Liane Brouillette is Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership and Cultural Studies at the University of Houston.

• List of Tables Acknowledgments Preface 1. Introduction 2. Now...and Then: A Change in Perspective 3. Back When All This Was Farmland: The Administration of Ed Larimer, 1953-1972 4. Management and Learning by Objectives: The Administration of Bill Davis, 1972-1982 5. Negotiating the Process of Reform: The Administration of Dave Roberts 6. Implementing the New Curriculum Framework: The Dynamics of Change 7. Differing Paths Taken under Site-Based Management: The Cottonwood High Schools 8. Shared Decision-Making at the District Level: Limitations Inherent in the Social Context 9. Differing Perspectives on the Purpose of Schooling Bibliography Index

"As more and more states and school districts race to restructure, less and less thought is being given to what might best fit in specific contexts. This book has so much in it that conveys the deepness of the contexts of schools and the inappropriateness of fast solutions." — H. Dickson Corbett, Independent Educational Researcher"By using a multi-level perspective, this book avoids a common current problem—treating school reform in a vacuum. It provides an empirical investigation of how school reform is affected by the nested quality of schools in districts and societal contexts."The finding that site-based decision making was valuable in this district context does not remove the fact that schools, classrooms, and the larger district are vulnerable to larger societal pressures. While this does not seem—on the surface—to be particularly profound, it is an important insight in an age when schools are treated as isolated entities." — Gary M. Crow, Louisiana State University