Traces London, Ontario's community schools from 1968-1984. Describes a system in transition from being centrally controlled by a school board to being increasingly in the control of community volunteers. Reflects on the redevelopment of the community school ideal as responsibility for school operations is placed back in community hands. (BRR)

Examines, by means of interviews with school principals, some of the problems involved in decentralization of the New York City school system. (WM)

After all the money spent, jobs allocated, new machinery and programs introduced, after all the publicity and conflict, and after all the bold rhetoric about the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Demonstration School District, New York City, the children of the district cannot read as well today as they did five years ago. (Author)

Describes the educational ferment that threatens to disrupt the French educational system and some of the changes brought about to maintain French educational tradition. (RK)

Discusses the history of community control of public education, examining: sub-regional communities (New York City's community school boards and Detroit's regional decentralization); school-based decentralization (preserving professional privilege in Salt Lake City and local school councils in Chicago); balancing bottom-up and top-down; whether…

The paper draws on findings from three case studies on the changing role of Local Education Authorities (LEAs) in England and explores the degree of LEA effectiveness, their contribution to school improvement, and the nature of their leadership. The context for the study is one in which, over the years, the powers and responsibilities of LEAs have…

Community education is an educational philosophy, which holds that the school is responsible for all aspects of education. The promise of that philosophy lies in its potential for involving people in the identification and solution of their problems. (Author/JH)

The storefront school's value as change agent depends on its leaders attending to the key issues of ongoing funding, relationships with the public school system, cooperative arrangements with other alternative models, accountability, and power control. (JM)

The state of New South Wales (NSW) ceded the Canberra area to the Commonwealth in 1911 as the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), but maintained responsibility for education in the region until 1974, when the territory became responsible for its own educational system. ACT's Independent Education Authority came into being in large part as the…

A description and assessment, by the first principal of a newly formed community school in New York City, of the struggle to implement structural, administrative, and programmatic innovations with a special focus on the parent school relationship. (EH)

"Politics" is used in a broad sense to refer to the social, economic, political, and civil forces that impinge on the publicly financed school system. These forces are generated both from outside and inside the educational system. It is the author's view that the big cities and the school systems of most of these cities are in just enough trouble…

This annotated bibliography was compiled as a library research project at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. Part I of the listing deals with decentralization as a structural feature of the local political system. Part II examines the process of local citizen participation. Parts III and IV focus on community control in the decentralization…

The past 50 years have witnessed a vast transformation of public education from tens of thousands of relatively independent, "grass roots," citizen-controlled school districts to centrally controlled, massive bureaucracies. Ten recommendations are made which would bring public education back under the control of ordinary citizens. (RM)

Examines Colombia's efforts to halt escalating violence and social destruction through political and educational decentralization aimed at bolstering participatory democracy. Discusses the efficiency and anticorruption goals of centralization policies of the 1970s. Describes lack of shared vision and other national and local barriers to…