In the 1980s and 1990s, state governments began to take over local school districts in cities across the United States. After decades of local resistance to state control, communities are beginning to make strides in their efforts to regain local control. This paper examines local- and state-level stakeholders' perceptions of the return to local…

Newark, New Jersey has been at the forefront of school reform from the civil rights era through more recent efforts to resist neoliberal school reform approaches during the 2010s. Drawing on interviews with activists, policymakers, and school reformers, this paper documents the history of community organizing as a strategy to improve conditions in…

Barry M. Franklin's new work uses the concept of community as a lens for interpreting urban school reform since 1960. Focusing on the curriculum and employing case studies, he applies the concept to reform initiatives in a number of city school systems. Included are compensatory education, community control, mayoral takeovers, educational…

A school program in the District of Columbia strives to find new ways to teach children how to learn. (CK)

Discusses New York City's recent experiences with political decentralization of schools, and describes the goals of decentralization and community schools. (LR)

This paper reports the results of a statistical study of two community school districts within one urban school system. The purposes of the study were to determine (1) whether parents in a decentralized district are more satisfied with their schools than are parents in a regular, centralized district, and (2) whether the type of school district is…

Describes several administrative-community alternatives for governing metropolitan schools: (1) administrative decentralization, (2) community participation, and (3) community control. (CT)

Veteran principals are among the victims of "community control," Chicago style. Presents a chapter from the "Krug Report" published by the Chicago Tribune, with observations, inpressions, and educated insights based on many interviews, visits, and long-time contacts with schools. Attempts to help the public better understand…

Community controlled schools can do much to lessen the tension that exists in urban communities in that various models can be developed that will serve as focal points for enacting educational policies that fulfill the goals of individual communities. (CK)

Analysis of report to be published by the Urban Coalition.

Large cities may have to implement educational change on an all or nothing basis if any headway at all is to be made in eroding the power of entrenched establishments. (CK)

An argument is presented in favor of adopting community control of local schools. This would place the schools in the hands of the particular ethnic group most heavily represented within a given system and would prevent suppression of minority group cultures for the sake of prosletyzing middle class ideas. (CK)

Examines, by means of interviews with school principals, some of the problems involved in decentralization of the New York City school system. (WM)

The movement toward school decentralization in Chicago is best described as a strategy of incrementalism. It has proceeded along separate fronts--administrative decentralization, district and school advisory councils, and a special experimental district. This paper describes the extent to which these developments have progressed. It also seeks to…

After all the money spent, jobs allocated, new machinery and programs introduced, after all the publicity and conflict, and after all the bold rhetoric about the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Demonstration School District, New York City, the children of the district cannot read as well today as they did five years ago. (Author)