Over the last decade, a series of educational reforms have increased opportunities for private companies to play a role in public education. For instance, school districts have sometimes looked to private companies to manage poorly performing schools. The accountability provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 may further increase such…

In 1991 Australia's National Industry Education Forum released a policy statement that suggested ways to improve Australian schools. This report, an outgrowth of that statement, contains a blueprint for the decentralization of management for Australian schools. Studies were undertaken in 11 companies to draw lessons from business and industry.…

This study investigated the extent to which school characteristics would interfere with or enhance a shared decision making (SDM) team's ability to address issues of academic achievement as mandated by New York State. A group of 108 SDM team chairpersons in New York State public high schools completed surveys about school characteristics and…

As school-restructuring efforts are initiated across the country, many schools are calling upon facilitators to guide the change process. Many people both inside and outside the school system can play facilitative roles. This guidebook offers tools and approaches for facilitating school change, breaking down the facilitator's role into 12…

While numerous feminist scholars have written about "silence," few have focused on the silence of women in powerful masculinized positions such as the superintendency. The purpose of the paper is to expose the silencing, the disallowing of voice in actual practice, or the "unnatural silence" (Olsen 1978) of women superintendents through a…

For over a decade, numerous educators have espoused the need for increased participation in decision making. Yet, evidence shows that mechanisms intended to broaden access actually result in governance that is little different from traditional, more autocratic management methods. To better understand this phenomenon, an examination of the…

This study explored the social world of one school, looked at the web of relationships, and documented the social interactions that occurred in the context of a mandated reform. The study was designed to describe and understand the relationships of teachers in one school as they planned and developed a school-wide strategy for change as required…

Based on the view that participative management is essential for high-quality child care program functioning, this book for child care administrators presents participative management as a philosophy and as a set of behaviors defining interactions with people. The book provides opportunities to explore management techniques involving others in…

This volume documents and reflects on the use of Open Space Technology by Peace Corps staff in the United States and in the field. An introduction reviews basic principles and processes of Open Space, which is a meeting and conference process congruent with Peace Corps philosophy, to clarify ways trainers have interpreted, adapted, and used it in…

This article discusses some of the various school-reform strategies that have been implemented since the publication of A Nation at Risk. It opens with an examination of standards-based accountability and some of the concerns and objections surrounding this movement. It asks whether standards are achieving their purpose, looks at the role of state…

Teams can produce innovative solutions to complex problems, enabling organizations to be faster, more responsive, more competitive, and more successful in meeting their missions. These kinds of results are not guaranteed, however. When an organization sponsors a team, it is usually to address a challenge deemed essential to organizational success.…

England's non-profit School Works project was initiated to respond to the challenges of updating school infrastructure by showing the links between design and education, producing beautiful schools which further learning, and working in new ways with new partnerships. The first part of this "toolkit" guide explains the thinking behind…

This article explores the relationships among principals' views of shared governance, parent involvement, site-based management, and the influence of professional experience and formal training on a principal's background. The report is based on a study that investigated principals participating in a state-initiated restructuring program called…

In two articles on outdoor programming models, Watters distinguished four models on a continuum ranging from the common adventure model, with minimal organizational structure and leadership control, to the guide service model, in which leaders are autocratic and trips are highly structured. Club programs and instructional programs were in between,…

This book is designed to help administrators with school reform to improve levels of teaching and learning. The text is based on key findings from school-change literature, as well as first-hand experiences in the process of school reform. It addresses how to develop a collective vision, how to provide professional development, how to involve…