The president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (Texas) is the latest in a series Baptist seminary presidents to be fired or resign after conflict with conservative trustees. Critics are concerned about implications for academic freedom; donors are withholding gifts; and an accrediting agency has questioned the firing. (MSE)

A recent poll of 332 university presidents, trustees, faculty, athletic coaches and representatives, and senior women sports administrators found that in intercollegiate athletics, trustees are seen as part of the problem but are also seen as having a leadership role to play. Active trustee involvement is urged. (Author/MSE)

Three former senior academic officers, all later to become college presidents, offer best practices for governing board members and chief academic officers (CAOs) on participatory governance, strategic resource planning, and relationships among the CAO, the trustees, and the president. Topics addressed include an effective institutional governance…

Reports initial findings of a small-scale research project investigating how school governing bodies contribute to school improvement. Examines the extent of board members' assumption of responsibility for monitoring and evaluating curriculum and school performance. Discusses possible tensions created by a lay body undertaking educational…

In Kansas City, Kansas, the school system wanted to do more than end two decades of court-ordered desegregation plans. The district created a comprehensive and integrated plan for educational improvement that can be used by any district. A three-pronged approach to school planning focuses on programs, demographics, and facilities. (MLF)

This study examined superintendents' perceptions of current performance evaluation practices and their preferences for those practices. Specifically, 1,125 superintendents across the nation received a questionnaire exploring evaluation effectiveness and results-based procedures. Findings indicate practices are neither uniformly effective nor…

The quality of superintendent-school board relationships has a direct impact on the success of any school system through the power of good public relations. The traditional roles of superintendents and school boards and the artificial division of labor between the two no longer serve our school systems well. In this article, I apply a model of…

One of the very unique characteristics of child care boards is the prevalence of parent volunteers serving as board members. When parents serve as board members, a number of challenges are created. Because most parents do not have previous board experience and they are both clients as well as trustees, there is the potential for conflicts of…

New ways of thinking about governance are beginning to transform the leadership strategies of many people who serve in nonprofit organizations. How specifically can the time and talents of higher education trustees be used more effectively to advance the interests of colleges and universities? How many college and university boards govern like…

For a decade, Ashland school district required the 70 average for athletes--a higher threshold than the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association standard that many of the state's schools follow. That standard has no minimum GPA, merely requiring that students do not flunk more than one major subject during a marking period. Parents began…

The success of a country's education system depends to a large extent on the mutual trust and co-operation existing between all partners. However, numerous documented incidents in the media have confirmed that there is a field of tension between school governing bodies of public schools in South Africa and the Department of Education, which is of…

When the Chicago School Reform Act was first passed, many worried that the legislation would usher adversarial politics into the school building. This paper describes parent and community involvement in school decision making at Sprague Elementary school, which serves 1,500 Latino students. The case study chronicles the school's development…

This booklet for trustees of institutions of higher education offers guidelines concerning the distinction between policy making and administration and the relationship of policy making to administration. It stresses the importance of keeping policy making and administration separate and of communication and consultation between the chief…

Findings of a study that examined the administrative practices of effective senior administrators in Ontario, Canada are presented in this paper, which is based on the theoretical concept of "facilitative power" as described by Dunlap and Goldman (1991). This approach views effective leadership as working through others rather than…

This study explores the reasons for high turnover within rural superintendencies from the perspective of local boards of education. Forty-one school districts with 600 or fewer students in a southwestern state were identified as experiencing high superintendent turnover (having employed three or more superintendents within the past 5 years).…