This booklet reports the results of a survey designed to identify attitudes and preconceptions of mathematics educators and other education professionals about mathematics reform. There are two sets of findings. The first set reports items of consensus where repondents almost unanimously agreed on key issues regardless of their organizational…

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…

Two questionnaires were sent to all school boards and a sample of teachers in Ontario to assess how receptive boards and teachers are to job sharing as an alternative work pattern in schools affected by declining enrollment. The report gives the background of the concept of job sharing and an analysis of the benefits, work situations, and problems…

DC has a larger percentage of students in charter schools than any state. To help oversee DC charter schools, Congress established two authorizers--the Board of Education (BOE), which has an Office of Charter Schools responsible for oversight, and the independent Public Charter School Board (PCSB). Congress required the GAO to conduct a study of…

In 2004, Edvantia, Inc. (formerly AEL) and the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) initiated an effort to identify successful strategies for recruiting and retaining highly qualified teachers in rural areas. They reviewed non-rural-specific and rural-specific research and practice literature, surveyed rural superintendents…

This paper examines federal policy, legislation, and adjudication related to assistive technology for students with disabilities. It considers the expanded mandate for assistive technology in IDEA 1997 and its implications, including costs and benefits. Recent federal court decisions, hearing decisions, and Section 504 rulings addressing assistive…

Now that school boards have been replaced by parent advisory councils, there is virtually no local school governance in New Brunswick, Canada. Factors leading to school boards' demise include neglected democratic institutions, failure to understand local boards' needs, less qualified members, boards' failure to protect their special…

Tests the effectiveness of senior educational administrators' efforts to cope with stress in a decentralizing Australian state education department of over 2,000 schools employing 60,000 professional staff members. Presents general findings of a self-report, coping-strategies questionnaire and reveals some significant relationships among general…

Because of board members' key role in determining the future quality of local school districts, it is important for communities to elect and evaluate the persons elected to school boards. Board members' primary role is to support district policy and the administration, especially the superintendent, in all decisions conforming to professional…

Local school boards have been bypassed by state-generated educational reforms and often impede progress toward decentralization. The Twentieth Century Fund/Danforth Foundation Task Force on School Governance advises states to abolish existing school boards and replace them with local education policy boards responsible for setting policy…

Survey based on personal/interpersonal and institutional barriers to site-based management identified by Mutchler and Duttweiler (1989) was sent to school board presidents and public school administrators in 54 centrally organized South Dakota districts. Majority of responding board presidents did not view these barriers as implementation…

Behavioral definitions are provided for the following four basic values that drive state educational policymaking: (1) choice; (2) efficiency; (3) equity; and (4) quality. How these values are distributed by the priorities of policymakers is discussed and illustrated through examination of the values of Illinois and Wisconsin. (SLD)

New Zealand schools are now managed by parent-elected trustees who work in partnership with school staff to formulate and monitor aspects of school policy. When a sample of participants in the partnership (principals, teachers, chairpersons, and parents) were asked about the board's role in policymaking, most respondents felt that the board should…

To explore group maturation in an educational setting, the policy board of a teacher center consortium was studied over a year, using ethnographic research methods. The group proceeded through various development stages, but not according to the predicted pattern, and failed to reach maturity. Maturation was disrupted by the director's dominating…

Explores inherent tensions between the substance of school board reform and the ideology of governance reform. New Orleans's unique culture of privatization has historically constrained grass-roots involvement in educational reform. A recent exception is a highly motivated, parent-based Education Issues Committee that successfully overhauled the…