This publication is a transcript of Superintendent Angus McBeath's presentation to legislators and media at an Issues and Ideas Forum hosted by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Lansing, Michigan. McBeath discusses education reform in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, including: (1) Basic Elements of Reform; (2) School Employee Union Involvement;…

This article is a historical case study of George Fox University (GFU) in Newberg, Oregon. Using organizational lifecycle as a theoretical framework, George Fox University had a long and delayed childhood in that it remained a small and struggling institution for most of the 20th century, and then experienced rapid growth in the late 1980s. This…

Recent national reports reinforce the growing perception that small schools are good schools. This may seem a revolution or the latest fad in schooling; however, issues of size cannot be captured in universal guidelines. This digest discusses the history of school size dilemmas to demonstrate why this is so. The earliest research literature on…

Educational administration has been shaped by the metaphor of organization. From organizational and management theory, and from economics, the parent of organizational theory, educational administration has borrowed definitions of quality, productivity, and efficiency; strategies to achieve them; and theories of human nature and motivation.…

This handbook examines the relationship between school buildings and educational performance. Following the introductory chapter, chapter 2 presents findings from empirical studies that have examined the building/performance issue. Research has demonstrated that the physical setting has both direct and mediated effects on prosocial and achievement…

The small schools literature began with the large-scale quantitative studies of the late 1980s and early 1990s that firmly established small schools as more productive and effective than large ones. These studies confirmed various benefits of small schools--higher academic achievement, increased student satisfaction, and fewer dropouts and…

Studies in New Jersey and California suggest that smaller schools or school districts produce higher aggregate achievement than larger schools or districts, especially in low socioeconomic status (SES) communities. Other studies have found that smaller schools have higher rates of student participation in extracurricular activities, and that…

This paper examines the hypothesis that school size mediates the effect of disadvantaged status on the achievement of individual students. A previous study using national data from the High School and Beyond data set failed to confirm the hypothesis. This study sought to test the hypothesis further by limiting the analysis to students in a single…

In 1973 a survey of teachers (361) and administrators (41) in 44 very small West-Texas secondary schools revealed highly positive opinions about the small secondary school and its educative and social functions. The same survey sent to the same schools in 1983 revealed similar positive opinions. Surveys covered three items: (1) teaching and…

Enrollment in noncollegiate postsecondary schools with occupational programs was 1.9 million in 1982, approximately the same level as in 1980, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). This finding is from the sixth biennial NCES survey of 7,603 noncollegiate postsecondary schools with occupational programs. Overall, 9,208…

THE FOLLOWING IS THE FULL TEXT OF THIS DOCUMENT: The research summarized here suggests that: Children learn more than academic content from their school experiences, especially how to behave in nonfamily groups. Congruence between the school and community can contribute significantly to a sense of community among both adults and youth, but at some…

Enrollment levels of high schools are positively related to the number of courses offered. The most common way to expand educational opportunities in communities served by small high schools is to increase enrollment, usually by means of consolidation. Size, however, is not always the predictor of course offerings, as some relatively small schools…

This paper examines the literature on the impact of school closures on students and communities in the context of four policy issues: school size, cost savings, educational equity, and public support for education. In closure decisions, a major hypothesis affecting school board members is that larger schools can offer a broader curriculum at lower…

Compiled from information gathered through questionnaires and other sources, this handbook documents educational practices conducted in the 55 counties of West Virginia. The data contained in this guide were collected in the spring of 1990. The text is divided into two parts: county profiles and high school descriptions. The high school…

Ph.D. productivity was evaluated, with attention to the educational background of male and female degree recipients, as well as differences in colleges identified as the most productive. There were 1,513 U.S. institutions with at least one graduate who earned a Ph.D. between 1961 and 1980. While women earned an increasingly large share of the…