Since 1993, school reform leaders from Chicago (Illinois), Denver (Colorado), New York (New York), Seattle (Washington), and Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) have come together in the Cross City Campaign to work for the improvement of urban education. In each of these cities rhetorical pleas for decentralization and the investment of decision making in…

Restructuring of small school districts calls for power changes, including relationships: (1) between the community and the school; (2) among teachers, administrators, and students in the school; and (3) between teachers and students in the classroom. A trip to 25 small town school districts in 21 states revealed few instances of democracy, and…

The Teachers Network created The Teachers Voice Initiative to bring teachers together and empower them to create their vision of the future of education. This book presents the perspectives of participating teachers, who report on their experiences as agents of change and designers of curriculum. Papers include: "Teacher Leadership for Creating…

This book was written for teachers and principals committed to instituting shared governance and more democratic forms of leadership and to help understand today's principalship and what it means to administer a shared-governance school. The data were derived from a study of successful principals in schools affiliated with the League of…

This paper provides a framework for the discussion of policy and development of educational quality. Based on the choice of indicators, the purpose of assessment, and the type of evaluation, the paper proposes a whole-matrix approach to addressing the critical issues in assessing and monitoring educational quality. These critical issues include…

It is possible to give a concrete meaning to the usually vague concept of decentralization by examining four core components. First, at the crux of decentralization is a downward shift in decision-making power. Administrative decentralization entails shifts internal to the institution. Political decentralization shifts authority to external forces…

This document for school-council members in Kentucky provides guidelines for school-based decision making (SBDM). In 1990, the Kentucky State legislature passed the Education Reform Act (KERA), which mandated SBDM in Kentucky schools and recommended the formation of school councils composed of the principal, three teachers, and two parents. The…

This paper describes the use of site-based management in one Maryland (Frederick) high school. A partnership was established between a college teacher and the high school in order to conduct teacher training for implementing a Clinical Supervision Teacher Growth Program. High school faculty became supervisors and supervisees in a peer coaching…

This book examines recent school reforms in England and Wales, the U.S.A., Australia, New Zealand and Sweden. It suggests that, at the same time as appearing to devolve power to individual schools and parents, governments have actually been increasing their own capacity to "steer" the system at a distance. Section 1 sets the scene by outlining and…

This study presents a report on parents' participation in a leadership-development project in which parents constructed their own leadership roles for improving children's educational opportunities and outcomes. The text focuses on parents working in collaboration with other parents, school administrators, and university faculty and staff. The…

Since 1990, a long-term study has been following the implementation of the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) in 21 schools in 4 rural school districts. This publication summarizes study findings through 1995. Findings across KERA strands suggest that reform would have been unlikely without KERA's extra funding, used to increase teacher…

Teacher leaders often teach full- or part-time while assuming leadership responsibilities. Also, they have often learned new roles just by doing the tasks demanded by those roles. A more systematic approach to helping teachers develop the requisite skills for assuming leadership roles (e.g. department chairs, team and grade leaders, and curriculum…

Findings of a study that examined Chicago teachers' opinions about school reform, the quality of their schools, and their perspectives on instruction and its improvement are presented in this paper. A survey mailed to 12,708 Chicago public elementary school teachers in late May and June of 1991 elicited an overall response rate of 70 percent.…

School finance is once again a hot topic across the country. Despite the current turmoil in education finance, reform remains a priority at both the state and federal levels. This report examines the school finance issue and proposes that education funding be tied more closely to systemic reform initiatives. It next describes past trends in school…

This paper describes a national 3-year project, the Empowered School District Project, which was implemented in nine school districts to empower school participants. This paper focuses on the efforts to empower students by helping them become independent, lifelong learners. The project was implemented in nine schools--five elementary and four high…