This book offers a comprehensive analysis and description of the political aspects of American education, utilizing both empirical data and case studies on the politics of education. Included are two case studies of recent school policies, which focus on the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965 and the school desegregation…

This book is divided into four chapters. The first examines the concepts and issues related to understanding social systems and how the schools can be viewed as a social system. The differences between centralization and decentralization, as well as systems-analysis and management-control approaches are also explored. In the next chapter, we are…

In 1989, Chicago (Illinois) Public Schools began an experiment with the radical decentralization of power and authority. This book tells the story of what happened in Chicago's elementary schools in the first four years of this reform. Implicit in the reform was the theory that expanded local democratic participation would stimulate organizational…

This book focuses on the question of how citizen participation affects the making of the school budget, the crucial controlling instrument of modern bureaucratic organizations. The four communities studied differed in size, social and economic characteristics, and form of government. Chapter 1 introduces the topic and begins the discussion of the…

Demands for urban decentralization and community control are indexes of the inaccessibility, irresponsibility, and unresponsiveness of the institutions of urban government in the 1970's. How and why these institutions have become the focus of such widespread dissatisfaction can be understood only in the total context of urban politics in America,…

This is a study of the constitution and development of a community school in a town near Belgrade. It is one of numerous community schools which expresses the characteristics of its particular commune and which participates actively in the development of the commune. Part 1 of this study lays out the basic principles and social demands for the…

Intended to spur policy makers, practitioners, parents, and other interested individuals to reopen rural educational issues, this volume explores "conventional wisdom" (the widely accepted assumptions and theories about rural education) and examines its merits in light of both accumulated experience and recent research. The text is…