Traditionally, absenteeism has been understood as a problem that requires individualised punitive measures. However, more recent studies have highlighted the importance and coherence of tackling it through community-based approaches in which the entire educational ecosystem is involved and participates. This article describes the methodological…

The Management and Planning System (MAPS), designed to provide a computer-based information storage and retrieval system to aid school board decision makers, is described. (DB)

Major literature is reviewed in the course of describing and assessing the role of operations research (OR) in educational administration. Increased use of OR approaches in education and a compounding of the present disagreement about the application and potential of OR are forecast. (MJL)

Planning, a key management responsibility, is the process of determining the thrust of an organization's activities. The basic concepts of planning are objectives and policies. Objectives are the ends by organizational effort. Policies limit the means by which ends are sought. Strategic planning concentrates on determining the ends to be sought,…

Planning, both as an academic field and as a profession, is in a dilemma involving the adoption of two contradictory public philosophies. The more established philosophy orients itself to the efficiency of the whole system, while the second orients to particular groups and claims that adequate participation in the system is denied these groups as…

Needs assessment is a young and growing field. Needs assessments contribute to effective educational planning and help educators improve services to students. Needs assessment can be used to identify goals and objectives, but probably has the most utility as a problem-focusing strategy that includes the following sequence: (1) identification of…

For education to be maximally effective at the local level, longrange planning must be developed at the State level and a constructive exchange of information concerning educational problems must be operating throughout all levels of a State edu"ational system. Administration of education at the State level must be organized to insure that seven…

As part of the Design of Training Systems project, the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, was assigned a sixfold task by the Training Analysis and Evaluation Group: (1) analyse the functional description of the Naval Education Training and Command (NAVEDTRACOM) from the standpoint of how decisions are made; (2) review the literature…

This paper is a partial report on a three-year field experiment in participatory educational planning in a suburban school district. It is shown that teachers, administrators, parents, and students, working voluntarily with technical support as a "collateral organization" within a district, can substantially broaden the scope of…

A collection of papers on particular issues commissioned by the chief state school officer in Wisconsin reassesses education--the state of the art and the future direction in general. Issues selected for discussions are those that highlighted the majority of the superintendent's discussions with lay people while campaigning for office and…

The business community is becoming recognized as an important partner in educational reform. Although more traditional adopt-a-school programs and career-day activities remain popular, the growing national concern over education and its perceived economic impact have compelled businesses to become agents of change. Business-led organizations such…

A longitudinal, comparative case study examines the impact of enrollment decline on and the response to it by 15 suburban school districts in 2 metropolitan areas. Data were collected during 1978-81 through interviews, observation of public meetings, documentary and statistical sources, and case histories developed for each district from 1964-81.…

Periods of executive change provide an ideal time for the development of planning efforts for public school systems and for self-examination of the system's strengths, weaknesses, and long-range needs. In the anonymous school system under study, the new superintendent's application of general systems theory to school district management entailed a…