Prepared as background for participants in an exploratory conference, this paper examines whether school-business partnerships and other forms of business assistance are contributing to fundamental change and reform, in the education system. Five questions are investigated. (1) How are businesses currently working with public education? The four…

Chicago's city leaders, unlike other city leaders, are going after fundamental and radical restructuring of the nation's third largest school system, but have found that it is hard to achieve. This paper provides a snapshot of the growing political involvement of Chicago's business leadership with the city's troubled school system. The need for…

Educational organizations, this paper asserts, are best described using a neorationalist model, which analyzes organizations as social instruments, acknowledges structural conflict, and views individuals as active participants. The paper examines traditional and modern rationalist organization theories and contrasts these with systems theory; it…

The thirteen chapters of this book deal with the varied facets of supervision and give perspective on its history, organizational framework, strategies, models, and future prospects. Part 1 provides a brief historic sketch of supervision in the United States and then moves directly to the issue of evaluating and understanding teaching. The three…

School administrators can get a better idea of what their purpose is by examining, first, what schools achieve; second, how schools function; and, third, why they function. A school's production function (what it achieves) involves many specific functions, but they all are a product of the relationship between school inputs and outputs. Inputs…

The application of behavioral technology to integrate individual needs for growth and development of secondary students with the organizational goals of the schools is discussed. It is emphasized that learning designs in the school should be utilized to give teachers, pupils, and administrators an opportunity in varied group mixes to participate…

Describes the political dynamics, hierarchy, and rituals of a typical college humanities department. Proposes reorganizing this academic structure, replacing the "humanities" with a philosophy of liberal education. (MM)

School organizations need to make changes in the organizational culture of schools in order to achieve excellence. An analogy between cognitive systems and organizational belief systems helps to explain the ways that beliefs and values are structured in school organizations. (MLF)

To establish a context for envisioning the school counselor of 2021, it is first necessary to envision the public school of the future. In this chapter, a trend in which schools move away from large institutional educational structures, with an emphasis on redesigning them into small learning centers within the larger establishment is predicted.…

This paper is a preliminary examination of historical shifts in U.S. discourses of school architecture as they relate to curricular reforms and inventions on new pedagogical techniques. The paper begins by sketching the current parameters of discourses on school architecture and notes some of the key arguments of reform taken up by educators and…

Examines processes that maintain stability in educational organizations and the reaction of those stabilizing forces to educational innovations. Suggests that the success of innovations for school improvement depends on the development of (1) instruction-related executive functions; (2) collegial teaching units; (3) continuous staff development;…

Reviews literature in political economics that analyzes schools' organizational performance problems and the current decline in public school support. Discusses schools' institutional frameworks, public (or collective) choice theories of political economy, citizen decisions to voice grievances concerning school system expenditures or exit the…

Agrees with the recommendation in a preceding article by Gideonse in the same issue that teachers should complete a postbaccalaureate program, but disagrees with Gideonse's advocacy of hierarchically structured teaching teams and an academic rather than a field-based program. (Author/JM)

Horizon High School combats student dropout rates in Bakersfield (California) by maintaining a small enrollment, high community involvement, close student-teacher relationships, flexible scheduling, and attention to individual students' educational needs and interests. Student attendance, graduation rates, and standardized test scores are…

Many features of our secondary schools are static, self-destructive, and depersonalizing. Rather than organizing the middle school along secondary school lines, using the elementary school model, with some obvious modifications, provides a more humanistic approach. (Author/SJL)