This study provided a detailed analysis of why newly elected school board members ran for school board in New York from 2017-2022 and the governance challenges they expected to face. Secondary survey data of 1,064 school board members collected by the New York State School Boards Association were examined to explore how personal and professional…

Charter school boards enter into a critical bargain: autonomy for accountability. Compared with their traditional district counterparts, they operate with relative freedom in curriculum, hiring, budgeting, and other operational decisions. In exchange, they are held accountable for student performance in ways that traditional district schools are…

In response to public pressure, urban districts in the USA have initiated reforms that aim at redrawing the boundaries between the school system and other major local institutions. More specifically, this article focuses on two emerging reform strategies. We will examine an emerging model of governance that enables big-city mayors to establish…

Mayoral control of public schools is nothing new. Boston pioneered the practice in 1992, replacing elected school committee members with mayoral appointees. Since then, a dozen urban districts--including Cleveland, Chicago, New York City, and Washington, D.C.--have undergone a similar change in school governance that has shifted some or most of…

Education reformers have long questioned whether school boards have become an anachronism. Pointing to promising efforts in Boston and New York City, some have argued for handing over control of school districts to mayors. A review of the research suggests that advocates overstate the evidence and underestimate the pitfalls, but, on balance,…

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among New York State school board member attitudes toward components of school board governance and their sense of effectiveness in high and low math academic achievement districts in New York State. The study examined board members' perceptions of their actual practices in policy…

Replacing boards of education conceived during the Progressive Era with mayoral control has been a popular reform strategy in urban districts such as Boston, Chicago, and New York City. A thorough review of the extant research, however, shows little evidence regarding its impact on governance, management, school organization, or teaching and…

Discusses the political aspects of educational policy formation and describes the governance of public education in the state of New York. (JG)

Decentralized control of New York City elementary and junior high schools was instituted in 1969. Subsequent financial crises in the city transferred governance functions from school officials to the Emergency Financial Control Board. A comparison of school board members in poor city districts, middle-class city districts, and suburban districts…

The setting is Pleasantville, a mid-size Midwestern suburban school district with 9,500 students and a proud tradition of active parent involvement and strong public support for the schools. Mary Vicenzi was recruited by Pleasantville's nine-member school board, which was concerned above all else, unanimously and emphatically, with the need to…

This research study was designed to build grounded theory about the challenges faced by rural superintendents. Participating rural superintendents identified five areas that presented a challenge but that also applied to superintendents in other settings: school law, finance, personnel, government mandates, and district or board policies. Further,…

The failure of the Rochester School Board in March 1967 to adopt a comprehensive program of school desegregation surprised many observers. On February 1, 1967, Superintendent Goldberg broadcast four desegregation plans to the public, and on March 16, 1967 the school board voted three to two against all four desegregation plans and adopted instead…

Since 1948, the locus of leadership, control, and management of the community colleges of New York has been vested in a three-tiered structural arrangement--the local institutional board of trustees and local sponsor, the Board of Trustees of the State University of New York (SUNY), and the Board of Regents. Article 126, the Community College Law,…

The plaintiffs are some 30 Puerto Rican and Hispanic parents and their 57 minor children who attend Public School 19 (hereinafter P.S. 19) in Brooklyn. The defendants are the members of the Community District School Board Number 14 and of the New York City Board of Education. The Community Superintendent William Rogers and Chancellor Irving Anker…

Contents include discussions of: the commission's objectives and findings, the immediate problem at the City University of New York, governance, long-range structure for the public sector, the private sector, access and opportunity (including the state tuition assistance program), the board of regents, cost implications of the commission's…