Based on a survey of superintendents from 100 of the nation's largest urban and ex-urban districts and on interviews with 40 large-district superintendents, this study finds that a majority of urban school superintendents believe that their ability to implement reform in order to raise academic achievement is frustrated by district governance. The…

Pennsylvania's Philadelphia School District implemented an action plan that mandated establishment of small learning communities (SLCs) in all schools. SLCs were intended to increase teacher professionalism and effectiveness by bringing decision making power to the local level. This paper examines how two elementary schools' SLCs implemented…

The Alberta Initiative for School Improvement (AISI) is being implemented in Alberta school jurisdictions and charter schools in the 2000-01 school year. While the "Framework for the Alberta Initiative for School Improvement," December 1999, provides the AISI background, goals, principles, considerations, clarifications, and…

This report explores the insights and experiences of activists who build strong constituencies to reform public schools. It presents data from a 2-year study involving the seven primary constituency and coalition building grantees of the Ford Foundation's Constituency Building for Public School Reform Initiative. Data were collected from 14…

This paper discusses dynamics of educational systems that can influence professional development. It begins by suggesting that adjusting education systems to support sustained, high-quality professional development for all teachers can be compared to developing dynamic, passionate orchestras whose productions touch their audiences and bring joy…

This study examined the effects of an intervention model on second-grade students who exhibited inappropriate behaviors toward authority figures. Participating in the study were 20 second graders (7 females and 13 males) from 1 classroom in a rural northeast Tennessee school district. Data were collected by means of observation of five targeted…

Takes a brief but hard look at each of the Demonstration Districts involving the school decentralization experiment in New York City, in order to understand the present chaotic situation. Only a well-informed, aroused citizenry is considered to be able to save the children from destruction at the hands of the school system. (DM)

An interview with the chairmen of the Senate's Select Committee on Equal Educational Opportunity in the months of hearings on Southern school desegregation. (JM)

Faculty surveys of the honorific academies and of American professors indicate that the former are more liberal politically than the latter, including those at the most distinguished institutions. Theories of intellectual creativity and political socialization are applied to these findings. Available from Elsevier Publishing, 52 Vanderbilt Avenue,…

Educational reformers tend to see teachers as passive consumers of innovations, while teachers view themselves as powerful, active, and autonomous in the classroom. Reform efforts have created the conditions for a power struggle over curriculum implementation. Future efforts must take into account these power relationships. (PP)

Describes the political development of post-colonial Africa. Continuing tension has existed between single party and multi-party solutions to political organization and between mass movements and elitism. While Africans have been responive to socialist rhetoric, the primacy of ethnicity and the weak class structure have militated against genuine…

This study investigated the significance of viewing the authority to evaluate as an indicator of the exercise of financial control. Financial control in this investigation focuses exclusively on state financial legislation. Evaluation authority in this investigation focuses exclusively on evaluation components of such legislation. (BW)

Lack of overall planning has caused a malaise in Australian higher education. National policy-making has evolved through changes in the power structure and governments' interrelationships. Results include erosion of university autonomy, trends toward standardization within the system, and budgeting that does not consider individual institutional…

The Australian Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) report, which describes a politically preferred version of the higher education system, is put into historical, economic, and political perspective and criticized for its style and content. The workings of the public agencies concerned with higher education are outlined. (MSE)

H. S. Bhola's models of planned change can contribute to the understanding of change processes and clarify the role of power in change. They do not, however, deal with problems such as resource dependency, which educational administrators face. Attitudes may interfere with acceptance of the models. (PP)