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A study of Ontario (Canada) colleges examined the government fiscal policy, profitability motives, bureaucratic organizational norms, incrementalism, and political and power relationships that impede successful integration of centers of innovation and entrepreneurship into colleges. Other factors not yet researched are discussed. (Author/MSE)

Examines a case study of a high-track English class to show how teachers use multiple claims to legitimacy and ambiguous standards to negotiate classroom authority. Finds relationships between teachers and students involve both conflict and collusion. Claims that a teacher's professional authority can be undermined by reliance on bureaucratic authority. (CAJ)

Investigates New Zealand teachers' perceptions of the bureaucratic and professional approaches to performance management in their schools. In climate of increasing control of teachers' work and professional activities by the state, results indicate that school managers have adopted a professional approach to staff appraisal. (Contains 41 references.) (Authors/PKP)

Uses Lipsky's concept of street-level bureaucrat to identify how English teachers in two Chicago public schools respond to student failure within the context of district accountability agenda. Finds, for example, that teachers responded to testing policies by allocating significant classroom time to "teaching to the tests," but employed several defensive strategies in response to policies aimed at lowering course failure rates. (Contains 39 references.) (Author/PKP)

Considers case-study data from four English further-education colleges. Responses from a total of 16 senior managers, 45 middle managers, and 288 team members were analyzed to assess key features of the middle-manager role, and to identify factors that enable or impede them. (Contains 1 table and 16 references.) (MLF)

Uses conceptual framework based on Hans-Georg Gadamer's three philosophical modes for understanding social phenomena to explore gender-based perspectives of employment-equity policy in Ontario, Canada, educational organizations during a period of political restructuring. (Contains 55 references.) (PKP)

Explains emergence of management in India; reviews sources of management concepts; compares meaning of the terms "management" and "administration"; discusses characteristics of organizational culture in India; describes efforts to introduce management concepts in Indian education; offers suggestions for realizing the potential of educational management in India. (PKP)

Uses Max Weber's writings to reconstruct his views on education, administration, and leadership; relates these views to some recent significant changes in education, especially higher education. Discusses problems of educational leadership in modern universities from a Weberian perspective. Provides three conclusions from Weber's writing; draws implications for educational administration studies. (Contains 56 references.) (PKP)

Challenges the assumption that bureaucracy is bad for charter schools. Examines perceived autonomy, governance structures, leadership, and perceived culture of community-charter schools in Ohio. (Contains 15 references.) (PKP)

Describes New York's charter-school legislation; explains charter-school responsibilities at state department of education and local boards of education; includes the development of the application form; discusses how state and local agencies shape charter schools through the application-review process. (PKP)

In a recent survey by Public Agenda, 853 randomly selected public school superintendents and 909 randomly selected public school principals cite politics and bureaucracy as their biggest obstacles. Two thirds or more say they need more autonomy to reward outstanding teachers and remove ineffective teachers. (MLF)

Describes several reasons, based largely on dissatisfaction with New York City bureaucracy, why principal of International High School in Queens decided to accept invitation to become a charter school: Student selection challenges; need for school-based staffing; scheduling, financial, and purchasing rigidities; and state assessment requirements. (PKP)

Results of Public Agenda survey of 853 superintendents and 909 principals about problems they face in carrying out their jobs reveal concerns with bureaucracy, workload, funding, accountability, teacher tenure, and university administrator preparation programs. Asked administrators to rate approaches to improve their working conditions. Draws implications for schools and districts. (PKP)

Examines the reauthorized Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) diagnostic and placement process of special-needs students in one urban school district from the perspective of shared power. Argues that intent of reauthorized IDEA is to shift power from school administrators and staff members to the parent/guardian members of Individualized Educational Program (IEP) committees. (Contains 51 references.) (PKP)

Examines how organizational factors affect how inclusion reform policy is interpreted in Dutch primary schools during implementation. Finds that professional bureaucracy has a counterproductive influence on reform implementation. (Contains 35 references.) (PKP)

Review of literature on school leadership organized for the most part around the following topics: Building leadership capacity (organizational, managerial coordination, mentoring, collaborative, democratic, ethical, expanded view of schooling); redefining school leadership, for example, by fostering teacher development; and reforming principal preparation, including calls for and progress of reform. Includes summary and implications. (Contains 154 references.) (PKP)

A case study of the New York City school custodial system indicates that, in spite of known scandals since the 1920s, it has ignored decades of regulations, reorganizations, and layers of oversight. A deviant culture and an infrastructure enmeshed in abusive policies will resist controls. True reform requires overhauling management, eliminating special interests, and punishing misconduct. (Contains 117 references.) (JOW)

Examines the implementation of Short-Lived Unanticipated Grants (SLUG) in Connecticut to determine to what extent the political process distorted the reform. Describes the SLUG proposal and its estimation in the median-voter model. Describes evidence of special-interest behavior of the school bureaucracy. Questions use of median-voter model to explain the effects of SLUG on school spending. (Contains 20 references.) (PKP)

Interviews 16 school board chairs in North Carolina to determine their attitudes toward state education reform legislation. Discusses two themes emerging from the interviews: Downsizing the state bureaucracy translates into autonomy and accountability at the local level, but paradoxically boards now lack the organizational buffering previously provided by the state agency. Draws implications for policy formation. (Contains 61 references.) (PKP)

Three-year study examines the effects of school-based management (SBM) on the organizational health of 28 elementary schools in Jerusalem using 7 indicators from the Organizational Climate Description Questionnaire and the Organizational Health Inventory. Finds no significant impact of SBM on the schools' organizational health, but finds significant differences in certain indicators of school health such as teacher morale. (Contains 90 references.) (PKP)

The current bureaucratic model used in administering public education in Canada displays a systemic gender bias that results from sociopolitical-cultural assumptions concerning gender roles, capitalism, hierarchy, and patriarchy. A proposed neo-bureaucracy would replace individual ownership of success with an accent on teamwork and group achievement while retaining enough current administrative infrastructure to ensure stability. (Contains 45 references.) (TD)

Illustrates how to use sociological concepts and theory in teaching about genocide and the Holocaust. Offers three examples to demonstrate how sociology can be integrated into the study of genocide and the Holocaust. Relates topics addressed in examples, such as gender issues. (CMK)

Reviews changes introduced to Australian public education over the past decade, comparing them against the "free, compulsory, and secular" education acts implemented in every Australian colony during the late 19th century. The principles and social values underlying the establishment of public education have been significantly eroded. (Contains 42 references.) (MLH)

The analogy of pregnancy and birth is used to describe the founding of a Waldorf-style charter school in southern California. Advice is given for dealing with the sponsoring district, bureaucracy, politics of educational reform, standardized testing, and parent community. Sidebars present the mission statement, grant excerpts, timeline, required charter elements, and 10 resources for considering charter schools. (TD)

Examines Vietnamese educational reforms of the 1990s, aimed at modernizing education to support Vietnam's wide-ranging market reforms. Discusses the structure of preschool through higher education; the cluttered lower secondary school curriculum, rigidly tied to textbook content and teacher training; rural disadvantage and lesser access to education; and the cumbersome nature of the reform process. (Contains 22 references.) (SV)

Examines the role bureaucracy plays in shaping educational performance using district-level data from 350 public school districts in Texas. Reveals negative relationships between bureaucracy and student performance across several grade levels. (Contains 20 references.) (JOW)

Argues that there is no teacher shortage; rather, the problem is an inefficient personnel system and an inflexible bureaucracy that does not allow market forces of supply and demand to work the way they do in other fields. (EV)

Examines aspects of initial teacher education and continuing professional development in Scotland against the backdrop of McCrone Report recommendations on teaching conditions. Discusses teachers' attitudes toward their own professional development; the nature of professional knowledge, skills, and values; and some principles to promote genuine professional enrichment rather than empty skills training and bureaucratic credentialism. (Contains 39 references.) (Author/SV)

Explains that every school system faces the challenge of how to manage staff more effectively, introducing several articles that focus on whether: large-city school systems are more bureaucratic, a system of family school choice is more efficient or effective, tuition is an answer to a reduction in public education finance, and there are common lessons to be learned from taking a small intervention to national scale. (SM)

Adopts Weber's (1978) conceptualizations of modern bureaucracy to examine the organization of public education in one big city school system, the Chicago Public Schools, asserting that school administration operates according to three principles: bureaucratic, patrimonial, and charismatic. The paper concludes that over-reliance on the bureaucratic model tends to restrict the research and policy reform agenda. (SM)

A research project examined what form of organizational structures have been adopted within British further-education colleges 5 years after their incorporation and removal from local-education authority control. Colleges are representing their structures as market models (alongside a clan culture), rather than Weberian bureaucracies. (Contains 29 references.)

Attempts to reconcile two theoretically opposing perspectives of bureaucracy (as either alienating or facilitative) by creating and testing a new construct called "enabling bureaucracy." Empirical results are encouraging. Schools can be designed with formalized procedures and hierarchical structures that help rather than hinder teaching and learning. (Contains 32 references.) (MLH)

The values of the short-term future are implicit: an unholy Apollonian-Dionysian mix of rationalistic, legalistic, bureaucratic, scientific pragmatics, and a reactive, postmodern, relativistic, hedonistic, narcissistic, materialistic nihilism. For education, this might imply a skew toward the digital, the mathematical, the marketable, and the meritocratic. (Contains 14 references.) (MLH)

Explores how family literacy practices are connected to social institutions that sustain or transform participants' awareness or reproduction of class identities and the inequities inherent in these interactions. Looks at the complexity of one African-American, working-poor family's literacy practices in their connections to social institutions. (SR)

A husband and wife team of Montessori-trained teachers started a private school in Brewster (New York) that also serves as a home school resource center. Their practices include mixed-age grouping, learner-centered instruction, optional standardized tests, parents in the classrooms, and frequent field trips. They endured 3 years of dealing with bureaucratic red tape before they could open. (TD)

An ethnically diverse elementary school committed to coteaching, narrative assessments, and a bias-free ambience performed poorly on 1996 statewide standardized assessments. Initially stymied by a new depersonalized district report card, teachers developed strategic compromises that accommodated the superintendent's bureaucratic directives and improved scores without compromising inclusion. (MLH)

Identifies factors contributing to urban schools' failure, including bureaucratic decision-making processes; outmoded, poorly maintained, and improperly designed facilities; responsibility overload; a new student population comprising immigrants, African-Americans, and the poor; rising security costs; inadequate staffing; and lack of political courage. Poor kids need political representation. (MLH)

Argues that during the late-nineteenth century, when teachers became de-skilled and women's access to top administration became limited, female spaces and social organizations emerged that were conducive to long service and career advancement at the low echelons of the bureaucracy. Focuses on a social history of teachers in Providence, Rhode Island between 1880-1900. (CMK)

Analyzes the issues and implications in the Higher Education Act Amendments of 1998, including the framework of federal student aid it establishes, the reduced federal influence on academic affairs and accreditation, increased regulatory flexibility and reduced administrative burden on institutions, and increased eligibility of distance-education students to participate in student aid programs. (MSE)

Using case-study methodology, examines a statewide doctoral program for preparing school leaders involving several public universities in Missouri. Findings on reasons for cooperation aligned with existing studies. Certain factors (leadership, logistics, bureaucratic barriers, and cultural differences) appeared to enhance or constrain collaboration. (Contains 22 references.) (MLH)

Presents a theory of collegial social control of teacher's instructional beliefs and practices that centers on the idea of "collegial focus." Examines whether social control affects teachers' practices, if collegial focus strengthens social control, the role of subject-matter specialization, and the effects of bureaucratic control on collegial control. (CMK)