SBM & Public School Reform

Political leaders, school administrators, business leaders, and parents are very vocal about their concern for the quality of the public school education that today's students are receiving, which has given rise to a mind-boggling list of ideas intended to reform our schools. The list includes such concepts as mandating smaller classroom sizes, creating social work links, offering diversity training, initiating small-group learning, staffing mall-schools, generating a menu of elective classes and seminars, devising charter schools, providing on-campus psychotherapy, partnering with business for school-to-work programs, teaching critical thinking skills (a.k.a. higher order thinking), legislating school vouchers, and, of particular interest over the last decade, a bottom-to-top reorganization of management, often referred to as school-based management (SBM).

School-based management (SBM) is a "strategy to improve education by transferring significant decision-making authority from state and district offices to individual schools" (Myers & Stonehill, 1993, p. 1). The traditional participants in the educational process, specifically, principals, teachers, students and parents, are given "greater control over the education process by giving them responsibility for decisions about the budget, personnel, and the curriculum" (Myers & Stonehill, 1993, p. 1).

SBM, with its idealistic implications for locally-created curriculum (

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hools that are changing to SBM are advised to ascertain that there is a firm and long-term "commitment to SBM at the state, district and school levels from the outset; seek out a qualified SBM consultant; be willing to accept that during the transition mistakes will be made; and reward stakeholders for performance" (Oswald, 1995, p. 3). Supporters of SBM argue that it provides better programs for students "because resources will be available to directly match student needsàSBM ensures higher quality decisions because they are made by groups instead of individualsàit increases communication among the stakeholders" (Oswald, 1995, p. 1). An impressive array of professional organizations have weighed in on the issue of SBM, among them the American Association of School Administrators, the National Association of Elementary School Principals, and the National Association of Secondary School Principals. They maintain, in the Education Research Consumer Guide dated January 1993, that school-based management can: Allow competent individuals in the schools to make decisions that will improve learning; Give the entire school community a voice in key decisions; Focus accountability for decisions; Lead to greater creativity in the
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Approximate Word count = 5180
Approximate Pages = 21 (250 words per page)

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