Five papers examine issues regarding the role of the assistant principal, with a focus on accountability in school reform and restructuring. The first paper, by George J. Michel, analyzes the leadership areas of the assistant principal and suggests methods to make the assistant principal accountable. The next four papers describe new models of…

Following a "dear colleagues" letter from John R. McKernan, Jr., Governor of Maine and 1991-92 chairman of the Education Commission of the States, a strategy is outlined that will help educational reformers to approach restructuring from varying perspectives and improve its chances for success. Several fundamental principles underlie…

The potential exists in schools nationwide to create a high quality system of education. But schools are not operating as a coherent system. While most educators and citizens are ready to act and to improve education, decisionmakers do not realize the need for a new paradigm in education. Many successful schools serve as examples of the benefits…

Higher order thinking can be defined as interpreting, analyzing, and manipulating information to solve a challenging problem. This definition does not restrict higher order thinking to any level of cognitive ability or any class of people; it includes thinking involving both nonacademic and academic topics; and it is not limited to any particular…

Theories concerning the organizational dynamics underlying the dispersion of institutional research activities within colleges are proposed. Two theoretical arguments concern whether or not a centralized, monopolistic institutional research office will be found on a given campus: the informational legitimacy argument and the limited attention…

A centralized marketing and promotion office may or may not be a panacea for a continuing education program. Five major advantages to centralization of the marketing and promotion function are minimization of costs, a school-wide marketing strategy, maximization of the school image, enhanced quality control, and building of technical expertise of…

Not all of America's public schools have benefited from recent efforts to improve education, because the problems of schools and of their communities are deep and complex. By 2000, when one of every three pupils in the public schools will be nonwhite, America's major cities could become an educational Third World. To avoid a deepening crisis,…

The belief that the similarities between business administration and public administration are more significant than the differences led in the 1950s to the development of schools teaching administration as a generic process. This paper reassesses eight tenets underlying the generic model for administrative education, drawn from the work of early…

Models of organizational structures developed through the study of commercial organizations are not necessarily applicable to educational organizations. Technical organizations such as factories act to regulate the flow of their processes and products and, thus, to buffer them from external forces. Institutional organizations such as schools or…

This study of the interaction between school and social context is divided into two parts. The first section examined some environmental factors external to the school that directly influence school policies and practices. Citizen participation in school activities and the relationship of the school to the state are two of the topics examined. The…

Considered are the social and cultural issues that underlie the patterns of schooling, the assumptions and implications of curriculum languages for teaching mathematics, and the contradictory meaning of change and reform that underlie current efforts to improve instruction. (Author/PK)

Discusses ways school counselors can be agents of change in organizational behavior to promote organizational health in their schools. Defines organizational health and identifies 10 related dimensions. (ABB)

Examines the processes involved in resource based learning, especially the availability of resources, school structure, and teacher role. (HOD)

The phrase "community of scholars" contains a contradiction. Actions that strengthen the community weaken the scholarship and actions that strengthen the scholarship weaken the community. Continuing tradeoffs between community and scholarship produce many of the unique organizational properties that universities exhibit. (Author/MLW)

Educational reform should be viewed less as the replacement of old with new and more as a process of renewal; the triumph of reform lies in its never succeeding. School reform intended to repair, once and for all, a broken institution will inevitably be frustrated. Schools depend ultimately on motivation. (RDN)