The 1973 seminar focused on improving administrative activities of State vocational education agencies, and emphasis was given to the processes and innovative concepts related to the maintenance and improvement of administrative activities. Guidelines and position papers were presented in the following areas: (1) The Role of Vocational Education…

This report gives a brief history of a differentiated staffing (DS) and outlines the major differences between horizontal and vertical differentiation. The Temple City model provides an example of vertical differentiation, while the Top of the World Elementary School plan is given as a model of horizontal differentiation. Obstacles to DS…

The research described in this proposal is aimed at understanding the dynamics of an alternative social institution, the nature of the behavior of various role-groups involved in it, and the effects of this involvement on these participants. The alternative institution being studied is an experimental "high school without walls"…

In this speech, the author asserts that training educational administrators has historically tended to fall within the practitioner-intellectual continuum. As a result, programs have followed one of two models: the "prescriptive" and the social science, with an unjustified dichotomy between theory and practice. The authors have,…

This document contains highlights of three years of research begun in 1967 that probed the decisionmaking structure of the education field, its politics, people, and forces. Twenty-five public school districts were studied and visited in the course of this research; nine districts were studied and analyzed in depth. A study of occupational…

Examines the problems educational policymakers face when students with AIDS are admitted to schools. Discusses (1) the Center for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines for dealing with such children; (2) the trade-offs in admitting such students; (3) possible parties responsible for educating children too sick to attend; and (4) actual policies in…

A professor of education returns to the elementary classroom as a teacher's aide and learns that administrators can support teachers by (1) working to eliminate fragmentation in daily routines, (2) protecting teachers from overextension, (3) focusing more on individual students, (4) promoting teacher collegiality, and (5) fashioning a school…

Discusses the nature of recent calls for educational reform in the context of the historical role of superintendents in the development of the public school movement. Provides a case study illustrating how one metropolitan school superintendent facilitated educational innovation and solidified his own organizational power within his district. (34…

Notes the increasing availability of prekindergarten programs for four-year-olds and describes a program that groups four- and five-year-olds together. Covers the program's instructional goals; reasons for using multi-aged grouping, cooperative teaching, and structured planning time; curriculum; interaction with parents; and dependence on the…

This report by researchers from the Universities of Minnesota and Toronto examines the available evidence and offers educators, policymakers and all citizens interested in promoting successful schools, some answers to these vitally important questions. It is the first in a series of such publications commissioned by The Wallace Foundation that…

The optimum situation for a school system is one in which bureaucratic influences and practices support classroom learning. The study reported in this policy brief examines a transformation toward this state of affairs in the country's eighth largest school district, the 140,000-student San Diego City Schools. An unusual leadership arrangement…

This year's Schoolhouse Commercialism Trends report finds that schools continue to be a prime target of a wide variety of corporate advertising efforts and criticism of marketing to children in schools is mounting. Most of this criticism is directed at marketing activities that are thought to have a negative impact on children's health. Public…

This brief describes workplace conditions in "learning centered" schools, where practices are consistent with recent research knowledge about learning and its contexts. Its purpose is to support fundamental, long-term change by offering a vision of best practice for educators to consider, discuss, and adapt to their circumstances. It summarizes…

In May 2004, two influential philanthropic groups held a briefing for education grant makers to help them decide whether to keep giving large sums of money to support school improvement. A moderator kicked off the event by asking, "Is it possible to get the types of schools that we need--[by] fixing the schools we have?" In other words,…

This book was written with the assumption that teachers and administrators must work as colleagues to improve instruction and learning in schools. It was written to be consistent with the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) standards for school administrators, especially Standards 1 and 2, which emphasize a learning-centered…