In Singapore, national survival necessitated an early fundamental restructuring of the educational system, followed by a period of fine tuning, or repair. By the early 1980s, Singapore had developed a highly efficient education system that met the needs of a rapidly industrializing economy. Since the mid-1980s' recession, Singapore has redefined…

School-effectiveness and school-improvement researchers are increasingly looking to establish some kind of synergy between their respective fields; however, current attempts lack a clear understanding of organizations. School-effectiveness research tends to emphasize structural dimensions, while the focus in school-improvement work is on…

Restructuring schools has become a rallying cry among educators. It aims to create schools that are more centered on learner's needs for active, experiential, cooperative, and culturally connected learning opportunities supportive of individual talents and learning styles. This report is based on an early evaluation of the process of restructuring…

The refinement and application of the School Organizational Climate Questionnaire (SOCQ), an instrument for measuring organizational climate, is described in this report. The instrument is a mechanism by which schools can direct their school improvement efforts. In two case studies, a small urban elementary and a large urban secondary school…

The nature of direct and indirect effects of local management of schools (school-based management) on learning outcomes for students has remained elusive. The findings from a 5-year longitudinal study of the "Schools of the Future" reform in Victoria, Australia, are reported in this paper. The Victoria system is the largest public school…

The author of "A Study of Schooling," following up an article in the March "Phi Delta Kappan," notes the noncorrelation of school satisfaction with teaching methods or curriculum; discusses educational goals; examines schools' concentration on noneducational factors; and recommends changes in goal-setting, school-level…

School effectiveness and school effectiveness researchers have increasingly sought to establish synergy between their respective fields, but differing organizational change perspectives have produced an irresolvable methodological and theoretical divide. Incorporating the "power" concept provides a bridge between structural and cultural analysis…

Public concern about the quality of leadership in society and the quality of education have fueled the demand for educational reform, particularly in secondary schools. This paper presents preliminary findings of doctoral research that investigated how leadership is experienced and understood by students, parents, teachers, and administrators in…

Impressed with the vital importance of an effective public education system to the future of the Commonwealth, a group of involved business activists formed the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education (MBAE) in 1988. The purpose of the MBAE was to help bring about systematic improvement of Massachusetts' elementary and secondary education…

The purpose of this paper is to describe the development/reliability/validity of a teacher instrument to assess the organizational coupling structure (OCS) of schools. A secondary purpose is to describe the implications of this work for understanding school coupling structure as a complex, "paradoxical" measurement and theoretical…

The strengths and weaknesses of school-business partnerships and the need for more corporate assertiveness in the public policy area are the subjects of this paper, which is an adaption of a speech given on November 1987 to the St. Paul, Minnesota Compact Conference. The business community has two contrasting views of public education. One view is…

This paper addresses the long-term impact of a school improvement effort of the Milwaukee public schools known as Project RISE (Rising to Individual Scholastic Excellence). Each school replicated the following characteristics of effective schools: (1) strong leadership by the principal; (2) high expectations conveyed by the entire staff; (3)…

Comparative data from three middle schools, all in one large urban school district in the Pacific Northwest, are used to identify criteria for evaluating student discipline policies and to generate theoretical statements of how school administration affects student behavior. An introduction summarizes the study's goals and assumptions and…

Proposals for the adoption of programs to improve the quality of education frequently emphasize the importance of concentrating on the individual school building as the center of the change process. This emphasis has led to increasing support for moving the locus of decision making downward to bring about what is called "school based…

Descriptive findings concerning organization and management practices in 16 urban high schools across the United States are reported in this paper. The findings are based on data from the as yet incomplete 3-year District/Secondary School Study. This research effort involved urban comprehensive high schools without special admissions requirements…