School Board Research: The Problems and the Prospects

Educational researchers examining school boards and school governance have commited some conceptual errors in the past. For example, to judge school boards according to traditional political concepts of responsiveness and representativeness is to ignore the insular nature of most boards of education, as well as to fail to take into account the at least partially successful attempts of the reformers to remove the schools from the influence of "politics." Systems theory has been applied to educational management with little substantive results, since systems theory offers no propositions that can be empirically tested. Although educational governance did not in the past receive the kind of attention it deserved from researchers, this area is a fruitful area of investigation, especially as the demands of technology increasingly strain the traditional notions of democratic governance in education. The author proposes directions for future research, concluding that the relation between decision-making styles and policy output in education is a legitimate, necessary area of investigation. (DS)