Describes several administrative-community alternatives for governing metropolitan schools: (1) administrative decentralization, (2) community participation, and (3) community control. (CT)

Analysis of report to be published by the Urban Coalition.

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)

A major component of the decentralization concept has been the focus on the participation of community, staff, and students in the process of educational decision making. On June 28, 1971, the Los Angeles City Board of Education mandated that a school-community advisory council be established in every regular elementary and secondary school in the…

Responses from inquiries to the superintendents of 32 urban school systems across the country provided the basis for classifying and evaluating modes of decentralization and extent of community control. Main features of the school systems' operations are reported under nine categories: (1) decentralized decision making with centralized…

A community controlled district in Harlem showed many positive features over a non-community controlled district; but today it no longer exists. Although quickly subverted by the larger organization, such unsanctioned social experiments provide significant new data for urban public organizations. (DM)

This report examines the difficulties faced by the San Francisco school district in attempting school integration, and places these events in the context of the national picture of urban school desegregation. Chapter I describes the kind of community pressures to which the school board was exposed, and how the school board responded to these…

This document reports on Phase II of a major project designed to study how school systems respond to the educational needs of the socially and economically disadvantaged. The report presents the Local Community Control model as the most effective means to change the school board's typical non responsiveness to the needs of the educationally…

This book is divided into four chapters. The first examines the concepts and issues related to understanding social systems and how the schools can be viewed as a social system. The differences between centralization and decentralization, as well as systems-analysis and management-control approaches are also explored. In the next chapter, we are…

This is the report of a project executed to assist in developing research policies on urban education. Data was gathered from several large cities, but detailed reports are included from Cleveland, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and Oakland. Trends in urban education with respect to decentralization and community control are…

A discussion of the educational problems of big-city school systems which defines the community school concept or philosophy, and emphasizes the role of an energetic school-home partnership composed of the community, parents, leaders, and educators. (JM)

This handbook is organized by action areas that a school principal needs to consider in creating, maintaining, and utilizing successful involvement with the neighboring communities. Each area discusses the range of options available to the principal. Building principals are thus able to select features to fit their particular communities. The…

In 1989, Chicago (Illinois) Public Schools began an experiment with the radical decentralization of power and authority. This book tells the story of what happened in Chicago's elementary schools in the first four years of this reform. Implicit in the reform was the theory that expanded local democratic participation would stimulate organizational…