Site-based management has become a popular school reform strategy. However, conflicts can arise when school districts with collective bargaining try to implement site-based management. Site-based management depends on collaboration and cooperation among educators, both of which conflict with collective bargaining's adversarial nature. There is…

School/site-based management requires shifting the initiative in public schools from legislators, school boards, superintendents, central administrative offices, and unions, to individual schools. The purpose of school/site-based management is to increase student achievement and success by making those closest to the delivery of educational…

This document outlines a community-based state school system that allows a large degree of local autonomy in exchange for heightened accountability for school performance. It highlights a model education platform for candidates in the 1994 election. A system of educational excellence for the 21st century would be performance-based, locally…

The implications of decentralization reform on the amount of serious attention and effort that teachers give to teaching and learning activities are explored in this paper. The discussion is informed by the results of two case studies of school districts recognized as exemplary cases of decentralization. The first section describes limitations of…

Texas school-finance reforms implemented in response to the 1989 Edgewood Independent School District v. Kirby state supreme court ruling have impacted school districts differently. A study of four school districts, two poor and two wealthy, examined how these districts responded to changes in the school-finance system and the state's educational…

This report on a symposium is comprised of four short papers on the Beginning Principals Study in Victoria, Australia. The first paper (by Jenny Baker) chronicles the struggles of a beginning principal at a small suburban school. The government school is in a high socioeconomic area and is close to several prestigious private schools. Enrollment…

This paper describes "Building Local Leadership for Middle-Grades Schools Improvement," a school-improvement effort implemented in six schools (three urban and three nonurban) within two neighboring districts in the south central United States. Methodology involved a survey of faculty members' perceptions conducted in 1988 and 1989, interviews…

The purpose of this Bulletin is to clarify the intent of shared decision making (SDM) and explore its benefits, drawbacks, and implementation. It looks at how the principal's role changes in SDM, stresses the need for training, examines conditions that affect successful implementation of SDM, and offers ideas on how schools can concentrate on…

This handbook explains site-based management (SBM) in schools to help those who wish to decentralize their operation so that the campus-level staff have flexibility in making decisions that affect the students at their location. The text is divided into four major sections, each devoted to a particular area of concern under the SBM concept.…

Few of the empirical studies on school restructuring adequately describe the role of site teams in school reform. This paper addresses this gap, an analysis of what site teams do, how they are configured, and how they operate. This paper presents empirical measures of variables relating to the decision-making and communication practices engaged in…

Findings of a study that explored the extent of knowledge and use of school-based management concepts by faculty, graduate students, and school administrators are presented in this paper. Nationwide data were obtained from surveys that were returned by 63 professors of educational administration, 82 principals, and 216 graduate students in…

This book lays the groundwork for rethinking school finance in the context of new educational policy directions for the 1990s. Proposed educational reforms have created several school finance issues: (1) the linkage between the basic school finance structure, educational goals, and the cost of effective schoolwide strategies; (2) site-based…

Information about 299 schools working with the school-based management process "Onward to Excellence" (OTE) is provided in this directory. Each school entry includes a contact person and information about OTE status, school demography, and progress toward school goals and activities. A total of 176 elementary, 48 middle/junior high, 51 high, and…

This study surveyed teacher's attitudes toward participatory decision making activity. The trend toward school-based management raises the question of whether or not teachers actually want to be involved in management of their schools. Sixty-seven teachers, from small schools taking graduate courses during the 1991 summer session at the Central…

Findings of a study that examined teachers' and principals' perceptions of organizational changes affecting their professional work as a result of restructuring are presented in this paper. The multiple case study of two elementary, two middle, and two high schools derived data from interviews with each principal and from questionnaires…