Large City School Research Articles

The Relationship of School Size and Rate of School Plant Utilization to Cost Variations of Maintenance and Operation

The effects of school size and school plant utilization on pupil costs of maintenance and operation (M & O) in a large city school system in the South were investigated. School size is significantly and negatively related to pupil costs of M & O. Utilization rate has a similar and stronger cost impact.

The Epidemic of School Violence

According to George Gallup's 1977 Phi Delta Kappan research poll, for the last six years the number one problem facing the public schools has been discipline. Consistently, parents, teachers, and administrators have perceived the increasing difficulty in promoting adequate discipline in the classrooms, halls, and playgrounds. A corollary to this problem is violence and vandalism. All large-city school systems (those with 500,000 community populations) are facing the growing problem of violence and vandalism.

Politics of Program Evaluation in Large City School Districts

Politics of Program Evaluation in Large City School Districts

Criterion-Referenced Reading Assessment in a Large City School District

The test-development process used to develop criterion-referenced tests in reading for a large-city school district's system-wide testing program is described. Two types of instruments were developed: (a) a measure of students' ability to read textbooks at their assigned grade levels and (b) tests of enabling skills emphasized in the basal reading program. Item construction and selection techniques are described as well as the strategy underlying the use of the two types of tests. The paper is especially relevant to situations where criterion-referenced testing is applied outside the context of instructional development models.

The Impact of the Courts on the Financing of Public Schools in Large Cities

The Impact of the Courts on the Financing of Public Schools in Large Cities

Open Enrollment and Fiscal Incentives

In the 1960s many large-city school systems adopted policies permitting students to transfer from their neighborhood schools to others they found more desirable, if the second school was not overcrowded. The adoption of these open-enrollment plans was motivated in part by the desire to eliminate racial segregation in the schools resulting from residential segregation and in part to allow students with special educational needs and interests to take advantage of specialized curricula offered only in certain schools.' While these programs did accomplish the second goal, they did not much alter patterns of segregation. Apparently, an effort that relies on voluntary integration little hope of success. In a 1973 survey of techniques used by urban schools, G. Foster concluded that open enrollment has never accounted for a significant amount of desegregation (1973). There been general skepticism among policymakers about the potential for accomplishing by voluntary means. Before there was even much evidence to indicate what its impact might be and before any efforts were made to significantly influence voluntary actions, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights expressed its skepticism in a delineation of six major limitations of such plans (U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 1967). Yet the policy of open enrollment as a means to desegregate the schools still offers a handsome alternative to mandatory busing, which stirred such intense controversy and perhaps even increased racial tension; and its potential needs to be explored further. What mainly needs to be explored is whether some incentive program that heightens the attractiveness of a transfer plan can accomplish what not been accomplished by simply offering the option to transfer. In particular, it seems urgent to examine how selected fiscal incentives for open enrollment might help to achieve greater racial and socioeconomic integration.

Meet the Rechargeable Humanoid Mark III Electric Teacher

and the practical, little of this and little of that. Let me expand my thoughts on these three ideas. Teaching is helping another to develop and to learn. In the past ten years, there has been flood of writing on what teaching is, and what it is not, and what it should be. One can read fiction and nonfiction about teachers in an English boarding school (3), in an infant school in New Zealand (4, 5), in one-room school in Appalachia (6), and in ghetto schools in America's large cities (7-9). One of my earliest impressions of what teacher should be-all things to all children-is described in the short story Sing the Body Electric by Ray Bradbury. family in which the mother has died decides to buy robot to help rear the children. The mechanical perfection I sought at the beginning of my teaching experience is expressed in description of the robot who was to mother the children: ... for you who have worried over inattentive sitters, nurses who cannot be trusted with marked liquor bottles, and well-meaning Uncles and Aunts ... we have perfected the first humanoid-genre minicircuited, rechargeable AC-DC Mark V Electrical Grandmother. .... The Toy that is more than Toy, the Fantoccini Electrical Grandmother is built with loving precision to give the incredible precision of love to your children. The child at ease with the realities of the world and the even greater realities of the imagination is her aim. She is computerized to tutor in twelve languages simultaneously, capable of switching tongues in thousandth of second without pause, and has complete knowledge of the religious, artistic, and socio-political histories of the world seeded in her master hive. ... Above all, ... this human being, for human she seems, this embodiment in electro-intelligent facsimile of the humanities, will listen, know, tell, react, and love your children insofar as such great Objects, such fantastic Toys, can be said to Love, or can be imagined to Care. This Miraculous Companion, excited to the challenge of large world and small, inner Sea or Outer Universe, will transmit by touch and tell, said Miracles to your Needy [10: 155]. Many of the books I read at that time reinforced the description. Having given up, at least on conscious level, this view of teaching as being humanly impossible, I find it easier to appreciate simpler definitions. I especially like the one in The Rasberry Exercises: How To Start Your Own School and Make Book (11). The book offers collection of ideas and suggestions for one's own free school. Here is one definition of teacher from that book: A teacher is who accepts you completely as you are while still being model of more skilled, more conscious, more aware, and more living person (11: 18). Here is another definition-a less personalized description: teacher is a who, or situation which, helps another learn something more quickly and easily than he could by himself (12: 16). Note that the emphasis here is on the learner's learning rather than on the teacher's teaching. This idea surfaces basic assumption of mine. teacher sets the design of an educational environment, but at some point responsibility for learning must pass from teacher to pupil. Sometimes this shift of responsibility is frustrating to the teacher, who feels guilty about ab-

Codifying Student Rights and Responsibilities

Many states and large city school districts have de veloped codes outlining student rights and responsi bilities in an all-out effort to avoid legal entanglements. This article explains the assumptions and definitions upon which standards have been established.

Educational Policy-Making: Implications for Urban Schools

Educational policy-making is a very complicated process in large city school systems. The first complication stems from the fact that there are so many sources of influence. There are multiple special interest groups competing for influence. Business, labor, political, ethnic and racial groups all seek to make their objectives and goals the guiding force behind educational policies. In addition, there is always a professional bureaucracy responsible for administering the system. The professional bureaucracy can be expected to have a strong voice in policy-making, either overtly through a strong superintendent or covertly through control of information and subtle sabotage of official policies. We all know the importance of money in the educational process. Since local school districts must increasingly depend upon state and federal monies for day-to-day operating funds as well as funds for most innovative programs, federal and state agencies exert considerable control over educational policy-making, nationally, regionally, and locally. There are so many levels of decision-making, so many sources of influence, that it is frequently all but impossible to determine how a policy was initiated, by whom it was initiated, or what constituency it was designed to serve. To further complicate matters, the various policy-makers, their clients (the pupils and their parents), and the general public very likely have markedly different conceptions of what policies are appropriate for a given purpose. For example, if we take as a point of departure the position that the goal of educational policy for inner-city schools should be to provide pupils with education that is excellent in quality and available to all, we are immediately confronted with the need for definitions; we must define both excellence and quality as well as what we mean by available to all. For some civil rights groups, these are all translated into a demand for racial integration of schools; for

Contemporary Suburban Schools: The Needy?

At the conclusions of his recent study of urban school finances, Seymour Sacks states: No set of findings concerning large city school finances today can be fully appreciated without a recognition of the long term decline of large city school systems from a position of leadership and prestige-measured in financial and educational terms-to one in which they are clearly subordinate in both dimensions to their suburban schools [18, 168]. We will argue that the conclusion of financial subordination is contradicted by data that we will present for 14 Ohio Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas (SMSAs) and for that reason this conclusion should be suspect in other areas of the United States as well. The doubts raised by our findings extend to the conventional explanations of the dynamics of suburban school growth and raise nettlesome questions for policy makers facing the task of redesigning school finance systems challenged in the courts [17; 20]. We will develop in outline form the currently accepted views of center city-suburban fiscal relationships in Section II of this paper. Particular attention will be paid to the dynamic inferences drawn from cross-sectional studies of school expenditures and ancillary theses regarding tax base behavior and interschool district migration. After summarizing these views, we will present our analysis of 1971 school expenditures and taxes for 14 Ohio SMSAs in Section III. The scope of our study will be compared with earlier works and the results contrasted. New tentative hypotheses and the implications of our results for policy makers will be presented in Section IV.

Cyclical Renewal in a Large City School District-Decentralization and the Policy Process

Decentralization of the New York City school system did not start in 1966 with the controversy over the demonstration districts in Harlem, Oceanhill- Brownsville and Two Bridges. The immediate controversy began in 1961 with "A Plan for the Revitalization of Local School Boards," and can be traced to disenchantment with centralized bureaucracy, which had its roots in the consoli dation of New York City at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Teacher Mobility and Allocation

Abstract : The paper presents results from an examination of teacher flows within a large city school system. The focus is primarily on the mobility of teachers among schools within the system, the movement of teachers into and out of the system, and the effect of these flows on the allocation of teachers among different types of schools. The data cover the movement of teachers in San Diego between the 1970-71 and 1971-72 school years. However, the theoretical framework used and many of the empirical results should be directly relevant to school personnel systems in large cities throughout the United States.

A Humanistic Program for Change in a Large City School System

A Humanistic Program for Change in a Large City School System

Budget decision making in large public school systems

This paper reviews and discusses results of a study of the budget process in fourteen large city school districts. Topics covered include incremental decision making, the use of “ratios” and “norms” in school budgeting, public participation in budgeting, relevant structural arrangements of local government, and the influence of boards of education on the allocation of resources. Finally, implications for the improvement of school management practices in large school districts are discussed.

The Impact of Metropolitanism on Central City Education

Among the many forces affecting the quality of education in large city school systems is the interaction of the school systems with their suburban counter-parts. This paper analyzes the determinants of school expenditures in large cities with special emphasis on the relationship between city and suburban school expenditures.

In Common Cause

Don't over-generalize from the headlines: There still are large-city schools in which teachers speak cordially to principals and all work together for the well-being of the school and its students, contractual constraints notwithstanding.

Input and Output in Large-City Schools

Input and Output in Large-City Schools

In-Service Education in Mathematics: Secondary In-Service Education Program in Bergen County, New Jersey

If Large city or county school systems have unique problems with in-service training in mathematics at the secondary level, at least the search for their solutions can be relatively self-contained and self-determined. The problems facing smaller communities are no less serious, although they differ in size and scope. It is this difference in size which frequently places any consideration of local solution beyond the limited resources of individual school systems. Clearly, the problem of in-service education for all teachers in large or small districts is and will continue to be a matter of great concern to all in mathematics education.

Some Issues Confronting School Administrators in Large City School Systems

Some Issues Confronting School Administrators in Large City School Systems

The Financial Characteristics and Problems of Large City School Districts'

This article reports findings in the latest of a series of investigations at Stanford University under the direction of H. Thomas James focusing upon the financing of American public education. This particular study sought to determine what impact variables representative of key governmental arrangements have upon school expenditures in large cities. From the data collected, the author concludes that govern mental considerations have a minimal effect on expenditures, the pri mary determinants being ability to pay for education and demand for education. Mr. Garms is administrative officer of the Stanford Center for Research and Development in Teaching.