Public educational reform can be defined as that process by which administrators develop and implement new ideas this year for the purpose of helping the public forget those that failed to take hold last year. So rest in peace, ``site-based management.’'
I very much wish we could hang in there. The central idea is sound. But there are reasons to be pessimistic. Like the politically late Mikhail Gorbachev, too many are trying hard to imagine a process with which they have had little or no experience. And by the way, hello “strategic planning’’ or whatever comes next.
There are lots of schools in this country that are really school based. But they are not public. They are called independent, parochial, or private schools.