The two reform orientations termed "hard" and "soft" policy do not represent a set of mutually exclusive choices for policymakers. Bureaucratically and professionally based decision-making approaches must coexist in schools and school districts. The dual policy approach necessitates a rethinking of administrative posture and gives shape to a…

Examines three past conceptualizations of school administration and leadership (scientific or efficiency approaches, the human relations approach, and human resources development), outlines assumptions of each approach, and discusses implications for administrators' professional development. Current restructuring and school-based management…

Thanks to four major education movements (the restructuring, effective schools and school improvement, school as culture, and demography movements), educational leaders are adopting a more holistic approach to improving schools. The four movements affect educational leaders' problem-solving behavior, the character of educational research, and…

Critiques the present state of research in educational administration, discusses difficulties involved with developing and codifying a knowledge base, and presents possible solutions and faculty-oriented improvements. Although education and educational administration are concerned with applying concepts from many fields, education still requires…

Addresses some theoretical, logistical, and methodological problems involved in researching the numbers of females in educational administration. The primary problem is absence of reliable national database and systematic data-gathering processes on national and state levels. Without such data, the research is incomplete, less reliable, and…

Summarizes a study: determining the relevance of a sixth-year program of administrator preparation to requirements of on-the-job success as perceived by male and female graduates; and assessing the feasibility of using generally defined professional study outcomes to measure success. Hewing to "what is" knowledge is a one-dimensional strategy…

Discusses possible models for assessing the optionality of resource allocation in secondary education. Concludes that a suboptionalization model that requires the administrator to weigh the consequences of varying three inputs at most simultaneously offers a more promising tool for educational decisionmaking than the production function method.…

Discusses unification of elementary and secondary school districts and examines an application of a negative incentive -- reduction of State aid to districts that fail to operate and maintain educational programs for children K-12. (JF)

Discusses a proposed overhaul of Federal educational legislation that would consolidate and simplify existing programs. (JF)

Proposes an indirect approach to describing educational planning in the United States by comparing it with that of Pakistan, whose centralized government has a systematic planning program. (JF)

Discusses what State education agencies can do to achieve their own objectives with federally funded programs. (JF)

Discusses the contrast between the clear legal mandate for State boards of education to determine education for the State on the one hand, and their peculiarly ill-defined and tenuous role in the State policy system on the other. (JF)

A position paper that looks at educational accountability from the viewpoint of the historian, the anthropologist, the political scientist, and the sociologist. The author is not optimistic about the future of accountability as a functional output nor as a process to improve education. (JF)