Summarizes the historical background, planning, and implementation of a School-Based Management/Shared Decision Making (SBM/SDM) program in Dade County (Florida). Highlights interim evaluation findings and recommendations. (FMW)

A collaborative arrangement between education and business could have benefits for both. Schools could learn about fiscal accountability, empowering subordinates, and corporate culture from businesses. Business leaders could learn from school leaders about how people acquire knowledge, professional development, and remotivating the unproductive…

Describes Provo (Utah) School District's efforts to establish instructional leadership roles for its principals. To achieve instructional improvement goals, Provo principals are expected to provide leadership in four fundamental areas: staff development, curriculum review, clinical supervision, and evaluation and assessment. Includes four…

Discusses site-based management in schools and suggests implications for school library media specialists. Topics addressed include historical background, including total quality management; current changes in education, including school restructuring; and a review of recent research and literature from 1990-93. (Contains seven references.) (LRW)

The School Development Program, conceived during the 1960s, is a collaborative process designed to enhance school climate through shared decision-making and guided problem-solving approaches. Basic components are the school management and planning team, the mental health team, and the parents' program. This evaluation of Cleveland (Ohio) Public…

The article examines four basic elements of staff development needed to manage the changes in educational systems today and in the future: multidimensional professional development for all staff, decentralized performance-based systems, understanding and implementing the change process, and the changing role of the staff developer. (SM)

Local management of special schools (LMSS) in England is designed to increase school autonomy concerning staffing and resource allocation. However, special schools are constrained by the National Curriculum requirements, children's statements of special educational needs, compliance with governmental models for staffing levels, and the high…

Finnish higher education has begun to develop decentralization of decision making together with evaluation and negotiation in higher education. This article notes the risk that economic recession will bring about renewed centralization before self-regulatory mechanisms are set in place. (Author/JDD)

School-based development and self-evaluation were introduced at 16 Scottish schools. After 15 months, 5 schools had made substantial progress toward their chosen priorities, whereas 2 had hardly begun. Conflicts were evident between the collegiate style of self-evaluation and the hierarchical power structure in most schools. (SV)

Rejecting the voucher concept for promoting unequal education, this article endorses the "public/private partnership" model of reinvented school governance. Under this system, teachers and administrators remain public employees but are managed by a private company. Jay P. Goldman's sidebar criticizes privatization schemes as unworkable…

A study of five decentralized school districts reveals many reasons why recentralization could occur, including lack of accountability provisions, lack of effectiveness, retrenchment, central office reluctance to share power, and union hostility. Unless districts approach decentralization thoughtfully and with commitment, they may abandon the…

Although teachers can gain as much as students from practicing conflict resolution procedures, they often remain unconvinced about benefits unless they actually try them. Drawing on experimental programs in Pittsburgh and New York City, this article describes the basics of moving adults from conflict to collaboration. Morton Deutsch's sidebar…

Explores both the practical and legal obstacles facing school-based management, with an emphasis on legal requirements in the state of New York. Suggests that school-based management may be the precursor to a reevaluation of the legal structure of school management labor relations. (MLF)

For the past 18 months, a middle school in Bowie, Maryland, has been enthusiastically committed to change. Teachers have become catalysts, realizing they possessed the skills and abilities to remedy schooling problems. They confronted school failure through school-based management, self-actualizing activities, staff development, and professional…

Superintendents, a principal, a teacher, and representatives of the National Education Association describe how they are attempting to resolve the question of establishing parameters in shared decision-making programs. Also lists 12 principles necessary for effective decision making to commence and 12 effective practices in shared decision making.…