Urban Education: Eight Experiments in Community Control; Report to Office of Economic Opportunity.

This document reports on Phase II of a major project designed to study how school systems respond to the educational needs of the socially and economically disadvantaged. The report presents the Local Community Control model as the most effective means to change the school board's typical non responsiveness to the needs of the educationally disadvantaged. In so doing, this paper reviews eight schools boards which have incorporated community control into their structure; three in New York City, three in Washington, one in Boston, and one in Chicago. The positions papers that result from this review are guided by the following four questions: 1) How did the community school board come to be? 2) What are its goals? 3) Is the board representative? 4) Is the board's policy making private or public? A striking observation that emerges while considering each board's effectiveness, is that staff personality is an important factor. Accomplishments vary from board to board and are generally modest. For instance, all boards reviewed have increased community participation but have failed to reach the masses of parents, except on specific volatile issues. The most significant accomplishment characteristic of all boards is that they have allowed community members to become politically and socially effective in the face of overwhelming odds and limited power. (Author/AM)