This article introduces a waka tino whakarawea model for evaluating programmes and services for Maori learners. It is based on a set of underlying principles identified in the author's PhD study (Bevan-Brown, 2002). Explanations are provided for eight principles: kaupapa Maori; importance, relevance and beneficence; participation; empowerment,…

A position paper that looks at educational accountability from the viewpoint of the historian, the anthropologist, the political scientist, and the sociologist. The author is not optimistic about the future of accountability as a functional output nor as a process to improve education. (JF)

Identifies a community skills triad (educational professionals, professional support structures, and the community) and undertakes a structural analysis of the interrelationships. Discusses implications for the development of a professional identity for adult educators. (SK)

Article considered three political determinants that should be kept in mind when deliberating upon accountability. (Author/RK)

The future stability of the Los Angeles school district as a single entity is questioned. Various problems that add instability to the system's present decentralization plans are discussed. Among them are achievement and academic performance. (Author/AM)

Political developments with respect to two public school systems are examined in terms of two theoretical models. When viewed from the analytical perspective used here, similarities between the two cities with respect to progress in decentralization begin to emerge.

A community school in a total community education process is not and cannot be the same school with a few additional evening enrichment programs. What community educators seek is a new form of education. (Author)

Analyzes why, as the process of decision-making has been centralized by school bureaucracies, and as professional educators have gained power, public education has become a closed social institution neither accountable nor responsible to the citizens it serves. (JM)

Argues that the principal cause of failure has been due to a lack of sufficient power to overcome the opposition of groups who depended upon and actively defended the historically centralized and professionally dominated system. (Author/AM)

This article examines the New York City decentralization program and its implications for ultimate exclusion of those groups for which the original design intended mainstream decision making powers. (JC)

The design, implementation, and eventual failure of a system-wide, long-term comprehensive reform of the Washington, D.C. elementary and junior high schools to improve academic achievement among black students is explored in depth. The struggle for control over policy making and the opposition of teachers' unions and community groups were key…

Suggests the extent to and particular ways in which urban governments and school systems are undemocratic and unresponsive to community needs. Provides an example of the general inability of minority groups to obtain their social and political goals through either protest or political bargaining. (Author/AM)

Notes that if the school really belongs to the community, then administrators have no more right to put a kid out of his school than to put their children out of the house. Discusses the implications of this ideology. (Author/AM)

Article concludes that the greater the interpenetration of school and community, the greater the likelihood of community control. The implications of community control on curriculum design are discussed. (RW)