This publication presents papers prepared for the National Conference on School-based Decision-making in Sydney, Australia. Papers were prepared by both government and nongovernment school systems in each state and territory of Australia. The aim of this publication is to help school administrators, teachers, school boards, and others involved in…

The Mt. Diablo Unified School District is in the second year of a pilot program in individual school management in eleven elementary schools, three intermediate schools, and one high school to bring a measurable improvement of learning with existent resources. This is an individual school management system that places educational decision-making…

Peer counseling in high schools provides a developmental growth opportunity for adolescents as well as a valuable outreach service for the Guidance Office. Through intensive small group experience and training, selected students gain insight into their own ideas, needs, and values. They also learn more effective interpersonal and decision making…

A booklet designed to help individuals determine if the schools or programs they are considering are the right ones for them encourages asking questions about a variety of matters: admissions requirements; program or degree completion requirements; faculty; the school's graduates' successes in their chosen fields; academic counseling; internships;…

The concept of needs and educational assessment is a blending of community participation and evaluation. There are four primary steps in this concept: goal definition, program assessment, needs identification, and decision making. This document offers a guideline model aimed at a simple, economical method of needs and educational assessment. It…

The Trouble Shooting Checklist-A (TSC-A) is a predictive instrument to aid the educational change agent in defining variables within institutions or organizations which are concerned with adopting modules in deciding whether or not an institution is suited for a particular innovation. These five dimensions comprise the major scales: Organization…

A student's choice of an answer to a test question is a coarse measure of his knowledge about the subject matter of the question. Much finer measurement might be achieved if the student were asked to estimate, for each possible answer, the probability that it is the correct one. Such a procedure could yield two classes of benefits: (a) students…

An instructional module designed to help librarians learn to identify and negotiate reference questions is presented and discussed. The instructional module consists of an essay on performance of negotiation as a decision-making step in the reference process, and exercises for identification of queries that should be negotiated. A videotape which…

This document reviews the consequences of urban community involvement in school decision making. Areas concerning educational decisions, shared as goals by lay communities and school people, are considered to be: institutional responsiveness, affective and material community support to schools, educational achievement, and the democratic principle…

Power, or influence, in educational governance is increasingly becoming diffused. Everyone in education now feels relatively powerless. A political model of decision-making, emphasizing consultation with representatives of interest groups is now appropriate. In this model, the school board functions as "meta-mediator." This modifies the…

The Oregon System of Mathematics Education (OSME) is a project geared toward identifying the curriculum gap between what exists and what is desired. Its primary objective is the improvement of mathematics education for all students in Oregon schools. The needs assessment described in this document focuses on gathering opinions and attitudes of…

Specifying the purpose and uses to be made of a test prior to administration is of paramount importance when one considers the time administrators and teachers spend on selecting, developing, administering and scoring tests and the amount of student time required to complete the tests. Determination of how test results will be used should be made…

In order to "cut through the jargon of the multifaceted field of evaluative research", 21 evaluation models representing a range of possibilities were identified (via literature review) and compared in terms of purpose and five basic phases applicable to rural development. Evaluation was defined as "the systematic examination of a…

The report contains eight conference presentations made by professional vocational-technical educators as they considered decisions necessary to occupational education program development in a period of rapidly changing times. The speakers' topics were related to decisions concerned with changes in society, competency based teacher education, new…

The study was conducted to identify occupational survival skills--the basic knowledges, traits, and competencies necessary to maintain a job. A list of 27 basic occupational survival skills was developed, involving the following areas: interpersonal relations and communications; personal characteristics; decision making and problem solving; job…