True educational restructuring requires a vision of learning, examples of visionary school-level restructuring, and a coordinated plan at the local, state, and national levels for inviting and helping schools accept choice, responsibility, and accountability. One strategy calls for site-based flexibility and development of educational innovation…

The Management Profile, an integrated appraisal method designed to determine school leaders' individual strengths and weaknesses, is a three-tiered model of leadership roles, functions, and tasks. After receiving a confidential report profiling their individual management characteristics, administrators can develop a professional development plan…

For a school to be educationally successful, it must be a community of professionals working together toward a vision of teaching and learning. A school must develop a vision, determine decision-making processes, assess effectiveness of strategies, establish and clarify major goals, obtain control over resources, and avoid distraction. The League…

Moving toward site-based management, Greece (New York) Central School District administrators and the teachers' organization established a representative steering committee to coordinate and facilitate the decentralization process and develop a master plan. Benefits include increased faculty understanding, improved school climate, and increased…

At a Suburban New Jersey elementary school, the principal learned to let go and provide the means for staff to solve their own problems. Some lessons include learning to listen, establishing patterns of communication, understanding individual styles, promoting open communication, working to build trust, thinking with new perspectives, promoting…

The principal of a partly restructured elementary school describes effective tactics for starting the process. These include teaching and demonstrating change, making change pay (by rewarding teachers for making risky changes), picking a focus or mission, and involving everybody. Although the process is not complete and some costs are unknown, the…

Recently, the Petersburg (Virginia) Public Schools have moved away from a highly centralized organizational structure to a Total Quality Management system featuring shared decision making and school-based management practices. The district was guided by Deming's philosophy that all stakeholders should be involved in defining the level of products…

Describes a management-development program aimed at developing managerial skills and responsibilities across the whole staff of a Welsh secondary school. Explains the reasons for possible antipathy to this inservice training topic. The project used teachers' current managerial tasks so that teachers, in conjunction with self-study materials, could…

One criticism of school-based management is that teachers are being asked to make disjointed decisions rather than decisions tied together by a common vision of change. This article discusses SBM's influences in changing school culture and presents a model embodying teacher-leader cooperation to change school policies and practices and adopt a…

Mastering the new professional standards for superintendents is important, but courageous risk-taking, timing, and judgment are the "heart-and-soul" factors of leadership. The usual board/superintendent relationship is inconsistent with site-based management and building autonomy. Perhaps boards should develop a clearly defined set of performance…

In communities as diverse as those in Montgomery County, Maryland, and the state of Kentucky, school staffs have shown reluctance to opt into shared decision-making programs. Teachers have often declined, and, in Montgomery County, the principals' bargaining unit went on record in opposition to a proposed policy of participatory decision making.…

In this interview, Arthur E. Wise, teacher reform advocate, discusses the status of educational reform, the impact of the national goals, and the principal's role in implementing change. School-based management complicates the principal's role, as principals must become expert team-builders and facilitators. The national education goals are…

Considers the issue of local school control within large school districts. Describes the campus-centered German educational system. Provides insight into why the orientation of initiatives in site-based school management may be the opposite of what is needed. (HB)

A 1992 survey of state education departments revealed the extent and nature of each state's school-based management (SBM) implementation. Fully 44 states reported some SBM presence and confirmed the existing knowledge base of activity in budget, curriculum, personnel, group process, and policy. There is state and national consensus for a gradual…

As school-based management and collaborative decision making are implemented in the educational system, the superintendent's traditional "clockworks" role will undergo transformation. This article explores the necessary leadership characteristics and skills for assuming this new role. Superintendents must be instructional, transformative, and…