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In 1989, West Virginia University initiated a project to create a new vision for teacher education and for schools in West Virginia. With the support of the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation of Pittsburgh, the school partnership is based on the Holmes Group concept of professional-development schools (PDSs), which provides a vehicle for school restructuring and teachers' active engagement with teacher education. This paper describes the first-year experiences of two participating schools--one elementary and one high school--to illustrate the average activities and costs of PDS implementation. Costs were incurred for the following cross-site project activities: teacher education centers, a cross-site steering committee, professional-development networks, a research team, and overall project administration. Findings suggest that restructuring is an expensive enterprise, involving a variety of resources and costs, some of which are difficult to calculate. In the first year, the high school spent $58,000 and the elementary school spent $48,000 to fund activities related to restructuring. These are conservative estimates of how much reform may cost annually, though it is difficult to generalize the amounts to all schools. Seven sample budgets are included. (LMI)

Two studies (from 1989 and 1990) are reviewed to illustrate the effectiveness and versatility of "ethnographies of thought" (as described by C. Geertz, 1983) for gaining significant understanding of the meaning perspectives of research participants and the contexts of a variety of educational settings. The methodological implications of the two studies are discussed. Although they focused on different research questions and settings, both studies used a naturalistic design and involved the collection of three sources of verbatim data. The first study focused on the assessment of a preservice teacher's professional learning during a practicum semester, and the second examined the salient issues of a school and business partnership. In-depth data collection for the first study utilized one student teacher. Data were also collected from the cooperating teacher. In the second study, data were collected from members of a single partnership and resonance sought in a second partnership. Experiences with both studies indicate that if participants are to be "understood," a significant investment of time in the ethnography is mandatory to give the researcher adequate insight. Two figures and a 20-item list of references are included. (SLD)