SPAEF: Public Administration & Management: An Interactive Journal -- Table of Contents

Table of Contents

2004

Alexander W. Wiseman, Editor

Preface to the Symposium: "The Management of Schools as Public Organizations"
Alexander W. Wiseman, Editor

Educational Governance and the New Public Management
Lance D. Fusarelli and Bonnie Johnson
Despite the long-held view that schools are loosely coupled organizations, recent outcomes-based accountability and school choice reforms, exemplified by the No Child Left Behind Act, represent an attempt by federal and state policymakers to employ techniques of the "New Public Management" and to impose more tightly coupled policy strictures on the educational system. The authors explore the origins of this movement and locate it within the context of an emergent neo-corporatist ideology that has fundamentally altered the traditional distinction between the public and private spheres. The authors conclude with a discussion of the impact of the NPM on educational governance and policy.

Managing from the Inside Out: Debating Site-based Management in Public Schools
David S. Brown
Historically, public schools have been run by an administration that made all the decisions about how education should occur. Increasingly, however, teachers are taking more active roles in decision-making at their public schools. This is often under the aegis of 'site-based management.' One important factor in site-based management is that teachers' and administrators' thoughts and beliefs related to public school management often differ significantly. This difference can cause internal power struggles between teachers and administrators. The purpose of this study was two-fold. First, this study investigated the hypothesis that attitudes towards site-based management are consistent with teacher or administrator status in public schools. And secondly, the local data was compared to national data to determine if similar discrepancies occur throughout the country. The results confirmed the hypotheses that teachers and administrators hold different opinions towards their site-based management and that this difference in opinion is influenced by the public context in which schooling occurs.

Decentralization and Educational Reform: What Accounts for a Decoupling Between Policy Purpose and Practice? Evidence from Buenos Aires, Argentina
M. Fernanda Astiz
This study provides empirical evidence of the implementation outcomes of decentralization and education reform policies conducted in Argentina during the 1990s. The study examines how the reform was adopted at the provincial level, to what extent policy implementation matches national official mandates, and what role organizational factors play in the processes of policy implementation and outcomes. Results shed light on the political roots of organizational adaptation that motives a decoupling between policy directives, implementation, and outcomes.

Management of Semi-Public Organizations in Complex Environments
Alexander W. Wiseman
Management activities in schools are unique compared to those of managers in other public organizations because of the character of schools as public service as well as publicly-funded organizations where high degrees of organizational autonomy and external penetration are both expected and required. There are rich discussions of various relationships between managerial activity and organizational context. And, while these discussions are not unique to the educational literature, special attention has been given to the association of managerial activities with organizational outputs of schools. There has, however, not been much attention to the effect the semi-public nature of schools has on school management In keeping with the theme of this symposium issue of Public Administration and Management: An Interactive Journal, this paper addresses school management and the nature or influence of the public context on management activities in schools.

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