an effort to understand the effects of many of these factors on student outcomes. This report describes the evolution of the program of New AmericanSchools (NAS), a nonprofit private effort to foster significant educationreform through the widespread implementation of schoolwidedesigns. Since its establishment in 1991, New American Schools hascontracted with RAND to provide analytical support for the effort.During that time, RAND research staff have played a number of rolesranging from advisor, to field observer, to formal evaluator of theeffort. As the evaluations of the implementation of the designs andthe outcomes associated with that implementation are completed,the results have been and will continue to be published as separateresearch monographs.This report provides a background for these monographs. It takesadvantage of RAND's unique perspective to describe the evolution ofNew American Schools and its strategy for reform during its first sixyears of operation. As such, it should be of interest to those concernedwith the reform of public education and, more generally, withchanging public institutions.Other RAND reports about New American Schools include:MR-598-NASDC, Designing New American Schools: Baseline Observationson Nine Design TeamsMR-729-NASDC, Lessons from New American Schools DevelopmentCorporation's Demonstration PhaseMR-716-NASDC, Reforming and Conforming: NASDC Principals DiscussSchool Accountability SystemsLessons from New American Schools' Scale-Up Phase: Prospects for Bringing Designs to Multiple Schools(forthcoming)Within RAND, this research has been conducted by RAND Education under a contract with New American Schools. Funding to support the evaluation has been provided by the Ford Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the John D. and Catherine T. McArthur Foundation, and the Knight Foundation. Thomas K. Glennan (Ph.D., Economics, Stanford University) is a senior economist in the Washington Office of RAND. His research at RAND has focused on education, manpower training, energy, environmental enforcement, demonstration program management in health and human services, and military research and development.