Luvern L. Cunningham

National commission for the advancement of educational leadership: Opportunity for transformation

random events but as concrete, continuous, connected experiences over extended periods of time. An interdisciplinary approach characterizes the work, drawing on such fields as social work, mass communication, systems thinking, learning theory, public administration, family studies, and early childhood education. Leading thinkers in these arenas have come to the table with the school administrators to draw out the implications of their work for schools. Through the learning community of the forum, the superintendents have generated a powerful knowledge base to inform their school reform efforts. They frequently comment that no other venue—university or professional associations—provides this deep sustained learning experience. 292 Educational Administration Quarterly

Toward Greater Relevance in Preparation Programs for Urban School Administrators

The authors review the bases for present preparation programs for school administrators and note that these programs frequently lack relevance to the behaviors required of urban practitioners. They set forth some proposals for moving in these directions, suggesting that greater cooperation with school systems and modifications in traditional university offerings are in order.

Interprofessional policy analysis: An aid to public policy formation

Interprofessional policy analysis is a new concept in the annals of policy development. It responds to a growing need among legislators at all levels for information about exceptionally difficult problems confronting the human community. The disease AIDS, for example, is devastating to the persons who acquire it, the families involved, and the work places and institutions it touches. AIDS has evoked medical uncertainties, moral and social issues, legal questions, educational policy debates, and religious controversies that fall heavily at the doorstep of the professions. Professions tend, over time, to develop intraprofessional perspectives in regard to the problems AIDS has created. But seldom, if ever, do we structure ways professions can address a complicated issue interprofessionally. Interprofessional policy analysis is designed to bring the knowledge and insights of individual professions into play in the review of problems such as those AIDS produces. Leaders from the human services professions join in intensive discussion, over extended periods of time, probing the dimensions of a problem, leading eventually to a written statement which clarifies potential policy directions for society.

Interprofessional education and practice: A future agenda

The factors that fostered the birth of interprofessional practice and are nurturing its early adolescence hold promise of encouraging a vibrant maturity. As several of the authors in this issue have postulated, tomorrows culture will see the continuing explosion of professional knowledge, increasing specialization, a growing desire and necessity for treating clients as whole persons, and, in general, a more complex society in which all aspects of life become increasingly interrelated. This future need not be frightening. In fact, the soon-to-be-in-place web of interprofessional communication and concerted action will result in the

Applying Lasswell's Concepts in Field Situations: Diagnostic and Prescriptive Values

1’ or a quarter century or more, the social sciences have been incorporated in one way or another into the preparation programs of school administrators. It has been assumed that knowledge drawn from the social sciences enhances the performance of administrators and provides bases for important research in the field. Such assumptions essentially remain untested although they are debated on occasion.’ What follows is an autobiographical report on the application of the work of Harold D. Lasswell to problem solving, planning, research, instruction, and human resource development.2 It is offered as an example, not to be emulated necessarily, but to encourage others to prepare accounts of knowledge utilization important to them. Such summaries may lead to improved understandings of how the incorporation of concepts drawn from the social sciences contributes to the development of the field of educational administration.

Collective negotiations and the principalship

Students of organizations know that the descriptive value of an organizational chart is limited. The flow of power and control within a school system is often a result of informal associations rather than the product of strict definitions of formal line and staff relationships. Such charts often have limited value. They depict control, or what we might better call authority, only in legal or formal terms. There are actually several authority structures in a school system-the formal and legal delegation of authority to an office by reason of its placement in the organization; the informal and extra-legal delegation of power and control to an individual above and beyond the formal limitations of his office; and the collegial or professional authority structure, which will be discussed later in this presentation. Officers at the top of the formal organization have more legal authority than those who follow, consider, for example, the broad discretionary powers granted a board of education or superintendent. In contrast to such formal or legal authority, there is that wondrous phenomenon where individuals such as the school custodian wield power far out of proportion to his formal office. If one has any doubts about this comment, he need only read Willard Wallers Sociology

Court ordered monitoring of school desegregation

Luvern L. Cunningham Novice G. Fawcett Professor of Educational Administration Faculty of Educational Administration The Ohio State University Lila N. Carol Director, Coalition of Religious Congregations Columbus, Ohio Sentiments ebb and flow about school desegregation. Few, if any, public policy matters arouse people as much. How, in the face of such opposition, can rights be preserved, the Constitution obeyed? How in a school situation, where the prevailing feelings seem stacked strongly against a court order to desegregate, can the order be enforced? And to what end? Such questions have led federal district courts to establish citizen monitoring committees. There ought to be embedded somewhere in this emerging practice, an elegant theory, an enlightened belief of some sort. And maybe there is. Oversight, auditing, and monitoring are popular terms these days.1 But in school desegregation it seems that the courts simply need help. They need help from citizens whom the court can trust, citizens who will insure that the will of the Court be done, and responsibly so. The court is not an administrative body, at least in most instances. The ordinary tools of the court for enforcement are not enough in school desegregation cases. Police departments can assist with safety matters. Mayors can issue reassuring statements. Truant officers can make sure that children attend school. That is not sufficient. There has to be more. This article is a review and analysis of this most unique new form of citizen involvement in education: court ordered citizens monitoring committees. These new instrumentalities have emerged within the last several years and stand as an example of a new form of participation in local school district policy making and governance. Recent school desegregation cases, those of the past dozen years, have produced concerns on the part of the courts about the role and responsibility of school boards and administrators in the implementation of school desegregation court orders. Thousands of citizen groups have been working in the interest of public and private education in the last half century. The earliest citizens groups actually began at the start of public education in the United States, especially in the urban area. They are hardly a new phenomenon. But the court ordered monitoring mechanism is of recent vintage. In fact, the existence of such bodies is not very well known nor is there any serious evaluation of their contribution to the governance and management of educational institutions. On May 31-June 1, 1977, the Community Relations Service of the United States Department of Justice2 and the College of Education at The Ohio State University sponsored jointly a national conference on court ordered monitoring committees. It was the first meeting of its kind ever held. The conference was attended by members of monitoring committees, superintendents, school board members and other

Educational Reform and the Principal.

A well-known college of education dean, Luvern Cunningham took last year off to think through some of the unprecedented problems that face U.S. public education. This article summarizes some of his conclusions. Already on record as questioning the value of universal compulsory education, Cunningham here ana lyzes several other controversial proposals for education reform, including the voucher ex periment planned for 1971 by the federal Office of Economic Opportunity. Although this article is nearly twice as long as the usual BULLETIN piece, the editors chose to publish Cunninghams paper in full because it represents the considered judgment of a respected establishment figure who now believes that we are at a watershed where public educa tion must change or die.