Theories concerning the organizational dynamics underlying the dispersion of institutional research activities within colleges are proposed. Two theoretical arguments concern whether or not a centralized, monopolistic institutional research office will be found on a given campus: the informational legitimacy argument and the limited attention…

A report is given on the second phase of a 3-year study on change in American high schools. Data are presented from 17 schools for two of the study questions: What types of changes are occurring and what are the key units of change? Information was collected through approximately 28 hours of interviews in each school with students, faculty, and…

This paper applies the strategic planning process to the task of school renewal and improvement. After outlining the basic elements of stratgic planning (planning-to-plan phase, research, writing a mission statement, forecasting, contingency planning, and development of the strategic plan), the paper focuses on using this model to restructure…

This paper describes a structure for assessing the school evaluation use process developed from a longitudinal case study of districtwide and school level evaluation procedures in a large urban school district. Two fundamental questions guided the study: (1) Why isn't the evaluation process more useful to decision-makers and practitioners? and (2)…

A centralized marketing and promotion office may or may not be a panacea for a continuing education program. Five major advantages to centralization of the marketing and promotion function are minimization of costs, a school-wide marketing strategy, maximization of the school image, enhanced quality control, and building of technical expertise of…

Besides setting the tone for accomplishing student learning goals and effecting improvement, school climate serves as a determinant of teacher attitudes toward personal and professional growth and development. Bureaucratization of schools decreases teacher effectiveness through rules, controls, and reduced autonomy and authority. The formal…

The five papers compiled in this report discuss several distinctive components of the National Development Center for School Management Training (NDC), particularly research and development work on school leadership, management development, and training. Titles and authors of the papers are as follows: (1) "The Role of a National Agency for…

Not all of America's public schools have benefited from recent efforts to improve education, because the problems of schools and of their communities are deep and complex. By 2000, when one of every three pupils in the public schools will be nonwhite, America's major cities could become an educational Third World. To avoid a deepening crisis,…

Based on inspections of 80 first schools for children either 5 to 8 years or 5 to 9 years of age, this survey reports data on school organization and staffing, and offers narrative descriptions of children's work. An introductory first chapter offers generalizations about features common to most first schools. The second chapter describes aspects…

This article describes a study that analyzes elementary and secondary teachers' and administrators' perceptions of the organizational climate of their school systems. (PD)

The American elementary school principal is subjected to pressures from parents, organizations, bureaucrats, the education publishing industry, and universities. The steady, continuous growth of child centered, informal education in Britain, compared to the cyclical changes of American elementary education, indicates that there are powerful…

The flexibility inherent in the multi-unit school organizational plan has been instrumental in making possible the placement of special education students in regular classrooms for a portion of their daily instructional program. This provides unusual opportunities for academic, emotional, and social growth heretofore unavailable to these students.…

Good management, in a soundly developed organizational structure, can shorten significantly the learning cycle that takes place in all organizational development. (Author)

Current knowledge about universities is such that approaches to their study should be both more frequently and more carefully made through organizational theory. While observers tend to agree about universities' general characteristics, important questions about their nature and viability are as yet unsettled. Michael Crozier's framework is…

The period of stress which colleges and universities currently face is analyzed in terms of environmental and organizational factors. (Editor)