An established goal of the Michigan Department of Education is that annual and long-range educational planning will be improved and expanded. The purpose of this Program Review/Planning Handbook is to recommend procedures and instrumentation through which educators at the local level may plan and conduct a program review and prepare and implement…

A RURAL DAIRY COMMUNITY IN UPSTATE NEW YORK IS THE SUBJECT OF THIS STUDY WRITTEN AFTER 3 YEARS OF PARTICIPATION BY THE AUTHORS IN THE DAILY LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY. THE ANALYSIS INCLUDES DESCRIPTIONS OF (1) THE VARIOUS SOCIAL CLASS GROUPS AND THEIR ECONOMIC PHILOSOPHIES AND SOCIAL ATTITUDES, (2) THE POLITICAL POWERS, BOTH VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE, AND…

This study examines, by adaptation of the Likert-type scale, the attitudes of a random sample of Bayfield citizens toward a new national park comprising 20 of the Apostle Islands and 42,000 acres of Lake Superior shoreline in northern Wisconsin, and its possible impact on the community. With the use of correlation analysis and regression…

A local history course offered as a semester elective to seniors has as its purpose the study of the local community as a microcosm of the United States. The basic principle is to reinforce what the student has already learned in previous history courses. The course proceeds through a chronological sequence of units about various periods of the…

Traces the European tradition of teaching elementary school students about their home and its immediate community, with particular attention to German practices. Emphasizes the value of homelife education in reducing personal anxiety and antisocial behavior, and its unique opportunities for Americans. (FMW)

Reports on an Arkansas survey that illustrates a technique for analyzing the school-related concerns and perceptions of teachers and community members. Shows how the survey can identify problem areas in the schools and explains how administrators can use the survey to improve school-community relations. (SB)

For the past decade, the federal government has supported comprehensive school reform as a way to improve under-performing schools (US Department of Education 1998). Thousands of schools across the country are now implementing scores of different whole school reform models with the hopes of improving school culture and raising student performance.…

This case study examines the process of opening and developing a new high school, with a specific emphasis on the evolution of its culture. Guided by a theoretical framework informed by the literature on school culture, this study explores the nature of school culture, how school cultures are established, the role of the principal, and the role of…

Discusses the effects of technological change and demographic shifts on the future of public libraries. Topics include displacement through disintermediation (replacing professional librarians with automated systems), the voucher movement, impact of new media on publishing, new information aggregators, cheaper computing equipment and Internet…

Combines a global, national, and local perspective to study the effects of educational changes over the last 20 years on the relationships among head teachers, teachers, and parents in France. Examines the impact of five kinds of transformations--decentralization, marketization, accountability, managerialism, and professionalism--on definitions of…

Using a feminist perspective, this paper attempts to quantify the position of women in educational policymaking in Britain in this century at national and local levels. Women have been in the minority and have not generally been a "shrieking sisterhood," guided primarily by feminist principles. (SLD)

Local innovation in agriculture and natural resource management is the process through which individuals or groups discover or develop new and better ways of managing resources, building on and expanding the boundaries of their existing knowledge. Prolinnova (Promoting Local Innovation) is a NGO-led global partnership programme that is being built…

Of the 19 projects conducted as part of the Defense Conversion Adjustment (DCA) Demonstration administered by the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Work-Based Learning, 5 tested the community planning approach. The projects attempted to alleviate the negative impacts of defense cutbacks on communities, firms, and workers. The project sites…

This paper examines the imbalance in representation of native-born Mainers on the school board in Mount Desert Island, Maine. Mount Desert Island is the location of Acadia, the second most visited national park in the United States. In this community, native-born Mainers represent 68 percent of the year-round population, but 80 percent of people…

It is feasible for school districts to develop and use subject area tests as reliable as those previously available only from commercial publishers. Three projects in local item development in a large school district are described. The first involved only Algebra 1. The second involved life science and career education at the elementary level; and…