Because of the increasing underutilization of school facilities in Arlington (Virginia), a case study of the management of these facilities was undertaken. The purposes of the study were to discover the political interactions leading to policy decisions on the management of underutilized facilities, to determine the actual policies that resulted…

The first article in this research report draws upon material presented at four American Newspaper Publishers Association-Bureau of the Census workshops. The report describes how the 1980 United States Census data can be applied by newspapers to localize national trends, to serve as a background for local news stories, to monitor changes in the…

As part of a larger study of political socialization in adolescence, 782 adolescents and 718 parents were surveyed to test hypotheses about political information as a function of the early phase of a presidential campaign and the news exposure level of the respondent. Despite shortcomings in the sample design and in the precision of interview…

A recent review of international literature revealed two basic social-change paradigms, equilibrium and conflict. These define ideological predispositions that influence the manner in which evaluations are conducted. Most current evaluations of educational reform can be classified under the equilibrium paradigm; the federally sponsored…

Attitudes toward and participation in politics by elementary and secondary school social studies teachers in Texas from 1976-1977 are discussed. Political involvement is interpreted to include voting, contributing time and/or money to a political party, running for political office, belonging to a teachers organization, watching news on…

A study was conducted to test identical models of the political learning process with data concerning national and local issues. These models hypothesized ways in which political learning from mass media is affected by such factors as strength of information flow, political system level, individual media exposure, interpersonal discussion,…

The events and legislation that have led to the present federal policy toward higher education are traced. The ongoing federal policy is shown to reflect the instability of a constantly changing political environment and a lack of consensus on the part of the political figures. The federal government has, within the last two decades, considerably…

University management is examined with regard to six major areas: decision and participation, finance, information, human flows, physical plant and equipment, and academic planning. Comprehensive long and medium term planning is proposed with the special feature of decentralized decision making. The issue of information requirements for managerial…

A preliminary review of findings and implications of social science research utilization among government officials is provided. The data come from face-to-face interviews of 204 persons at the upper levels of decision making in the executive branch of the federal government. Section one presents descriptive data on the diversity of the…

British evulative studies in education have taken different approaches from those in America. Although there has been some interchange of ideas, the social context in the two countries is different, requiring different mechanisms for the initiation, implementation, and followup of educational evaluation. There are still lessons to be learned in…

The attitudes and opinions of Massachusetts legislators, municipal leaders, and educators regarding school finance reform reveal that school finance reform should aim for equal educational opportunity. Future school aid reform should be a total program to provide aid to cities and towns, gradually raising education's share to 50 percent state aid…

The research reported here addresses the impact of school district consolidation on constituent support of educational expenditures. It is hypothesized that, regardless of the success of consolidation in satisfying its stated objective of providing a qualitatively improved education more efficiently, the loss of local control will, under certain…

Examines the influence of intraparty political debates during the 1984 presidential campaign. Indicates significant influence on undergraduate college students' attitudes about candidates and their interest in the campaign. Demonstrates that candidate violations of expectations provide a useful theoretical explanation for significant shifts in…

This case study of the Early Childhood Education Program (California) focuses on the political meaning of evaluation. It shows how analysis of evaluation politics reveals who controls education policy, which values are prevailing and dominant, and which definitions of policy goals constitute the assumptive world. (RDN)

Based on current literature, this article proposes a two-dimensional matrix consisting of factors extracted from domains having constraining effects on school operation and of environmental attributes that conceivably describe those external factors identified. An instrument capable of constructing graphic representation of constraint sizes is…