The Philadelphia Commission on Decentralization and Community Participation offers plans for reforms on the school and district level. On the school level, three options are suggested: (1) informal community participation in decision-making; (2) advisory participation in the form of an elected or appointed committee from the community; or, (3)…

School districts containing the largest proportions of poor and disadvantaged pupils have the lowest financial resources available to support their schools. The inequalities persist for a combination of both technical and political reasons. The evidence reviewed suggests that the distribution of school resources is directly related to the…

The broad outlines of the recommendations for dealing with the urban school crisis presented by the National Educational Association (NEA) Task Force Project are: (1) decentralization and reorganization involving both parents and educators in decision making processes; (2) availability of medical and dental care; (3) individualized instruction;…

Sources consulted in preparing this bibliography include the "Bibliographie du Quebec,""British Education Index" (The Library Association), the "Canadian Education Index," the "Cumulative Book Index" (Wilson's), the "Current Index to Journals in Education," the "Directory of Education Studies in Canada," the "Education Index" (Wilson's),…

Research on economic development efforts among 70 American Indian tribes, mostly in rural areas, yields information that may be applicable to rural areas generally. Local control matters--when decisions move into the hands of those whose future is at stake, the decision makers bear the consequences of their decisions, resulting in better decision…

This study finds that the New York City version of school-based decision making, School-Based Management/Shared Decision Making (SBM/SDM), fails to bring school-based management or shared decision making to the schools. This report begins by describing the seriously dysfunctional structure of the New York City public schools and explains the…

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)…

The most basic reason why blacks are rejecting integrated education is that such education is incapicitating in terms of understanding and alleviating the black condition. Negro Americans educated in white institutions are turned against their own people; they become advocates for oppression of blacks, not advocates against their oppression.…

The conference proceedings which comprise this book focus on three problem areas: (1) Objectives and social implications of community governance of city schools, covered as follows: Harold Pfautz discusses the long-run impact of community-governed schools on goals of racial equality and harmony, Mario Fantini suggests the curriculum and other…

This document discusses the educational cycles of urban education from 1898 through the current thrust toward decentralization. Briefly, political exploitation for personal profit was followed by the theory that "professionals" should control the schools without "outside interference." The present revolution is a direct reaction to the failure of…

The concept of community control of schools differs from "decentralization" because community control stresses the possibility of the schools becoming an integral part of the total community. When professional educators are coupled with a cluster of special interest groups (e.g., book publishers, realtors, landowners, politicians), they form…

It is time to reevaluate the myths of the nineteenth century and the structures they created pertaining to education. There is a need to utilize new power relationships to creatively build a pluralistic educational system. It must be recognized that conflict can lead to collaboration if respect is present, whereas collaboration which ignores…

The contents of the second volume in the "Pegasus Series on Decentralization and the Urban Crisis," of which Alan Altshuler is General Editor, are organized in five chapters. Chapter one, "Background to controversy," comprises discussions of such topics as the failure of integration, liberalism and race, Negro responses, and the issue of…

This paper measures the effects on student outcomes of decentralizing educational responsibility to communities and schools. In El Salvador, community-managed schools emerged during the 1980s when public schools could not be extended to rural areas because of the country's civil war. In 1991, El Salvador's Ministry of Education decided to draw on…

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…