This book argues that school-based management appears to be primarily concerned with dismantling centralized education systems (which have traditionally supported the work of teachers, students, and parents) and replacing them with a free-market ideology of competition and choice. School-based management separates elite policy makers and interest groups from those who implement policy. The movement promises more democratic community involvement, more parental choice, and better managed and more effective schools. What has occurred, the chapters argue, is a rhetoric of devolution in a context of centralism. The shift to school-based management justifies the state's avoidance of its social responsibility to provide an equitable quality education for all; promotes greater inequality; detracts from educational issues; may lower teacher quality; and cuts resources for education. Following the introduction, chapters include: (1) "Democratic Participation or Efficient Site Management: The Social and Political Location of the Self-Managing School" (Lawrence Angus); (2) "The New Right and the Self-Managing School" (Jack Demaine); (3) "Paradigm Shifts and Site-based Management in the United States: Toward a Paradigm of Social Empowerment" (Gary L. Anderson and Alexandra Dixon); (4) "Culture, Cost and Control: Self-Management and Entrepreneurial Schooling in England and Wales" (Stephen J. Ball); (5) "Reinventing Square Wheels: Planning for Schools to Ignore Realities" (Marie Brennan); (6) "The Evaluative State and Sefl-Management in Education: Cause for Reflection?" (David Hartley); (7) "The Politics of Devolution, Self-Management and Post-Fordism in Schools" (Susan L. Robertson); (8) "Pushing Crisis and Stress down the Line: The Self-Managing School" (Peter Watkins); (9) "Managerialism, Market Liberalism and the Move to Self-Managing Schools in New Zealand" (John A. Codd); (10) "Teaching Cultures and School-based Management: Towards a Collaborative Reconstruction" (Andrew C. Sparkes and Martin Bloomer); (11) "'And Your Corporate Manager Will Set You Free...': Devolution in South Australian Education" (Brendan Ryan); (12) "Managerialism and Market Forces in Vocational Education: 'Balkanizing' Education in the 'Banana Republic'" (Peter Kell); and (13) "Self-Managing Schools, Choice and Equity" (Geoffrey Walford). One figure and an index are included. References accompany each chapter. (LMI)