Over the past twenty years, Federal government intervention has had a greater impact on elementary and secondary education than most citizens, educators, or politicians realize. Federal intervention has taken two directions: initiatives to redistribute educational resources through compensatory educational programs, and initiatives towards target…

This chapter of "The Best of the Best of ERIC," Volume 2, contains 14 summaries of documents and journal articles on citizen advisory committees, all of which are indexed in either "Resources in Education" or "Current Index to Journals in Education." The materials included deal with various aspects of this topic, such as the role of the school…

The paper discusses civic literacy as it bears on adult education. Civic literacy addresses the domain of intentional actions about political community, in a process of discovery and invention, the result of a dynamic interaction between practice and theory. The action-inquiry model of civic literacy consists of two theses and five competencies.…

Summarizing research conducted under the Western Regional Research Project on the delivery of rural community services, this report presents explications of the following generalizations which have been supported by research: (1) Many rural service institutions need reorganization and renewal, (2) Regionalization increases organizations' ability…

In this document, the author points out that Americans have lost confidence in the government and political processes and shows how Common Cause can help restore trust in our institutions. Over the years, since the signing of the Constitution, Americans have believed that their political system was one in which they had a voice and that the system…

This booklet takes a brief, factual look at the changes in Canadian education over the past 15 years and identifies some social changes that seemed to have an influence on education. Changes in public involvement in education, curriculum, status of teachers, financing, and the federal government's growth in financial assistance to education are…

The effects of Florida's "sunshine" law opening collective bargaining sessions to the public are outlined in this presentation, which summarizes the results of a survey of school board members, superintendents, and negotiators. Of the 101 school board members (one-third of Florida's total) responding to the questionnaire, 68 said that…

The involvement of the community is absolutely essential in planning for declining enrollment and school closing. Through the use of the community task force, the frequently painful decisions entailed by a no-growth policy can be made more palatable. There are three types of task forces (the indepth seminar, the six- to eight-week study group, and…

Recent studies show that committee members are committed to their goals in a degree equal to their control of goal implementation. Results of a questionnaire sent to the 27 vocational-technical program coordinators at the College of DuPage (Illinois) asking them to indicate the frequency with which certain activities were engaged in by advisory…

This is the final report of the Evaluation of Pilot Programs for Children (EPPC), a project to evaluate the progress of five communities in Tennessee which received demonstration funds from OCD to develop a Community Coordinated Child Care (4-C) program over a 3-year period (1971-1974). The 4-C is a system under which local public and private…

This research assesses new arrangements for citizen participation in urban school affairs within the 13 cities studied. An effort was made to learn who participates and whom they represent, the forum for participation, the issues considered, the tactics used by participants, the sanctions available to participants, the success of the program, and…

Jackson County, West Virginia, a rural county which was industrialized in 1956, was reported on in 1966. Natives of the county, characterized by traditional patterns of behavior, and in-migrants, characterized by rational patterns, were compared regarding educational values and attitudes. The basic hypothesis of this study was that the in-migrants…

An experimental project sought to build a replicable model of a viewer-active television simulation. Other educational goals were to 1) increase citizen concern for environmental factors and land use in Maine; 2) disseminate information on land use agencies; 3) illuminate the citizen's role in public planning; and 4) develop new patterns of…

In this booklet, the author describes both the changing role of the school superintendent and nine ways in which today's administrators differ from their predecessors. He also discusses the role of the school attorney (1) as an advisor at law, (2) as a counselor on governance, and (3) as an attorney in litigation. (JF)

This report presents the findings and recommendations of a study to determine the attitudes of taxpayers toward the performance of School District 4J in Eugene, Oregon. Data revealed that only 32 percent of the taxpayers considered the district schools to be meeting community needs. Since the constituent opinions toward appropriate school…