School-Based Management as School Reform. - Review - book review

School Administrator, Feb, 1997 by Dan Woll

Reading School-Based Management as School Reform: Taking Stock is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. It is tedious work and, at least for the first hour or so, it does not look like much of anything.

However, as in the case of the puzzle, an impressive big picture is revealed eventually to the persevering reader. Authors Joseph Murphy and Lynn Beck's comprehensive assessment of site-based management is arguably an unmatched overview of recent research on shared governance. It is free from the bias that influences much of the writing on this subject. Their citations are exhaustive to the point of being a drawback to readability.

The authors' impartial style does not preclude reasonable conclusions. They ask tough questions that cast doubt on the honeymoon SBM has enjoyed with politicians. How can the effects of different training, pre-existing climate, and available resources in schools be removed from comparative analyses of SBM? (It is not possible.) How can causality be established between SBM and observed outcomes in an experimental design. (It can't be proven.) Where are the rigorous quantitative experiments that preceded the widespread initiatives in SBM? (They do not exist.)

Readers seeking validation of the lightweight rhetoric surrounding the subject will be disappointed. The fact that this may put off some readers speaks to the problem of why the public is so easily taken with fads.

(School-Based Management as School Reform: Taking Stock, by Joseph Murphy and Lynn G. Beck, Corwin Press, 2455 Teller Road, Thousand Oaks, Calif. 91320, 1995, 216 pp. with index, $51.95 hardcover, $23.95 softcover)