Reviews current governance problems in education and details the range of possible governance models for post-industrial schooling. After describing problems that governance must address, the paper describes various possibilities for school governance in the future. Five types of control processes are considered. Ideological foundations of an…

The Intifadeh, Palestinian, uprising against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, has become a catalyst for educational change. Palestinian methods of coping with an educational system controlled by outsiders include informal, community-based education; alternative instruction based on existing textbooks; and long-term planning as part of…

Review of four articles on nonmetropolitan trends suggests that (1) access to adequate education and other services should be ensured regardless of locale; (2) urban-rural dichotomies are politically useless; and (3) rural schools and communities should pursue locally defined goals. A coherent comprehensive rural policy is needed that values…

The fundamental job of school board members is to view themselves as moral and cultural leaders and to transform the needs of groups to a higher and more noble framework. Lists the National School Boards Association's statement on the governance role of the local school board. (MLF)

The past 50 years have witnessed a vast transformation of public education from tens of thousands of relatively independent, "grass roots," citizen-controlled school districts to centrally controlled, massive bureaucracies. Ten recommendations are made which would bring public education back under the control of ordinary citizens. (RM)

The little town of Benson, Vermont, set a national record by voting down its proposed school budget 12 times. This paper reviews the facts leading up to the situation, providing the Benson residents' point of view, which was that they did not regard the system as their own and they felt that taxpayers' money was being wasted by the system. (SM)

Blacks have spent much time and energy "filling other people's pockets" (as Margaret Walker has said) but have not addressed the needs of their own community. Black communities are in a state of deterioration for which the treatment must be self-help. In this paper the example of an unhealthy organism is used as a metaphor for prescribing a cure…

School buildings designed in Norway during the early 1970s were frequently of the open plan type. This document briefly describes problems faced in the designing of open plan buildings and planning and implementation of educational activities appropriate to the new facilities. In anticipation of future elementary school construction, the document…

Outlined is an approach to educational history of the 1960s which incorporates the linkage between social, political, and contemporary educational history. The key theme cited is the interaction between the Black equal education struggle, the state structure, and the enactment of state-sponsored reforms that shaped popular protest patterns. (IAH)

Growing social and economic inequalities and political impotency are the sources of functional illiteracy. The current educational emphasis on basic skills will not resolve these problems. Students must harness their collective forces to replace corporate control with democratic power. (Author/GC)

This paper explores the relationship between low income parents and urban schools. Parent participation in urban schools today is said to have been institutionalized in forms set in motion by the Civil Rights movement. Three types of response to the failure of schools to respond to the 1954 Supreme Court decision calling for desegregation are…

Responds to criticisms of the community control approach to public education. Holds that community control was only unsuccessful because it was opposed by those interests who feared the consequences of participation by the poor, and that the idea should be given an opportunity to operate at the local level. (Author/GC)

Examines the relationship between centralization and public education. Suggests that compulsory schooling is key to the increasingly centralized and "managed" nature of society and that the nationalization of schooling has undermined individual rights to liberty and democracy. Advocates that communities be responsible for their children and for…

This paper examines the determinants of systemic education reform in the American states. Socioeconomic, political, and cultural variables are all found to affect the level of systemic education policy in each state. Unlike many studies of policy determinants, urbanization is negatively associated with this particular policy. The political factors…

Change in rural schools is difficult to achieve because the diversity of these schools does not allow for one set implementation program. Small rural schools are an integral part of the rural community, and as such are as different as the part of the country where they are located. Change in rural areas is unsuccessful due to: the amount of…