Quality work teams that are based on W. Edwards Deming's business-management theories have proliferated at the school and district levels to handle problem solving and decision making. Teams are said to build stronger relationships among those involved in education and, ultimately, to benefit students because more people with broader perspectives…

This bulletin describes how Coopers & Lybrand and the United States Department of Commerce's Center for Workforce Preparation joined efforts to create a model for school-finance and management reporting. The Finance Analysis Model provides a new reporting system for districts that have implemented school-based management. The model is a…

This paper examines the problems of centralized academic-indicator systems in light of the move toward site-based management. Problems with current practice are examined in the framework of critical inquiry. Alternatives to current accountability guidelines are presented that harmonize positivism with critical inquiry, while respecting both local…

The emphasis in recent British educational legislation (primarily the 1988 Education Act) has been on the creation of an "internal market" to stimulate improvements in educational outcomes and provide efficiency and accountability. The internal market mechanism allows schools to manage their own budgets and personnel and to create…

School leaders, especially principals, will play a major role in determining how effectively public schools are able to respond to the challenges of the next century. This handbook summarizes, analyzes, and synthesizes literature on educational leadership. It also integrates theory and practice, containing ideas from practitioners. The volume…

Educational reform in Norway has led to increasing decentralization and a redefinition of the role of the school principal. Action research is an approach enabling principals to clarify alternative actions, consider appropriate action, and become aware of the relationship between agency and structure. Systematic reflection is a tool for…

The 1988 Education Reform Act precipitated major educational change in the United Kingdom. This book is a compilation of papers originally presented at the 1994 Centre for Educational Development Appraisal and Research (CEDAR) conference at the University of Warwick (England). The papers focus on changes that have occurred and are occurring in the…

This book discusses seven of the many major issues that schools and school districts face in adopting school-based management (SBM). Chapter 1 presents the rationale for SBM, and chapter 2 describes governance issues. It concludes that SBM does not threaten school-board sovereignty if SBM is properly structured and if the board does its job…

This paper presents findings of a case study that identified the new forms of accountability and control being constructed locally in the education service of England and Wales since the major legislative changes made in 1988. The changes include local school management, grant-maintained schooling, and competitive contract tendering. The 1988,…

School-based management (SBM) and its counterpart, shared decision making, raise traditional questions about power, representativeness, decentralization, and professionalism. This paper turns to history to provide a framework for untangling the issues that have come to the fore in current debates about power and shared school governance. In a…

When state governments in Australia decentralized many administrative responsibilities to schools in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was assumed that they would develop fresh management, development, and governance capacities. In general, such decentralization attempted to replace bureaucracies with corporate management, limit school evaluation…

In 1990 the Kentucky General Assembly passed one of the most comprehensive and innovative reform laws in the nation, the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA). Under this law, schools must meet state-defined goals to receive financial rewards. This paper presents findings of a 6-year, field-work study of education reform in four rural Kentucky…

As of November 1996, at least 25 states had passed charter-school legislation empowering agencies of state government to enter into agreements with private individuals and groups to operate public schools. This is a guidebook for government agencies given the power to permit individuals and groups to operate autonomous public schools under state…

Site-based management is a concept whose time has come. This book was designed to introduce the concept of teaming, elaborate the decision-making process, and describe the skills and processes needed for a variety of decision-making situations. Chapter 1 introduces the concept of teaming and discusses the decision-making process in depth. Chapters…

This paper defines site-based budgeting as a tool for restructuring schools through meaningful participation. It also describes the legal dimensions of site-based budgeting, with an emphasis on Texas. The following legal principles are discussed: public oversight of public dollars, deregulation of governmental powers, equal protection,…