An examination of education-reform efforts in 50 states for the period 1983-87 found widespread adoption of reforms that were designed to increase state authority over education policymaking. The few decentralizing efforts contrasted sharply with the near universality of the centralizing reforms. This paper presents findings of a study that…

This paper presents findings of a study that examined the efforts of one Dade County, Florida, high school to use site-based management/shared decision making (SBM/SDM) over a 7-year period. The study examined participants' beliefs about the distribution of authority, the nature of work, and conceptions of learning and compared those beliefs with…

This paper locates the phenomenon of self-managing schools within the framework of "fast capitalism" and identifies themes of organization central to fast capitalism, which are argued to also underpin the self-managing schools. "Fast capitalism" refers to the rapidly intensified integration of regionalized productive activities into the global…

This paper presents findings of a study that described the existing nature of school-based management (SBM) structures and procedures associated with school-development planning in Western Australia. It also examined the impact of SBM on the curriculum and professional activities of teachers. Data were obtained through analysis of official policy…

Site-based management, parental choice, and accountability for the efficient, effective, and economic use of public resources in England and Wales were key themes of the 1988 Education Reform Act. The 1993 Education Act opened the way for greater choice in the marketplace by encouraging specialization and/or selection by aptitude/ability in…

Site-based management is designed to bring decision making to the school level and involve all stakeholders in a process that will result ultimately in improved student outcomes. Enacted into law in June 1989, Hawaii's School/Community-Based Management Initiative (SCBM) is part of a national trend toward decentralizing decision making and…

This document describes the methodology used to carry out the Assessment of School-Based Management Study, which identified the conditions in schools that promote high performance through school-based management (SBM). The 3-year project, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), began…

In some countries there has been a general trend toward centralizing control in areas such as the development and measurement of school goals while also increasing responsibility at the school level for financial and staffing decisions and for structuring learning activities to achieve those goals. The British and New Zealand educational reforms…

In some educational systems, legislative action mandates teacher participation in decision making through the formation of policymaking bodies such as school councils. This paper presents findings of a study that investigated high school teachers' perceptions of empowerment in schools with and without school councils. The study investigated…

Van Duyn Elementary School (Syracuse, New York) implemented a site-based project to develop student character. The neighborhood is a racially mixed, stable, private home community with 58 percent of students eligible for free or reduced price lunches. The school's objectives as part of a shared decision making, pilot school process were to have…

The relationship between school site culture and secondary school reform is examined in this paper, which focuses on high school teachers' impact on the implementation of school-based management. Traditional high school organization contains all the elements that stifle the development of a positive school culture: large staffs, academic…

This guide is designed to increase a school's productivity by presenting some simple yet powerful techniques for looking at the school and making decisions to address the most immediate problems. Tracking success is tracking progress and using evaluation as a tool for implementing changes from school-based management to complete restructuring.…

This report is based on a survey of local school council (LSC) members in Chicago (Illinois) that was conducted in 1992 to determine and share the thoughts of LSC members on planning for school improvements and educational change, implementing policies, training, and fulfilling responsibilities and duties. Nearly 850 council members responded.…

Interviews with 34 teachers at a rural high school in northeastern Connecticut examined cognitive constraints affecting teacher involvement in participative decision making. The principal recently restructured the school in an attempt to ensure teacher decision making. Data collection consisted of a standardized open-ended interview conducted at…

Research suggests that school reform initiatives have had minimal success in engendering systemic instructional improvement in schools. Within this evaluative context, this paper explores the means through which the paradigm of thinking about school instruction dominant in the profession (that is, Hirsch's "thoughtworld") potentially…