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This article examines the effect of external political pressure on the distribution of influence in school districts. It is specifically concerned with the influence exercised by school-level administrators and teachers on school-level policy. School districts are viewed as institutional organizations. However, differences across school districts in influence patterns cannot be easily explained with standard institutional theories that stress common patterns of structure across organizations. A theory of local variation across institutional organizations, relating external political pressure and centralization, is developed and assessed empirically using data from High School and Beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the administrative costs and administrative behavior associated with categorical programs in the U.S. It attempts to understand some of the effects of regulatory policies on the way school districts are managed. The particular class of regulations of interest are those associated with categorical funding. This type of funding is regulated in two senses: it is awarded to districts only for specific purposes; and it is clearly intended to supplement and not supplant local resources. It discusses ways to assess administrative costs associated with categorical programs and the general methodological approach of the study and provides a description of the district and the administrators who were the subjects of study and the types of data that were collected. There are significant hidden costs associated with the administration of categorical programs and that these are borne by the local district. Furthermore, the results suggest that regulations tend to divert the attention of local managers away from educational concerns to funding concerns. However, they also suggest that local educational managers may view regulations as opportunities rather than as constraints.

This study investigates the effect of task uncertainty on the initiating and search behavior of managers. Competing theoretical arguments are assessed empirically using data collected by sampling randomly the work activities of 50 managers. The findings show that different arguments hold for upper level managers than hold for lower level managers, suggesting that explanations for managerial behavior solely in terms of manager-task interaction or solely in terms of hierarchic position will be incomplete or misleading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing consensus that the curriculum as taught in schools is ‘out of balance’. Emphasis on basic skills outweighs to a far greater extent than appropriate the emphasis on problem solving and higher order skills. Drawing on ideas about the effects of specialization from behavioral decision theory and on recent work in the economics of organization, this article proposes structural changes in the teaching job to address this problem. The possible limitations as well as advantages of the proposal are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]