Summarizes the organizational process and political bargaining models of policy change, and considers the rational decision-making model as an alternative. Models are interrelated with each other to show how each reveals a dimension of the politics of school decentralization. (Author/AM)

The focus of this paper is on the delineation of three popular reform measures: decentralization, citizen participation, and community control and assessment of recent efforts to implement these. It develops a model that realistically combines decentralization with community decision making. (Author/AM)

Six school board members discuss the most crucial community relations problems facing their school system and what their school boards can and should do about them. (MF)

Faced with a legal mandate to equalize educational resources available to its public elementary schools, can the Board of Education of the District of Columbia respond effectively to the public pressure for decentralization of its decision-making systems? The answer may be determined through the responses to two further questions: to what extent…

This study examined a school district before and after its school board changed from appointed status to elected status to determine if there were significant differences in the board's handling of constituent demands. School board minutes were examined and demands were analyzed for a six-month period under the appointed school board, then…

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…

A questionnaire survey of 180 Texas school district superintendents sought to determine both their perceptions of how community power structures influenced school board decisions and their techniques for communicating with their local power structure. The study analyzed four power structure types--monopolistic, multigroup noncompetitive,…

The major focus of this study is on altering the current structure of collective bargaining in public education to provide for adequate community participation. Concentrating on big city school systems where minorities and the poor have historically been apart from the educational policy-making process, the study finds that the scope of bargaining…

The report is based on a questionnaire which was part of the Alaskan Native Needs Assessment in Education (Project ANNA). It was sent to members of 44 village school boards to determine the educational preferences of Alaskan Native adults. The method asked 6 open-ended questions: (1) What kind of high school does your village want your students to…

The belief that structural change providing for the representation of minority parents in urban school districts would improve educational services for their children has led to an emphasis on school-system controlled or affiliated channels for participation. This emphasis, based on assumptions about parent participation in suburban districts, has…