Reviews five dimensions (focus, scope, structure, process, and capacity) of an organizational design used by 20 New York districts planning for site-based management (SBM) implementation. The confusion surrounding devolution of decision making hinders districts' efforts to effect changes in intermediate variables (job satisfaction and staff…

The New Designs for the Comprehensive High School project developed four preliminary design specifications for the following educational areas: learner outcomes, learner process, organization, and partnerships. The three principles apparent in project papers were the design-down process, collaboration, and integration; the modes of understanding…

When the Ontario (Canada) Ministry of Education launched the Transition Years initiatives, it argued that certain aspects of school practice deserved special attention: student assessment, recording, and reporting practices; teacher inservice education; school and classroom organization; school-community relationships; core curriculum; curriculum…

The history of schooling is a mix of constancy and change in policies, organizational structures, school practices, and classroom pedagogy. Over the last century and a half, well-intentioned and serious reformers, using Federal, state, and local policies, tirelessly and repeatedly tried to improve schooling. Classroom and school practices such as…

The importance of school organization and its impact on teachers' commitment to staff development has been highlighted in recent research. In schools that are favorably disposed toward staff development, the norms of "collegiality" and "experimentation" prevail. Staff practices fundamental to the creation and maintenance of the…

The aim of this guide is to help state education agencies (SEAs) find effective ways to improve relations between schools and their communities. Focusing particularly on the Northeast and New England, the document reviews literature on school-community relations and presents numerous examples of school-community interaction. First, the author…

This document examines the organization and governance of British education and presents projected plans for education in the 1980s. The British schooling system comprises nursery, primary, middle, and secondary schools, and further postsecondary education, university education, and teacher education. Both private and public nursery schools enroll…

Peer associations within schools are important influences on educational orientations and aspirations. The many studies in this area, however, have not produced a comprehensive and detailed theoretical account of peer socialization effects, thereby impeding the design and implementation of more effective school organizations. Although schools…

Instructional leadership for principals is not a panacea for the ills of education. Efforts to alter principal practices to meet this poorly defined and poorly researched construct reflect a lack of self-reference in the educational field. More study and thought are needed before plans of action are imposed. (BJV)

This monograph on higher education in the German Federal Republic aims to describe the contemporary scene through a detailed look at structure, finance, research, studies and teaching, students, faculty, and international relations. Organized into nine chapters, the first, "Historical Development and Current Responsibilities," describes…

Intended for use by graduate students in educational administration and supervision as well as by practicing school administrators, this book is a guide to the most effective practices surrounding the school principalship. Ideas in the book reflect current views of good management, including systems approaches, participative and collaborative…

This report summarizes two studies conducted during the late 1960s on effects of team instructional organization upon elementary teachers' decision-making influence in educational affairs and their job satisfaction. The first study, by University of Oregon researchers, compared interview and questionnaire data from Wisconsin teachers in four…

This review of the effective schools literature focuses on six teaching factors: the nature of instructional materials, lower versus higher order skills, classroom reinforcement practices, teacher selection, teacher training, and individual versus whole-group instruction. Different from earlier studies, the review concentrates on specific…

Several major reports on the status of education in the United States have been presented to the public and to educators and government bodies in recent years. Nine of these reports provide the source material for this document on the state of the search for educational excellence: Adler's "Paideia Proposal,""A Nation at…

School-based management (SBM), the decentralization of decision-making authority to the school site, comes in many variations. However, all forms of SBM require a rethinking of how and where budgeting, curriculum, and personnel decisions are made. This bulletin provides an overview of what SBM is and how it is implemented by summarizing some of…