An Indianapolis-based nonprofit organization has crafted a sweeping plan for reworking the 33,000-student Indianapolis school system that would place the district under the control of the city's mayor, pare down the money spent in central administration, and give principals broad authority to hire and fire teachers. The reform plan created by the…

The trend of teacher collegiality and professional development in educational restructuring is examined in this paper within the context of growing demands for accountability and productivity. The increased international interest in teacher collegiality through various forms of school-based professional development is viewed as a means of…

The empowerment of teachers through collaboration, a supervisory trend currently receiving much attention and emphasis, employs variability and encourages cooperative decisionmaking. Despite its apparent popularity, collaboration can be viewed as unwieldy and difficult to manage with teachers who are already working under less than desirable…

A review of literature on the principal's changing role in shared decision making is provided in this paper, which discusses the following areas: policy development; the egalitarian ethic for teacher participation; the principal/faculty relationship; the principal's functions in shared decision making; and elements of successful decision making.…

The first 3 of the 11 publications reviewed in this annotated bibliography discuss both the benefits of school-based management (SBM) to educational quality and the appropriate degree of school district involvement in developing educational objectives, providing training for school management teams, and monitoring school-site leadership.…

This article describes a management training model for school principals developed by the Pasco County (Florida) School District and the University of South Florida. The model is based on the theory that school development requires collaborative decision-making about goals and plans, staff and program development, and assessment activity. (TE)

Numerous attempts have been made to improve the effectiveness of decision-making in organizational settings. Some of the historical and contemporary organizational trends regarding these efforts, both in business and in school settings, are presented in this paper. The focus is on the related expectations and outcomes that are evident in diverse…

This report is the fifth in a series on cultivating excellence in education for the purpose of training and retraining school leaders of the 1990s. The role of school administrators, and especially building principals; the characteristic administrative functions; the step-by-step procedures for implementation; and the advantages and possible…

This paper addresses briefly the responsibilities which site-based decision-making (S-B D-M) imply and presents the many opportunities to innovate collaboratively as a way to achieve greater professionalism. Texas' Senate Bill 1 (199) and House Bill 2885 (1991) set into motion two important aspects of educational reform, the decentralization of…

Findings from a Massachusetts Department of Education project to describe district-led experiences with school-based management and to identify factors for improved classroom practices are presented in this paper. Interviews with 12 superintendents and assistant superintendents involved in systemwide restructuring were conducted to learn about…

Supervision based on collaboration, participative decision making, and reflective practice is the hallmark of a viable school improvement program that is designed to promote teaching and learning. Action research has gradually emerged as an important form of instructional supervision to engage teachers in reflective practice about their teaching…

This study examined curriculum procedures and the roles, decision-making processes, and perceptions of central administrators, building administrators, and teachers in five school districts. Qualitative data collection included taped interviews using a focused indepth interview schedule, field notes, observation, and document collection. The study…

Although most attempts to effect school reform have been initiated from the top down, an alternative paradigm of educational reform has emerged: the idea that educators in schools must become empowered agents in their own school improvement processes. This paper explores this new paradigm, arguing that schools are both the objects and arenas of…

This paper describes a qualitative study at an at-risk primary school after a year of implementing educational changes. The paper opens with a detailed diary of the author's first morning observing the principal in action at the school. The analysis of data and field notes centers on the strengths of the principal's leadership, and the themes in…

This paper takes a distributed perspective on leadership practice in schools. Drawing upon empirical evidence from two contemporary studies of successful school leadership and the international research base concerning distributed leadership, the paper argues that leadership practice is a distributed entity that is mediated through human…