School-based management (SBM) remains a "hot topic" in educational circles. This article explores the reality of SBM internationally. It focusses on the perceptions of selected Australian public secondary principals who reflect on the drivers and impediments affecting their capacity to lead school-based innovation. While broadly…

As school-based management systems are established in increasing numbers of school districts, assistant principals will be assigned more responsibility, including teacher evaluation. Meanwhile, the present duties (assigning lockers, disciplining students, and preparing student handbooks) need not be dull activities. (MLH)

Successful administrators have the ability to delegate various tasks and responsibilities effectively. Specific delegation procedures include clearly defining and delineating tasks, giving authority and leeway to do the job, bolstering the doer's self-confidence, accepting the job as done, and giving credit for work well done. (MLH)

Five principals were asked by NASSP editors to describe their personal response to an ethical dilemma. Principals' difficult situations included an athletic team's transportation costs, a college scholarship requirement, a site-based management problem, an employee alcoholism case, and a too-strict textbook adoption policy. (MLH)

Strategies for mainstreaming students with disabilities include consultation, community-based instruction, and vocational transition. Administrators can keep current by getting involved with local colleges and universities with special education training programs, subscribing to journals, contacting state special education directors, forming…

For several years, Colorado school district's staff has participated in new educational management coaching and review process. Shift from centralized educational administration to site-based management involved transforming elementary and secondary director positions to area administrator/coach roles and converting central administration into an…

To generate support and improve efficiency of school support staff, weekly workshops in one Florida school district addressed previously assessed needs among the staff. (JW)

Principals and others involved in strategic or operational planning decisions need a data collection process with a systematic internal and external scanning structure. Internal data originate from students, school climate, finance, and human resource variables. External data include demography, government finance and budgetary allocations,…

Any plan to create a communications/governance structure to empower stakeholders must address several questions: rationale, potential advantages and disadvantages, problems to be considered, format, committee structure and responsibilities, and evaluation techniques. Includes 10 references. (MLH)

Because most people will resist law and reason (government), power must be rendered in someone else's name to make ruling palatable. Executives, including principals, represent the law. To enforce a given law, executives must often exceed their base of authority to act decisively--despite recent rhetoric about staff empowerment and site-based…

Principals must manage funds wisely on behalf of educating children; most learn school budgeting and money management through on-the-job experience. A survey of high-school principals found positive relationships between: (1) more school wealth and influence of educational reforms, and 2) less school wealth and compliance with central authorities.…

Although the process of participative, school-based budgeting might seem tedious and time-consuming, it can truly empower teachers and administrators. One cannot set instructional and budgetary priorities without knowing costs. A costing formula to help facilitate the budgeting process is presented. Includes 18 references. (MLH)

Although school-based management will not solve the problems facing public secondary schools, it does decentralize, simplify, and localize decision making that can lead to improved classroom instruction. To achieve this goal, boards of education and teacher unions must agree to suspend or revise negotiated agreements and board policies to allow…

Presents a model to help principals with strategic planning. Success hinges on involving stakeholders, scanning for relevant data, identifying critical success factors, developing vision and mission statements, analyzing the site manager's supports and constraints, creating strategic goals and objectives, developing action plans, allocating…

Describes a Kansas public school district's efforts to develop a synergistic curriculum plan combining the most positive elements of a standardized curriculum with those of a school-based curriculum. Encouraging staff commitment demands mutuality of expectations, dependence, trust, respect, communication, and vision. (MLH)