This first report of charter school parents' perceptions based on nationally representative samples finds that charter parents, as compared with parents from district schools, are less likely to see serious problems at their children's school, report more extensive communications with the school, and are more satisfied with most aspects of the…

Network theory has recently been suggested as providing a useful framework for developing a change strategy by which the federal government can induce educational reform. In this paper the potential contributions of network theory are assessed by showing its close relationship to group theory. Then three critiques of group theory and…

Discusses the busing controversy, the increasing demand for community control of schools, and the general discontent with the public school system through an analysis of school desegregation in Chicago. (Author)

Interest groups have historically contributed more to the maintenance of existing national educational policies and programs than to the creation or shaping of new ones. The uncertain political acceptance of the recently increased federal role in education complicates attempts to predict the degree of change in policy development to expect during…

This study of policy making is set in Chicago's school system during the late 1960's. The three case studies presented here identify a school board's response to core issues faced by school policy makers in the largest of the central cities in the United States. After applying both bargaining and unitary models to the Chicago school board's policy…