Syllabus for Advanced Study in Educational Management

Professor David Wiles
E-Mail


Special Notice

During the Fall 1996 semester EAPS 760 will be part of a special program experiment in distance education. The course will consist of two cohorts of graduate students, one located in Albany approximating the conventional seminar format of small group instruction and one homebased in Oswego as the SUNY Oswego EDUlink cohort. Each cohort will participate in "live, interactive electronic classrooms" Thursday evenings from 7:15 to 10:00 p.m. The cohorts will also be "linked" through e-mail and this world wide web internet delivery system.

Overview

This course provides students with an overview of management theory and research as each shapes concepts and constructs of education policy. The course assumes management as a phenomenon embedded within particular contexts of school based decision making and governance. Information from the public service sector, non-profit and private corporate perspectives of management will focus attention to the improvement of communication and implementation tasks associated with the delivery of services in k-12 and post secondary educational settings.

As a core post master's course in the Educational Administration and Policy Studies Department doctoral program Eaps 760 will cover both descriptive and normative elements of thinking about educational management and the shaping of educational reform policy. Six general themes provide the intellectual underpinning "steps" of coursework throughout the semester. These six steps will coordinate specific class readings and student activities. The steps are intended to provide a convenient and coherent way to prepare for comprehensivie examination requirements in the "management" section.

  • Public Service and the Engine of Industry
  • The System & Progressive Reform
  • Centralization & Consolidation
  • Compensation & War Metaphors
  • Reform as Devolution & Downsizing
  • Electronic Deluge

    • During the course of considering the six steps, students will be expected to become familar with certain key individuals who shaped the management context that now embeds school administration. While many other important figures need to be understood for their particular contributions to our understanding of educational management, an initial framework of people should be understood by the end of the semester. Each student should be able to identify by "step" and contrast the major thoughts and assumptions about managing for each of the following:

  • Woodrow Wilson and Plunkett of Tammany Hall
  • Max Weber and Frederick Taylor
  • Chester Barnard and the Brownlow Committee
  • Charles Lindblom and Anthony Downs
  • Aaron Widavsky and Peter Drucker
  • James March and Herbert Simon
  • Tom Peters
  • Shoshana Zuboff and Bill Gates

    • Eaps 760 will also focus upon the special initiative of the New York Board of Regents and State Education Department to improve secondary school performance. Use of descriptive data about performance and schooling operation will be used to frame discussions about management and educational policy implications for Report Card reporting and implementation of the all Regents effort in English Language Arts Learning Standards. Actual case data is provided for the following:

  • New York districts with the best Regents secondary performance;
  • New York districts with the highest pupil suspension rates;
  • New York districts with world wide web pages in operation;
  • New York districts scoring above 65 percent in average enrolled passing for Regents Comprehensive English in 1994-1995.

    • Textbooks and Course Materials

  • Shafritz & Hyde (editors) Classics in Public Administration: Third Edition (Pacific/Cole Publishers, 1992);
  • Shoshana Zuboff, In the Age of the Smart Machine (Basic Books, 1984);
  • Bill Gates, The Road Ahead [with interactive CD-Rom] (Viking Books, 1995);
  • New York State Education Department, Learning Standards for Math, Science and Technology (March 1996 Revised Edition);
  • New York State Education Department, Learning Standards for English Language Arts (March 1996 Revised Edition).

    • The student may wish to secure other supplemental or background/personal library sources that will be cited extensively in Eaps 760. These would include Raymond Callahan, Education and the Cult of Efficiency (1962), Truman Arnold, The Symbols of Government (1938), James Conant, The American High School (1958), Daniel Moynihan, Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding (1974), Frederick Mosher, Education and Public Service , 1980, Osborne & Grabler, Reinventing Government (1992), Tom Peters, Thriving on Chaos (1987) and Tom Peters, Liberation Management (1992).

    Course Content

    Depending upon initial face to face meetings and start up decisions the class will either start with Step One or Step Six. It is obvious that the first part of the semester will be concerned with the Picture Tel interactive classroom activities, establishing an e mail network among all Eaps 760 members and a cohort-cohort buddy system among individual students. We will also assess the internet capability and use of world wide web among Eaps 760 students.
    Assuming the class starts with Step One each student should read the following in Shafritz and Hyde's 3rd edition (1992):

    Step One
    Early voices and chronology to 1917 pages 1-10;
    Woodrow Wilson, pages 11-24;
    E. Pendleton Herring, pages 75-79;
    Frederick Mosher, pages 497-4509;
    Frank Goodnow, pages 25-28;
    Frederick Taylor, pages 29-32;
    Max Weber, pages 51-56;
    Frederick Mosher, pages 411-418;
    Dennis Thompson, pages 423-532.
    Step Two
    Mary Parker Follett, pages 66-74;
    Chester Barnard, pages 96-100;
    Robert Merton, pages 101-109;
    Luther Gulick, pages 80-89;
    The Brownlow Commission Report, pages 90-95;
    Phillip Selznick, pages 171-187;
    David Lilenthal, pages 138-143;
    David Rosenbloom, pages 510-522.
    Step Three
    Herbert Simon, pages 150-165;
    Morton Grodzins, pages 278-283;
    Douglas McGregor, pages 217-223;
    Charles Lindblom, pages 224-235;
    Anthony Downs, pages 305-318;
    Pressman and Wildavsky, pages 406-410;
    Katz and Kahn, pages 248-259;
    Graham Allison, pages 457-475.
    Step Four
    Yehezhel Dror, pages 297-304;
    Aaron Wildavsky, pages 319-334;
    Aaron Wildavsky, 382-396;
    Herbert Kaufman, pages 330-354;
    Theodore Lowi, pages 353-362;
    H. George Frederickson, pages 368-381;
    Frederick Mosher, pages 497-509;
    Arnold Meltzner, pages 533-538.
    Step Five
    Charles Levine, pages 425-440;
    Michael Lipsky, pages 476-484;
    Naomi Caiden, pages 485-496;
    Ronald Moe, pages 539-549;
    Dell Wright, pages 550-563.
    Step Six
    Shoshana Zuboff, In the Age of the Smart Machine, (Basic Books. 1984);
    Bill Gates, The Road Ahead, (Viking, 1995).
    Supplemental for Step Six
    Stewart Brand, The Media Lab, (MIT Press, 1988);
    Louis Pondl,et.al., Managing Ambiguity and Change, (Wiley, 1988);
    John Galbraith, Organizing for the Future, (Jossey Bass, 1993);
    Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook (Doubleday, 1994);
    Nicholas Negroponte Being Digital (MIT Press, 1995);
    J. Dunlop and R. Kling (ed) Computerization and Controversy (Academic Press, 1991).

    Student Evaluation

    Students will be expected to participate in each Thursday night interactive classroom experience, do all readings and course exercises associated with each of the six steps and complete the following five writing assignments before the end of the semester.

    ONE: Throughout the class the student will keep a journal of technological experiences associated with Eaps 760, to be turned in at mid term. With instructor comments, the student will then develop a ten page critique of the experience and specific suggestions for improvement of two cohort, distance learning experience in doctoral preparation.

    TWO: Describe real-life case of a particular school or set of schools that are implementing Compact for Learning by preparing to reach commencement level in either Math, Science and Technology or English Language Arts Learning Standards. Emphasize the management and policy implications. Fifteen pages maximum.

    THREE and FOUR: Provide syntheses of two of the areas represented by the fist five steps. The synthesis can be an historical discussion of management writers of a particular era or can be created around management "lessons" derived from a step discussion. Each student will create a paragraph of intention to be turned in at least three weeks before synthesis. Ten page each maximum

    FIVE: Small group project report using New York district data set(s) to some degree. Actual projects will be discussed and approved by the instructor. Writing assignment may include aspects of presentation for interactive classroom situation.

    OPTION to FIVE: Should small group work prove difficult logistically, an individual student may select one of the two New York Learning Standards. The assignment would be to take a minimum of five writers that are clearly identified as "education administration" or "education policy" (e.g., Laurence Iannaccone, Richard Elmore, Susan Fuhrman, Roald Cambell, Tom Sergiovanni) and speculate how they might interpret the standards and benchmark information to create an argument about educational management in the late 1990's.

    Instructor Hours

    To be determined, but at least one full day each week (besides Thursday) will be set aside for work on logistical and professional problems. Instructor can be contacted by: