Summarizes the viability of the vulnerability thesis as a tool in accounting for school superintendent behavior today, suggesting how the thesis can be built on in order to better understand the political world of superintendency. The paper suggests some social and political theories that might extend the thesis, further clarifying the…

School boards can be oriented toward narrow interests or broader constituencies, bureaucratic or informal in organization, and private or public in their deliberations. Various board styles may be more or less suited to given electorates. Corruption appears more closely associated with secrecy in deliberations than with tendencies toward…

Raymond Callahan's superintendent vulnerability thesis suggests that school superintendent behavior is subject to the political winds of local school boards, in turn dominated by the economic values of American businessmen. This thesis inspired a body of research termed "dissatisfaction theory," which describes the sequence of events…

State and federal governments have appropriated increasingly greater portions of decision-making policy from local school boards. This chapter discusses the politics and governance of local school districts, summarizing three major theoretical perspectives (decision-output, competition-participation, and dissatisfaction theories) and relevant…

Examined is the assertion by Douglas Mitchell that the dissatisfaction theory be abandoned because it has not been able to predict the political upheavals it described. Reported is the first incumbent defeat as well as suggestions on why prediction should not be the only goal for a social/political theory. (24 references) (SI)

This study reanalyzes data collected in 1977 from 95 Ohio school districts and develops a theory of dissatisfaction that may accurately predict school board elections. According to the theory, only when people are dissatisfied enough will they become politically active. Seven tables and 16 references are included. (WTH)

As Texas public schools undertake their third year of implementing site-based decision making (SBDM), it becomes increasingly important to examine the extent to which SBDM has achieved its purported goals. This paper examined how Texas public school districts might effect mandated governance changes through the political phenomenon known as…