Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of a leadership development initiative on the school leaders and leadership coaches who participated in it. The initiative, called the Leadership Learning Community (LLC), was created in a research-practice partnership between a consortium of 12 predominantly rural, high-poverty school…

Public school districts in Mississippi established the Program of Research and Evaluation for Public Schools (PREPS) to provide good research and evaluation data for sound decision making. A cooperative arrangement was developed with the College of Education at Mississippi State University. PREPS staff directed research and evaluation activities…

This paper considers the growing trend of collaboration among school districts, addressing the national trend in general and examining the perspective of and the trends in Mississippi in particular. The trend in Mississippi is a natural outgrowth of the reform movement in the state and will probably continue on both a formal and an informal basis…

Educational administration faculty from five public higher education institutions in New Mexico formed a consortium to address the need for effective educational leaders in rural school districts. Members established the New Mexico Partners for Educational Leadership (PEL), composed of faculty from the five universities, leading educational…

Small schools may resist educational reform because they view the implementation of change as too costly and time consuming. Formation of a consortium of small schools allows the pooling of staff and resources, thereby increasing capabilities while maintaining the positive attributes of small schools. In rural northeastern Oregon, eight small…

In spite of a diminishing amount of money available for educational research, a demand still exists for research and evaluation. This paper discusses how to initiate cooperative research between local education agencies and neighboring universities and educational labs and centers. First, the paper identifies problems in the development of…

As required by state law, a consortium was developed by Eastern Washington University (consisting of the training institution, 10 school districts, and their professional organizations) whose responsibilities were the development of competencies for special education teacher training, supervision of teacher training programs, and evaluation of…

The Rural School Consortium for Educational Leadership and Reform was formed by four rural Indiana school districts in 1991 to coordinate resources for providing staff development that would support reform and restructuring efforts. In the first consortium-sponsored activity, teachers, administrators, support staff, board members, and parents…

Every agency with a responsibility for teacher education has a legitimate role in inservice education, and these roles should be formalized in cooperative arrangements. Five types of power which affect an institution's ability to motivate teachers to continue inservice education are: (1) expert (innovation and research, management and…

The directors of 12 teacher centers describe their experiences as field agents, in multifaceted roles such as catalysts, solution-givers, facilitators, resource linkers, coordinators, or trainers. Ways that the teacher centers have offered help to schools and to teachers are outlined. The directors believe that change is made first on an…

This paper reports on a collaborative approach that was developed in 1978 in response to teacher dissatisfaction with staff development efforts. INSERV (Central Arizona Inservice Consortium) was formed, composed of the Arizona Educational Association, nine school districts, the state department of education, and the College of Education at Arizona…

Institutional research is viewed by many persons as the process of providing appropriate data for the purpose of making sound decisions. The major place for applying the principles of the discipline of institutional research has mostly been in institutions of higher learning and a few large metropolitan public school districts. It is proposed that…

A consortium was organized in 1977 to assist 16 school districts, covering 5,100 square miles and including 19,000 students in a largely rural part of Oregon, to comply with Public Law 94-142 which requires provision for appropriate public education for the estimated 12% of the school population who are handicapped. Problems making it difficult…

Partnerships is an Emporia State University program designed to strengthen university relationships with public schools in Kansas. It contains four strategies for offering services needed by public school practitioners: (1) providing leadership, research, and staff development assistance to formal school district consortia in the university's…