Empirical Researches on School Governance and Responsibility in the United States since 1990s

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This research project based on the empirical researches has aimed at comparing the school reforms in Japan with those in the United States of America. As the hypothesis of our research, we set up three types of them. The first one is participatory reform with internal responsibility, and the second is market- oriented reform with external responsibility/accountability. In conclusion, we clarified that the mainstream of the Japan's reforms since 1990s would belong to the third type which is participatory reform with accountability. To speak about it concretely, we enacted to set up a school councilor (Gakko-Hyogiin) in 2001 who might advise a principal on school management, and then we established school management council (Gakko-Unei-Kyogikai) in 2004 which should make an advisory and/or governing function.We have described a landscape of the school reforms in the United States. The Chicago school reform may be regarded as the first type of school reform, and educational voucher and charter school are two of the second one. By the way, it is interesting to us that the Chicago reform has been transformed the first type into the third one. We also find out the importance of social capital, especially of trust inside its reform. As for educational voucher, we have researched the Cleveland case, and reconsidered both the separation of church and state and the inequality of schooling. Finally, we have published two reports as our results : the interim report published in 2004 and the final one in 2005.