This article investigates the impact of different school models (middle school, K-8, and the UK secondary) on young adolescents' perceptions of their school climates. In particular, it analyzes the importance of people and place in the positive and negative attitudes that middle-level students develop about their schools. Based on mixed-method…

Fifteen years ago further education (FE) colleges in England were removed from local education authority (LEA) control and re-formed as "FE corporations". Now, it is proposed that, from 2010, local authorities will become re-involved in the running of FE. Given such a prospect, this article takes the opportunity to look back at colleges…

Sweden has undertaken major national reforms of its school sector, which, consequently, has been classified as one of the most decentralized ones in the OECD. This paper investigates whether local tax base, grants, and preferences affected local school resources differently as decentralization took place. We find that municipal tax base affects…

With the implementation of site-based decision-making occurring in schools, the extent to which teachers perceive their involvement in decisions on planning, budgeting, curriculum, staffing patterns, staff development, and campus-level organization and the extent to which teachers' views of their involvement in these activities are congruent with…

Fiscal efficiency and organizational effectiveness were the primary objectives that underpinned the reform of educational administration in New Zealand in the late 1980s. The consequent re-organization of schools and schooling located responsibility and accountability for school performance, teachers' work and student outcomes firmly at the door…

Schools are implementing new and effective strategies in an effort to graduate 90 percent of students and to ensure that graduates are prepared to succeed in college, advanced training and work. This newsletter describes how schools have redesigned their schedules, organizational structures and cultures in an effort to graduate 90 percent of…

How do a school and a community interact? This question guided this dissertation examining one rural school and community. The purpose of this case study was to investigate the relationship between the rural Marceline R-V School District (a K-12 school system) and its community, Marceline, Missouri. The framework for this study included the…

The goal of this study is to identify those factors contributing to special education teacher (SET) turnover that can be directly amendable to intervention by the improved policy and practice at school sites. This study examines the turnover behavior of SETs by including variables clustered as teacher demographics, employment factors, and teacher…

This work, part of the Spanish government's National I + D Plan 2004/07, entitled "Observatics: the implementation of free software in ICT centres in Andalusia: an analysis of its effect on the teaching-learning process", aims to describe the most recent impact of online communication technologies on education in Andalusia (Spain),…

This article explores three incarnations of the idea to integrate high school and the community college--Leonard Koos's 6-4-4 plan of public school organization, Middle College High School, and the early college high school initiative. The author discusses rationales for integrating high school and the first 2 years of college, as well as possible…

The effective, sustained implementation of literacy across the curriculum in secondary schools is still a relatively rare phenomenon. This is because such an approach to literacy requires secondary schools to undergo extensive and complex processes of school change, involving altering teachers' thinking, attitudes and behaviour in relation to…

This non-experimental, correlational study looked at the relationship between bureaucratic structures in middle and high schools in bringing about change in individual teacher classroom instructional practices through the centralized directive of membership in a professional learning community. Using a continuum of bureaucratic structure, from…

While providing stability and uniformity, organizational routines can foster continuous change. Using Feldman's (2000) performative model of routinized action theory, coupled with leadership succession research, we examined how three successive administrations in a California high school revised a student attendance (tardy-monitoring) routine over…

Education finance has emerged as one of the most pressing public policy issues of the new century. Americans spend more than $500 billion a year on elementary and secondary education, yet neither policy-makers nor practitioners seems to know how to align these resources with student learning goals. In fact, spending increases have outstripped…