Using a case study approach, this investigation focused on the decision-making processes involved in developing budgets in two Texas school districts following a tax limitation, or rollback, election. Factors influencing the decision-making processes included the rollback election's outcome in each district, the participants, the perceptions participants held of themselves, the perceptions participants held of others in the district and community, the decisions made, and the factors influencing participants' decisions. Two Texas school districts were selected as subjects of this study which used qualitative data collection methods. In one school district, the rollback election passed. In the other, it failed. Data collection included observations of school board meetings and budget workshops. Structured interviews of school board members and administrators, pro- and antirollback proponents, and newspaper editors were conducted. Questions focused on the budgetary decision-making processes before and after the rollback elections. They also solicited information fromsubjects regarding rollback elections, the factors precipitating the rollback elections and the impact of the rollback election campaign upon each school district. Document analyses were triangulated with the observations and interviews to identify the factors influencing the budgetary decision-making process. Following the rollback elections, school officials in both districts adopted a conservative approach to budgetary decision-making. …

The purpose of this study was to determine the interrater reliability of the Texas Teacher Appraisal System instrument. The performance indicators, criteria, domains, and total instrument were analyzed for inter rater reliability. Five videotaped teaching episodes were viewed and scored by 557 to 881 school administrators trained to utilize the Texas Teacher Appraisal System. The fifty-five performance indicators were analyzed for simple percentage of agreement. The ten criteria, four performance domains, and) the whole instrument were analyzed utilizing Ruder-Richardson Formula 20. Indicators were judged reliable if there was 75 percent or greater agreement on four of the five videotaped exercises. Criteria, domains, and the whole instrument were judged reliable if they yielded a -Ruder-Richardson Formula 20 score of .75 or greater on four of the Based on the findings of this study, the following conclusions v/ere drawn: 1. Forty-eight of the fifty-five performance indicators were reliable in evaluation teacher performance. 2. Seven of the performance indicators were unreliable in evaluating teacher performance. 3. None of the ten performance criteria appeared to be reliable in evaluating teacher performance. 4. None of the four performance domains appeared to be reliable in evaluating teacher performance. 5. The whole instrument was reliable in evaluating …

The purposes of this study were to determine (a) what teacher evaluation processes or instruments are used in the 45 independent schools of the Southwest, (b) what types of professional development activities or programs are provided for teachers in these schools, and (c) how the development and implementation of the teacher evaluation process and professional development programs are perceived by the teaching faculty in selected schools. Questionnaires were administered to chief administrators of the 45 member schools of the Independent Schools Association of the Southwest. From the 28 schools submitting completed questionnaires and evaluation instruments, it was found that: (a) 3 of the schools had a very informal process, (b) 7 of the schools had an informal process, (c) 12 of the schools had a formal process, and (d) 6 of the schools had a very formal process. Four generalizations emerged from factors evident at the 5 schools selected for on-site visitations which should be addressed by independent schools regardless of the type of evaluation process used: (a) each school should develop a teacher evaluation policy; (b) each school should develop evaluation criteria and procedures that relate to each teacher's classification; (c) each school should delineate the specific role of …

The purpose of this study was to determine if there are personal and demographic characteristics which can predict the most accurate teacher appraisers. The demographics were limited to the following: campus-level job assignment, employing district size, sex, race, number of years of experience as an administrator, previous level of teaching experience, and curriculum area taught by the appraiser. The 622 subjects were school administrators trained to utilize the Texas Teacher Appraisal System. The data were analyzed using multiple linear regression. Where an independent variable was significant (.05), a follow-up ANOVA and Tukey's multiple comparison were employed. Based on the findings of this study the following conclusions were drawn: 1. A summary data set indicated there was little evidence that any of the demographic variables was a significant predictor of accuracy in the evaluation process. 2. Six different data sets indicated that varying instructional settings and methodologies can influence evaluator accuracy. The campus assignment, years of experience, content area taught, race, and sex of the appraisers were all identified in at least one of the exercise sets as having significance. Except for sex and race, none of the variables was found to be significant when the overall prediction equation with all …

The problem of this study was to determine the perceived impact of the Texas Career Ladder Plan upon the motivational levels of teachers. The purposes were to determine: the impact of the Texas Career Ladder Plan as an incentive for improved job performance; the strengths and weaknesses of the current Texas Career Ladder Plan; the types of incentives that teachers believe would motivate them to perform better; and the suggestions that teachers have to modify the current Texas Career Ladder Plan. An opinionnaire was developed to obtain data pertinent to the perceived impact of the Texas Career Ladder Plan in providing incentives for improved job performance. A random sample of 500 elementary school teachers and 500 secondary school teachers was selected from the personnel rosters of the participating schools. Data from 92 percent of the subjects sampled was achieved. A descriptive analysis was used to interpret data collected in this study. The findings indicated that the Texas Career Ladder Plan has had no impact or a perceived negative impact upon the motivational levels of teachers as indicated by 14 of the opinionnaire items surveyed. There was a perceived positive impact upon the motivational levels of teachers as indicated by eight …

The problem of the study was to ascertain the perceptions of high school personnel and students regarding the effectiveness and implementation of the educational reforms and the No-Pass, No-Play section in Texas House Bill 72 and compare them to changes in reported student academic performances. Questionnaires were mailed to a stratified random sample of fifteen high schools in Texas. Six persons were asked to respond at each school. The sample consisted of ninety participants. In addition, each school provided forty student grade profiles, twenty from 1984 and twenty from 1986. The instrument, "Questionnaire on Texas Educational Reform Legislation, Extracurricular Activities and No-Pass, No-Play," had eighteen questions. Questions one and two provided demographic data for the study. Questions three through eighteen assessed the perceptions of high school personnel and students regarding educational reforms and the "No-Pass, No-Play" rules. Hypotheses one through four used chi-square Tests of Independence to determine the significance among variables. Hypothesis five used a t value to measure the comparison of the grade-point averages from 1984 and 1986. Hypothesis six compared the result of hypothesis five and a z value generated from a comparison of a percentage of participant responses and the neutral value. The findings were that …

This study identified and compared the perceptions of department chairpersons and their principals about what responsibilities should be assigned to chairpersons, what responsibilities are currently assigned to chairpersons, and the chairperson' perceived need for any additional training, administrative support, departmental support, or released time in order to fulfill responsibilities currently assigned. Principals and chairpersons from 132 of the 264 5-A public high schools in Texas were surveyed by means of a 61- item questionnaire. The questionnaire included responsibilities in ten areas: planning, evaluation, budgeting, personnel, curriculum and instruction, communications, scheduling, clerical activities, supervision, and advising. Chairpersons from English, Foreign Languages, Mathematics, Physical Education, Science, and Social Studies were included in the study. Data collected in the study were keypunched and computer-processed, generating frequencies, percentages, means, and appropriate chi-square tests of independence, and probability factors for determining significance. The following conclusions were drawn from the study. 1. There is substantial agreement between Texas principals and chairpersons about responsibilities that should and should not be assigned to chairpersons in the areas of planning, budgeting, communications, and advising. 2. There is moderate to substantial disagreement . between Texas principals and chairpersons about responsibilities that should and should not be assigned in the areas …

The problem with which this investigation is concerned is that of identifying and assessing degrees of influence of environmental conditions and actors which influenced the passage of House Bill 72 by the Texas legislature. The two methods used to collect this data were personal interviews of key actors in the legislative process and a questionnaire administered to all members of the 68th Texas legislature.

This study investigated the effects of selected spelling teaching methods on spelling mastery of upper-elementary, learning disabled students. It also examined the value of assessing learning disabled students' modality preferences for diagnostic/prescriptive purposes.The study's significance is that it sought to (a) determine whether students classified as learning disabled can identify their preferred learning modes; (b) determine whether matching modes of instruction to students' modality reference(s) results in greater achievement; and (c) identify a systematic way of prescribing instruction for learning disabled students.

This study was conducted to gauge the perceptions of various groups regarding the elementary principal1s role in the public schools. The hypotheses for the study were the following. 1. There will be no significant difference between the role perception ratings given by the elementary school principal and the business representative regarding their perception of the role of the elementary principal. 2. There will be no significant difference between the role perception ratings given by elementary principals and public school board members regarding their perception of the role of the elementary principal. 3. There will be no significant difference between the role perception ratings given by business representatives and public school board members regarding their perception of the role of the elementary principal. 4. There will be no significant difference between the role perception ratings of elementary principals, business representatives, and public school board members regarding their perception of the role of the elementary principal relative to the age of the respondent, the sex of the respondent, number of years in present position, number of years residing in district, and educational level of the respondent. 5. There will be no significant difference among the role perception ratings of elementary principals regarding …

This study examines the extent of agreement or disagreement among and between Texas superintendents, principals and athletic directors toward fifty specifically defined role expectations for the full-time athletic administrator. By defining the athletic director's role expectations, the superintendents, principals and athletic directors may function more effectively in discharging their duties and implementing quality interscholastic athletic programs. Parents and educational leaders are very interested in athletic programs which contribute to the emotional, social, physical, and mental growth of youth. Given the increasing number of athletic programs and participants, it is important to analyze and report data related to athletic administration. The perceptions of the superintendents, principals, and athletic directors to the specifically defined role expectations for the athletic director provided data for analysis to determine the extent of role conflict and the role of the athletic director. The main findings are the following. (1) There is a minimal role conflict for the athletic director based upon the perceptions of the superintendents, principals, and athletic directors. (2) The majority of the respondents agreed or strongly agreed with forty-four of the specifically defined role expectations for the athletic director. (3) The majority of the respondents disagreed or strongly disagreed with the athletic director …

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between principal job satisfaction and the principal perception of superintendent leadership style in six school districts located in North Central Texas.

The purposes of this study were to identify the procedures and criteria used for conducting teacher performance evaluation in Texas public schools, to determine the degree to which teacher performance evaluation procedures and instruments reflect the stated evaluation policies of Texas public schools, and to determine the degree to which teacher performance evaluation instruments used in Texas public schools reflect presage criteria (teacher characteristics) as opposed to process criteria (teacher behavior) as opposed to product criteria (student change or gain) as opposed to general job performance requirements (job expectations). The main findings include the following. (1) Teacher performance evaluation is required in all Texas public school districts and is often performed several times a year by more than one observer. The building principal is the key person involved in this process. (2) Although all school districts stated the supervisory function of the improvement of instruction as the major purpose of their teacher performance evaluation policy, a large number of school districts utilize teacher performance evaluation for the administration functions of serving as a basis for retention or dismissal. (3) If in reality teacher performance evaluation were construed as the improvement of instruction or teaching performance, it should be predictable that …

The main purpose of this study was to determine the effect of Texas House Bill 72 on equalization of finances in the public school districts of Texas. House Bill 72 is a finance reform bill which was passed by the Texas Legislature during the Summer of 1984. This study involves basically three steps. First, current criteria for equity as defined by school finance "experts" and recent definitive court decisions were determined. Second, financial data from the Texas Education Agency were statistically analyzed for the 1984-1985 school year. Third, the statistical analysis was used to determine if the current Texas school finance plan meets the current criteria for equity. The population used in the study was 1,068 school districts. Based on the findings of this study the following conclusions were drawn. 1. The use of a per capita flat grant by the Texas Public School Finance System contributes to the unequalizing of financial resources available to school districts. 2. School districts with greater property index values are required to exercise very little effort toward the support of their public schools. 3. School districts with high property index values tend to have lower effective tax rates and high per-pupil expenditures. 4. School …

The purposes of this study were to determine the predominant career paths of superintendents within the State of Texas and to determine the most important professional positions and areas of professional development as perceived by superintendents and educational experts. The study also compares actual experience and professional development of superintendents with those perceived as most important.

The purpose of this study was three-fold: 1. To determine the amount and direction of changes in sources of funding for the Regional Education Service Centers from 1979 to 1984. 2. To determine the percent of change in programming expenditures of the Regional Education Service Centers from 1979 to 1984. 3. To rate the changes in quality of programming as perceived by the superintendents of the local school districts receiving services from 1979 to 1984. A review of the literature and a brief history of the Regional Education Service Centers of Texas were followed by tabular and narrative descriptions of the findings. Deflated data, to account for inflation, were derived by applying Bureau of Labor statistics formulas to dollar amounts supplied by the Regional Education Service Centers. Each of the five Education Service Centers included in the study experienced a decrease in total funds, due chiefly to a cut in federal and state support. Although local contributions increased in four out of five of the Regions during the five-year period, the net result to the Centers was a decrease in funding ranging from 23.2 percent to 51.8 percent. The impact on programming was severe. Of the nine major services on …

The problem of this study was to measure the impact of a read-aloud approach combined with direct teaching methodology on student achievement/attitudes and school expenditures. The purpose of this study was twofold. First, the study was to determine the relative impact of three treatments on student reading and listening skills, vocabulary development, and attitude towards reading. The first treatment was read-aloud based on specific recommended texts combined with direct teaching methodology. The second treatment was read-aloud based on specific recommended texts. The third treatment, the control, was simply a read-aloud-based program. The second purpose of the study was to compare the relative cost and effort required by the three treatments. The 226 subjects in this study were selected from the population of third—grade students from three metropolitan early childhood centers. The subjects were pretested and posttested with the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS), a criterion-referenced vocabulary test and the Estes Attitudinal Scale. Analyses of covariance and after F-test multiple comparisons were used to compare the relative impact of the three treatments on a preselected set of criterion variables.

The purpose of this study was to determine the role of high school assistant principals as perceived by principals, assistant principals, and teachers. The population in this study consisted of the principals, assistant principals, and teachers in Class 5A high schools in Texas during the 1985- 86 school year. One hundred and twenty of the Class 5A high schools were randomly selected to participate in the study. One principal, one assistant principal, and one teacher from each school were asked to respond to the survey. A questionnaire was designed to measure the perception of the three groups under study and contained seventy-seven job responsibilities which were divided into six major areas. The six areas were school management, staff personnel, community relations, student activities, curriculum and instruction, and pupil personnel. Eighteen items were eliminated through clarity, appropriateness, and reliability studies. Each respondent was asked to rate the degree of involvement of assistant principals for each job responsibility listed in two columns labeled current and ideal. Five hypotheses were developed for the study. Three hypotheses were tested by a multivariate one-way analysis of variance with repeated measures, and two were tested using a univariate one-way analysis of variance. The .05 level of …

The problem with which this study is concerned is the teacher evaluation system in the state of Anambra, Nigeria. The purposes of this study are (a) to provide objective information concerning the perceptions of school administrators and teachers toward the teacher evaluation system in the State of Anambra, Nigeria, (b) to determine whether agreements or differences exist between teachers' and administrators' perceptions of the teacher evaluation system, and (c) to draw conclusions and make recommendations for improvements based on the perceptions of the teachers and administrators. To accomplish these purposes, questionnaires were distributed to a random sample of 652 administrators and teachers who are currently employed in 37 randomly selected primary and secondary schools in the State of Anambra, Nigeria. Four hundred and sixty school administrators and teachers, representing 70.6 percent of the sample, returned completed usable questionnaires. Part I of the questionnaire was designed to gather relevant demographic data to determine the perceptions of the school administrators and teachers. Part II of the questionnaire contains the components of the evaluation system which were used to measure the perceptions of school administrators and teachers. Analysis of variance was used to test the data according to the independent variables. Three statistically …

The purpose of this study was to compare the legal costs of Texas public school districts during the school years 1980-81, 1981-82, and 1982-83 with the preventive law practices utilized by those districts. A survey was made of Texas superintendents' knowledge of school law. The data were contrasted with legal costs and the preventive law practices of the district. Two survey instruments were developed, and the case study approach was utilized. A survey was sent to the 1,101 Texas public school superintendents. The twenty-five item instrument was designed to solicit information regarding the amount of money spent by districts and the types of preventive law practices that school districts use to reduce legal costs. A legal awareness questionnaire was developed and administered to 72 of the 542 superintendents who responded to the first survey instrument. Three school districts were selected to be case study sites. The data from the instruments were analyzed to determine if a relationship existed between a district's legal costs and its preventive law practices, a district's legal costs and the superintendent's knowledge of school law, and a superintendent's knowledge of school law and the district's preventive law practices. The major conclusions of the study were as …

This study was conducted to measure the effects of classroom instruction entitled Citizenship curriculum Training on high school discipline. Data for this study were collected and analyzed for fifty-eight ninth-grade students who had been referred to the principal's office three or more times the semester prior to the experimental treatment. An experimental group of twenty-nine students received citizenship curriculum instruction. The control group of twenty-nine students received only the school's traditional curriculum during second period class. Two teachers presented the citizenship curriculum training which included instructional units on beliefs, attitudes, emotions, anger, decision-making, communications, confrontation, positive attention, stress, peer pressure, authority figures, getting along in school, and the society game. Data were collected relative to grade-point average, absences, discipline referrals, and attitude toward high school as measured by the Remitters High School Attitude Scale. T-tests for correlated samples and analysis of covariance examined the effects of the Citizenship Curriculum Training on the four variables measured. The .05 level of significance was used to test the four hypotheses. The results of the study indicate that Citizenship Curriculum Training does not improve the students' gradepoint averages, absentee rate, lower the number of discipline referrals, and does not improve students' attitude as measured …

This study analyzed a random sample of thirty-six collective bargaining contracts between teachers and their respective boards of education in Wisconsin, New York, Tennessee, and California. The contracts were studied to assess the effect that collective bargaining has had upon the powers of principals over time. This was done by comparing each contract to a comprehensive list of traditional powers that were available to principals prior to collective bargaining (Pre-Collective Bargaining Power Profile of Principals). This analysis of contracts was a two-phase process. The first step was to identify whether or not the profile statements in the Pre-Collective Bargaining Power Profile were referred to in each contract. The second step was to describe how the presence of references to these statements affected the Power Profile of Principals. The principal's power was reported as being affected in three ways: deleted, constrained, or authorized. The general conclusion of this study was that the effect of teacher collective bargaining upon the powers of principals has been marginal. The data from the analysis of the contracts revealed that the majority (66 percent) of the statements in the Pre-Collective Bargaining Power Profile were not referred to in the collective bargaining contracts. The effects of the …

The problem of this study was to determine the extent of agreement or disagreement by public school principals in the State of Texas with fifty selected court decisions. The population of the study consisted of all the public school principals in the State of Texas. From this population, a subject of 600 potential respondents was chosen for participation in the study upon the recommendation of the doctoral advisory committee using a random sampling technique. The instrument used in this study was a law questionnaire that was developed in conjunction with Dr. Roosevelt Washington of North Texas State University. The first part of the law questionnaire requested background information from the respondents which was used for the independent variables of the study. The second part of the law questionnaire contained fifty summarized court decisions to which principals were asked to indicate their level of agreement or disagreement.

The problem investigated by this study was that of understanding types of behaviors exhibited by participants in negotiations processes and impact of behaviors on collective bargaining in Nigeria. The study's three purposes were to describe the nature and extent of interpersonal conflict that occurs in collective bargaining, to determine the consequences that stem from such conflict, and to suggest the behaviors and performances during the face-to-face negotiations that should exist to enhance labor-management relations in Nigerian public education. This study examined behavior in negotiations by using simulation, i.e., a quasiexperimental method. Four outcomes of negotiations--time required to reach agreement, terms of agreements, verbal behavior exhibited during negotiations, and satisfaction derived by negotiators in negotiations—were examined.