Educators from the United States flock to Edmonton, Alberta, a district in Canada where schools control 80% of the district's total budget. Education leaders from Chicago, Colorado, Hawaii, Los Angeles, Minnesota, Oakland, California, and the District of Columbia have all flocked to learn about Edmonton's experience with site-based management of…

Although it is too early to tell whether recent Kentucky and Chicago developments are harbingers of the future, it is possible to evaluate the effectiveness of three types of reform proposals: pseudo-reform, incremental reform, and reform by restructuring. School restructuring is the most challenging approach. Includes 14 references. (MLH)

This article builds and explores the hypothesis that parent and community participation in school governance can have positive impacts on community development by fostering improvements in school performance and school-community relations and by acting as a catalyst for collective action around community-development issues. It does so through case…

When embarking on school/community-based management, nine Hawaii elementary schools trained their staff in facilitative leadership and received technical assistance from district offices. Schools can involve more parents by reaching a shared understanding about parental involvement, developing appropriate involvement strategies, providing parents…

After describing recent school reforms in Hawaii, this paper discusses the state's efforts to ensure greater accountability and to deal with two issues: student evaluation and the measurement of indicators used in state-by-state comparisons. During the past few years, Hawaii has been involved in many reform initiatives, including implementating…

School/Community-Based Management (SCBM) improves the quality of education by providing schools with administrative flexibility and by empowering each school's community to make and implement decisions that will directly affect its members and students. To help individual school communities that are considering adopting SCBM understand how shared…

Across the United States, School/Community-Based Management (SCBM), also called site-based management, is gaining support. The effects of SCBM in some Pacific-region schools are detailed. SCBM arose in response to mandates giving decision-making powers to the people who have to carry out educational initiatives. One evaluation of SCBM…

The School Community Based Management (SCBM) process for the Hawaii public school system, legislated in 1989, elicits input from administrators, teachers, support staff, parents, students, and community members. SCBM shifts some of the decision making powers to the school and can be adopted by a school on a voluntary basis. This study develops a…

This report contains collective data on Hawaii's schools, showing trends over time and, where appropriate, comparisons with data from other states. It includes data from 246 public schools and 7 school districts for the 1996-97 school year. In 1996-97, enrollment growth, which had exceeded 1.5% for 5 years, declined sharply to 1%. Dropout rates…

Site-based management is designed to bring decision making to the school level and involve all stakeholders in a process that will result ultimately in improved student outcomes. Enacted into law in June 1989, Hawaii's School/Community-Based Management Initiative (SCBM) is part of a national trend toward decentralizing decision making and…

Hawaii's School/Community-Based Management Initiative (SCBM), which was enacted into law in 1989, is part of a national trend toward decentralizing decision making and increasing school autonomy that arose during the 1980s. A voluntary program, SCBM offers schools flexibility, autonomy, and a small amount of resources in exchange for…

A formative evaluation was conducted of two elementary schools that have been engaged in the School/Community-Based Management (SCBM) process in Hawaii. The evaluation process was aligned with the SCBM philosophy, which promotes shared decision making, shared responsibility, and collaboration. Stakeholders contributed to the evaluation, which…

This report examines family involvement in elementary and secondary education, focusing on special concerns for schools in Hawaii and the Pacific Islands. The report identifies barriers to family involvement found among culturally diverse populations and suggests positive directions aimed at overcoming those barriers. Following an introduction,…