For 70 years, the Union City School District used a line-item budget system, a top down approach that was regarded by many as "deaf, dumb, and blind." This antiquated central administration process gave school leaders and staff little, if any, input into the distribution of resources for their schools, resulting in a redundancy of allocations,…

School reformers hope that converting comprehensive high schools into collections of small schools will produce results similar to those realized in freestanding small schools. Three themes--personalization, professional community, and shared decision making--exemplify the early successes in conversions. But the challenge of sustaining these gains…

The Governor's Institutes of Vermont are summer programs for Vermont high school students. The students are chosen for their strong personal motivation and interest in art, science and technology, and international affairs. Coordinated with the Institutes, the Lead Learner program is designed to enhance teacher and school efforts in restructuring.…

The first education reform wave stressed top-down state initiatives identifying educators as the problem and prescribed greater accountability, closer supervision, tighter regulation, better teacher screening, tougher graduation standards, and a longer school year. The second reform wave saw educators as the solution and advocated bottom-up…

An overview of school-based management (SBM) and the issues involved are provided in this document. Information is offered on the following topics: the advantages and liabilities of SBM; its effect on the roles of the school board, superintendent, and district office; decision-making processes; elements of SBM implementation; examples of three…

Sharing decision making with teachers and parents actually increases the principal's influence. Offers 10 steps to translate leadership skills into school restructuring. (MLF)

With a $30,000 Carnegie Foundation grant, a Baltimore middle school launched a school-improvement team comprised of teacher representatives and "house" principals from "schools-within-schools," parents, community members, and the principal. After 4 years of tackling test scores, attendance, curriculum, scheduling, and parental…

Examines local management of British schools in term of organizational form theory. The 1988 Education Reform Act was designed to change the local education authority from a unitary to a multidivisional (M-form) structure, though the LEA's regulatory role was left undeveloped. Without a quality assurance function, decentralized management…

When initiating major structural change in schools, collaboration among educators, community members, and business persons is vital. This publication describes the efforts of the Ysleta (Texas) Independent School District, which successfully used collaboration to promote effective school change. Within the district, the Del Valle High School has…

Findings from a study to determine the knowledge base among Kentucky superintendents about site-based management (SBM) are presented in this paper. Questionnaires mailed to all of the state's 177 public school superintendents yielded a 73 percent response rate. Findings indicate that while there was considerable interest in SBM, there was…

In Colorado, a charter school is a public school operated by a group of parents, teachers, and/or community members as a semi-autonomous school of choice within a school district, operating under a contract between the charter school members and the local board of education. This publication provides information on the operation of charter schools…

Research on school-based management approaches to educational reform, including effective schools research, is presented. Included are an introductory section on school-based improvement and its link to effective schools, by Anne T. Henderson; descriptive summaries of 53 references; a list of organizations to contact for further information; and a…

Moving toward site-based management, Greece (New York) Central School District administrators and the teachers' organization established a representative steering committee to coordinate and facilitate the decentralization process and develop a master plan. Benefits include increased faculty understanding, improved school climate, and increased…

The principal of a partly restructured elementary school describes effective tactics for starting the process. These include teaching and demonstrating change, making change pay (by rewarding teachers for making risky changes), picking a focus or mission, and involving everybody. Although the process is not complete and some costs are unknown, the…

Recently, the Petersburg (Virginia) Public Schools have moved away from a highly centralized organizational structure to a Total Quality Management system featuring shared decision making and school-based management practices. The district was guided by Deming's philosophy that all stakeholders should be involved in defining the level of products…