The Role of Local Boards of education in Education Reform

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Central Council for Education (Chuou Kyouiku Singikai) urged local boards of education to attack three kinds.of reform problems, that is, (1) revitalization of its organization and management, (2) building partnership between boards of education and schools, (3) improvement in local community's educational function. To make it clear how and in what degree local boards of education are engaged in such reforms, nation-wide survey research was done , asking related questions of 500 municipal boards of education selected from 16 prefectures. 274 municipal boards of education returned questionnaires.Major research results are follows. There are many variations among boards of eductionconcerning the progress of education reform as a whole. The variations are related both to the characteristics of local community where boards of education are located and to the characteristics of school superintendents. As for community characteristics relevant to reform efforts, the size of population is significantly related to the degree of the progress of education reform. The larger the community where school board's are located, the more reforms they are engaged in. As for characteristics of school superintendents, it is made clear that high degree.of the progress of reform is significantly related to (1) those superintendents who are endowed both with political-administrative skills and with educational expertise , (2) those superintendents who have strong attitudes toward educational problems in their community as welt as build close relations with mayors, and (3) those superintendents who frequently interact with their constituents and actively work mayors and members of local congress to cooperate for community's schools and education.