This evaluation analyzes the School Improvement Plans (SIPs) produced by the core planning teams of Project Creating a New Approach to Learning (CANAL), part of a court-mandated desegregation plan to reduce inequities in predominantly Black and Hispanic American schools in Chicago (Illinois). CANAL's goal is to organize and train core planning…

Majority control of schooling undercuts the freedoms of expression and belief which are central to the First Amendment and to the political health of our society. In education, First Amendment rights can only be guaranteed insofar as choice is actually available to dissenting families. However, battles over public orthodoxy are observable in…

This book is an introduction and guide to school-based management, a decentralized form of organization in which decisions that have traditionally been made by a superintendent or school board are made by the local school. Chapter 1 provides an overview of decision-making in public school systems starting with a brief history of the trend toward…

Change in rural schools is difficult to achieve because the diversity of these schools does not allow for one set implementation program. Small rural schools are an integral part of the rural community, and as such are as different as the part of the country where they are located. Change in rural areas is unsuccessful due to: the amount of…

In this speech the subject of eroding public confidence in the public schools is discussed. Elected school boards and school administrators quite frequently do not solve the problems facing the schools, and this failure is often because of lack of communication with the public and lack of citizen participation in decisions affecting school…

The 15-year effort to decentralize New York City public schools and thereby implement basic changes in the school system is briefly sketched in this study. The structure of the school system, powers of local boards, central board, and chancellor, school board elections, keeping the public informed, educational impact, and effect on truancy and…

This resource paper on the subject of citizen participation, decentralization, and advocacy planning is part of a series designed to supplement undergraduate geography courses. The approach of the paper de-emphasizes inventory or case study reviews of specific participation or advocacy planning projects for a more general conceptual discussion of…

This discussion is organized into four sections. In an introductory section, it is pointed out that the word "decentralization" appears to have many meanings. There is a need to clarify definitions, and to examine decentralization in a practical, working context. In Part 1, "Background and Issues", some of the major issues…

Even though public school districts are structured with the expectation of responsive governance, most school boards are not particularly responsive to their constituents. School boards from politically contentious districts tend to be more responsive, but they have even less success challenging the dominance of the superintendent than do less…

Although the break-up of the unresponsive school bureaucracy in New York will be a move toward greater accountability, the basic question is: will this raise achievement levels? Its possible advantagees include: the increase in both the operating efficiency of the schools and the responsiveness of schools to the lay public; increased student fate…

The reported failure of urban schools has been well documented by various government commissions. To remedy this situation, quality and equality of education must be insured. Research and development on disadvantaged populations has increased in an effort to reverse the effects of traditional pedagogical methods. Numerous programs for early…

The contributors to this volume examine various legal aspects of the following school problems: decentralization, collective negotiation, and student rights. These writers detail the practical aspects of recent decentralizations in New York City and Detroit, and make recommendations for local board functioning in decentralized systems. Three…

The research presented in this study focuses on the hypothesis that there are consistent patterns of school desegregation and racial attitudes in the South and urban North which can be empirically derived and mathematically described through the simultaneous use of ecological and opinion data. Findings relating to the public school desegregation…

Three major areas of confrontation within the educational system stem from power shifts taking place within the social system as a whole. The taxpayer's revolt against increased school expenditures as juxtaposed to teachers' collective demands for salary increases forms the nucleus of one major confrontation area. Secondly, urban schools face a…

This collection of essays scrutinizes needs in urban educational reform, and systematically analyzes curriculum, the urban school child, the language patterns of disadvantaged black children, teacher training, compensatory education, community control, and educational separatism. It is contended that the urban school should be redesigned to…