Despite contemporary efforts to develop lists of department chair tasks and responsibilities, there is no historical foundation available for understanding the department chair position. This study was designed to identify the critical incidents and factors which impacted on the development of the department chair position in higher education from…

Kentucky has witnessed many changes in educational administration. An assessment of those changes, with a focus on school boards, was done. School boards are not efficient bodies and this is not a problem. If efficiency was the top concern, then minimizing time and costs would be dominant and schools would suffer. School boards are not…

The Wayne State University Public School (UPS), Detroit (Michigan), a university-operated charter middle school, is strongly influenced by the educational reform movement. The evolution of UPS is documented as a case study of educational reform in the 1990s, focusing on the 1994-95 school year. The school is in an urban area marked by poverty and…

This report describes the flexible scheduling practices of Kennedy Middle School in Aiken, South Carolina and its Interdisciplinary Middle School Program for Advisement, Counseling, and Teaming (IMPACT). The school is organized into 2 sixth-grade, 2 seventh-grade, and 2 eighth-grade teams, each of which contains 6 teachers and 90 to 150 students.…

In 1989, the Texas State Board of Education undertook the responsibility for developing a 4-year plan and for establishing a vision for education that extends into the next century. This document contains the goals for education established by the 71st Texas legislature. The mission of public education in Texas is for it to be characterized by…

As a result of the 1988 Chicago School Reform Act, a number of powers previously exercised at the central administration or board level have devolved upon the Local School Councils (LSCs) and principals. The cooperation of 14 representative schools was enlisted for an ongoing qualitative study of the dynamics of reform at the local level. To date,…

The organization, methods, and outcomes of the distance education systems at the Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia (UNED) in Spain and The Open University of the United Kingdom are compared. The following topics are covered: higher education in Spain, UNED's ideology, student characteristics in both universities, organization,…

The third of four technical reports on Oregon education finance, this report summarizes views of 44 opinion leaders in Oregon (including public officials, business leaders, educators, and journalists) on questions of education goals, quality, cost, and methods of decision-making. Answering questionnaires, the respondents first addressed issues of…

The functions of student service offices at Mercy College of Detroit were clarified. A Key Personnel Group (KPG) consisting of the directors of all student service offices was formed. Administration of a needs assessment survey to students who had been admitted conditionally (i.e., entered with less than a 2.00 high school grade point average)…

This document, a two-volume report, provides in volume 1 the final longitudinal evaluation of the New York City Dropout Prevention Initiative (DPI), 1985-86 through 1987-88. (The second volume comprises appendices containing summaries of each previous evaluation for this time period.) The DPI was implemented in 13 high schools and 29 feeder middle…

Originally presented at a 1986 conference on student discipline strategies, this collection of papers represents highlights of the conference proceedings. Each paper has since been revised and updated. An introduction by Oliver C. Moles discusses the nature, extent, and academic effects of student misbehavior. In "Classroom Management Techniques,"…

This article examines the Snow Hill Institute, one of several 19th-century industrial schools founded for rural Southern black students, following the model of Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee Institute. This case study provides a sketch of William J. Edwards, an early Tuskegee alumnus and founder of the Snow Hill Institute in Wilcox County,…

This study uses data from a national survey of principals of public schools with a 7th grade to document and analyze the variation in the types of marks and evaluations included on report cards issued to young adolescents in the United States. The analyses examine the prevalence of report card entries of various types and the antecedents and…

The sociology of education is concerned with the study of groups of people within educational institutions. This book analyzes the sociology of American education from a historical viewpoint. The chapters in the book derive from social theory, the sociology of organizations, the sociology of work and professions, and the study of class, race, and…

A study involving 55 elementary schools and 18 secondary schools was undertaken to examine the relationships among teachers' perceptions of school organizational coupling structures, school environmental robustness, and three school effectiveness measures (school organizational effectiveness, school achievement, and average daily attendance). The…