The Principal is arguably the most influential person on a school campus. If a unified school district employs principals, they have a centralized support system to assist them in their quest to advance the community they serve. This work uses a phenomenological approach to investigate the perception principals have towards the support systems in…

Many school districts with centralized school choice adopt strategyproof assignment mechanisms to relieve applicants of the need to strategize on the basis of beliefs about their own admissions chances. This paper shows that beliefs about admissions chances shape choice outcomes even when the assignment mechanism is strategyproof by influencing…

We examine the correlates of district spending and revenue losses following the onset of the Great Recession and the role of fiscal federalism in mitigating these losses. We estimate whether spending and revenue declines were driven primarily by local labor market conditions or the degree of state fiscal centralization. Utilizing population level…

Purpose: A burgeoning literature investigates the importance of student teaching placements for teacher candidate development, but an important perspective that is largely missing from the existing literature is that of the school districts that host student teachers. In this paper, we describe the student teaching process from the perspective of…

Facing a declining K-12 student population and rising education costs, Vermont lawmakers approved Act 46 in 2015. This legislation has the potential to consolidate school districts that have fewer than 900 students. The law aims to significantly reduce the number of districts in the state by using tax incentives as a carrot and forced…

Since 1958, the New York State Education Department has officially promoted the policy of consolidating small, rural schools. This policy is delineated in the Master Plan for School Reorganization, and while the centralization of most one-room rural schools has been successful, the state has been less successful in the consolidation of smaller,…

In England the balance of responsibilities between national and local government for the governance of education is changing. Relationships between schools are shifting and new structures, groups and alliances are being created in response to national policy. The article is part of a project to understand how the new local education landscapes are…

Despite decades of critiques and scores of innovations designed to abolish or weaken it, the school district remains a central institution of the American educational system. Yet, although the district remains the primary agent of local democratic control and serves as the main unit for educational decisions, relatively little attention has been…

There is increasing pressure on the central office, particularly in large school districts, to improve student outcomes across schools and to close large achievement gaps between groups of students based largely on race and income (Louis, 2008; Honig 2012). Reforms intended to "raise the bar and close the gap" in student achievement are…

This qualitative case study used General Systems Theory and social network analysis to explore the relationships between the members of a district central office and principals of elementary schools within an urban school district in the Midwest. Findings revealed sparse relationships between members of the district central office and principals,…

The Tennessee Achievement School District (ASD) was created in 2011 to rapidly turn around the lowest performing schools in the state by authorizing high performing charter management organizations to operate the schools. A lack of enough quality applicants, however, led the district to directly run a group of schools. This research investigates…

Recent reforms in England's education system have been justified on the grounds that other countries have pursued similar approaches to education reform. Many such policies that by-pass or otherwise diminish meso-level institutions demonstrate a commitment to the idea of devolving authority to local actors. The current reforms in England and…

Across Canada there have been numerous recent examples of incidents where the political and ideological interests of provincial governments have run counter to the mandates of school districts. In this pan-Canadian study, focus groups were conducted with school board trustees and school district superintendents to examine the relationships between…

Over the past 30 years, states have assumed a greater role in financing education. The presumption of local control has been superseded by systems of state control. This shift in authority raises several critical questions. Chief among them is, "What effect has centralization of education financing had on the capacity of school districts to…

The past two decades have seen an emerging trend in urban school governance: mayors taking the reins of school district leadership. The impetus for putting the mayor in charge of a city's schools usually stems from at least one of the following being documented or generally perceived about an urban school district: (1) Lack of accountability; (2)…