The paper draws on findings from three case studies on the changing role of Local Education Authorities (LEAs) in England and explores the degree of LEA effectiveness, their contribution to school improvement, and the nature of their leadership. The context for the study is one in which, over the years, the powers and responsibilities of LEAs have…

A major component of the decentralization concept has been the focus on the participation of community, staff, and students in the process of educational decision making. On June 28, 1971, the Los Angeles City Board of Education mandated that a school-community advisory council be established in every regular elementary and secondary school in the…

Using three interpretations of community control, the attitudes of local elites in New York City were analyzed. Findings indicate substantial levels of support for some form of community control among both white and minority respondents. (Author/RLV)

The Chicago Public Schools have experienced major reforms since the late 1980s. This has resulted in increased power to local school communities and the creation of local school councils (LSCs) that employ its principals. This paper presents findings of a study that examined principals' perceptions of their changing roles under Chicago's school…

Examines Colombia's efforts to halt escalating violence and social destruction through political and educational decentralization aimed at bolstering participatory democracy. Discusses the efficiency and anticorruption goals of centralization policies of the 1970s. Describes lack of shared vision and other national and local barriers to…

The movement for community control of schools allowed for the participation of parents in educational policy with regard to their local schools. This movement was aimed at increasing the participation of inner city parents in the schools. This movement has currently slowed down. In large metropolitan areas, the size of the educational system has…

Faced with a legal mandate to equalize educational resources available to its public elementary schools, can the Board of Education of the District of Columbia respond effectively to the public pressure for decentralization of its decision-making systems? The answer may be determined through the responses to two further questions: to what extent…

The purposes of this study were: (1) to ascertain the extent to which urban school systems have decentralized the administration of their schools, (2) to obtain opinions on its workability in terms of curriculum development, (3) to begin development of an instrument for clarifying role and function issues at various echelons of decision-making,…

Chinese "people-managed schools" began in the 1940s as popular voluntary village schools providing flexible relevant education to rural peasants, but are regarded today as low status and low quality. This change reflects the Chinese Communist Party's incremental move away from both decentralized decision making and populist education to…

This discussion is organized into four sections. In an introductory section, it is pointed out that the word "decentralization" appears to have many meanings. There is a need to clarify definitions, and to examine decentralization in a practical, working context. In Part 1, "Background and Issues", some of the major issues…

More than a century of centralized government and church control of Aboriginal education in Canada, aimed primarily at cultural assimilation, resulted in injustices, widespread inequalities, and underdevelopment. In the 1970s, after much political wrangling, the Canadian federal government and the First Nations agreed upon a policy of Indian…

The relationship between research and educational policy in the areas of school system decentralization and community control is analyzed in this dissertation. The literature on decentraliztion and community control is reviewed. It is contended that existing empirical research on these subjects has not systematically tested the assumptions…

The purpose of the study reported here was to assess the various decentralization efforts as they occurred in different services and in different cities. The study reviewed decentralization's record in terms of five outcomes: (1) Increases in the flow of information between servers and served; (2) Improvements in service officials attitudes; (3)…

This document reviews the consequences of urban community involvement in school decision making. Areas concerning educational decisions, shared as goals by lay communities and school people, are considered to be: institutional responsiveness, affective and material community support to schools, educational achievement, and the democratic principle…

This paper discusses the impact that recent educational reforms by the New Zealand government had on Maori individuals involved in community decision-making processes, focusing on one predominantly Maori rural community. Three strands of recent educational change in New Zealand are the move to self-managing institutions; ongoing debate over…