Public schools are often faced, when engaged in the task of developing annual goals, with the necessity of soliciting public input. To gather reliable input from the school community has been haphazard and uneven. Consolidated High School District 230 (Palos Hills, Illinois) employed the Public Opinion Laboratory, a professional survey firm, to…

A 3-year study of decentralization of Alaska schools identified several factors that influenced whether a school was locally controlled and found patterns of control associated in important ways with staff and community attitudes toward school. Information was gathered by surveys and interviews conducted in 28 communities randomly selected to…

AEL works with state educational entities to help schools become higher-performing learning communities. AEL's current partnership with Lincoln County (West Virginia) began about 6 months after the state board of education assumed administrative control of the county school system, citing major deficiencies in the system. AEL provided facilitative…