This paper examines whether teachers and parents feel they influence school leaders' work in the policy field of community participation in government schools within the state of New South Wales (NSW), Australia. It reports on the implementation of recent policy initiatives designed to create school/family partnerships. In New South Wales, a move…

Located within the Navajo Nation, Ganado Public Schools are committed to improving educational services through a long-term district restructuring process. This process involves: (1) strategic planning and envisioning sessions that generate concrete details of future schools; (2) reorganization of personnel to support curriculum development and…

School-based management (SBM) has gained popularity as a method for local school participants to improve their schools. As yet, however, there is little empirical evidence supporting a link between SBM and improved school performance. This book examines the SBM strategies that hold the most promise for increasing organizational effectiveness…

The last 2 decades of the 20th century have witnessed a growing movement to reform the American education system. While people debate why and how reform should be accomplished new initiatives are being developed and applied in many different areas: student performance standards, curricular innovation, assessment, accountability, professional…

This paper describes how an elementary school included parents in participative decision making to develop successful student-affairs programming. Including parents in the development of school activities mollifies complainers, creates opportunities for parent input, and facilitates innovation. Student-affairs programming offers an excellent…

The educational system in England and Wales is currently encountering a mix of increased central government control and school decentralization. The Local Education Authority (LEA) is in danger of being squeezed out, unless it can discover a new role as a service operation. American school districts in the same situation have adopted a…

The Iowa Educational Excellence Act and its amendments provide for four types of Phase III programs: performance-based pay, supplemental pay, a combination of both, or comprehensive school transformation. In 1993, the Des Moines Phase III program, which originated as a combination of performance-based pay and supplemental pay, changed to a…

This book presents findings of a study that explored the changing role of the high school principal. Data were gathered from principals and central-office personnel through interviews in more than 150 high schools in 23 states and 7 countries. Following the introductory chapter, chapter 2 describes the autonomy of the principal's school-site…

Deregulation in South Carolina schools was designed to give schools flexibility in meeting state and federal guidelines and student achievement goals. A survey of principals and faculty of deregulated schools examined how they perceived themselves as change agents. A questionnaire was sent to each principal and one faculty member in each of the…

Kentucky has witnessed many changes in educational administration. An assessment of those changes, with a focus on school boards, was done. School boards are not efficient bodies and this is not a problem. If efficiency was the top concern, then minimizing time and costs would be dominant and schools would suffer. School boards are not…

This report describes and evaluates Chapter 1 schoolwide programs in the School District of Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) since the reauthorization of that legislation in 1988. A brief description of the history and philosophy of Chapter 1 legislation and of the Philadelphia district opens the document. This district serves a population that is 77…

The role of education in reaching all children is discussed in this address. The former Minnesota Commissioner of Education describes the major restructuring efforts undertaken in the state during her tenure. Reform efforts were made in six areas, in which the following changes occurred: (1) from input-based education to individualized,…

This document consists of the two issues in the third volume (covering 1993) of "Notes from the Field," a serial documenting a 5-year study of the implementation of the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) of 1990 in four rural Kentucky school districts. The first issue addresses implementation of an ungraded primary program in eight…

This paper narrates the experiences of a superintendent hired into Montgomery Township School District (New Jersey), an affluent, small school district with a history of labor relations problems. When hired in 1990, the new superintendent was confronted with seven pending grievance cases and the board of education's rejection of the annual school…

Exemplary approaches to school-based budgeting are examined in this paper. Interviews were conducted with district staff involved in implementing school-based budget reforms in five school districts--Chicago, Dade County (Florida), Detroit, Los Angeles, and Edmonton (Canada)--and with state-level staff in California, Florida, Kentucky, and…