Processes and Power in School Budgeting across Four Large Urban School Districts.

shared decision-making and school-based management have emerged as central themes in the current education reform movement. Support for greater autonomy at the building level comes out of the desire to involve parents more directly in the education of their children, the recognition of the principal as a key educational decision-maker, the emergence of school-based management and governance as more responsive to educational needs, and the reconsideration of the school as a site for the delivery of an array of social services. In 1983, with the publication of A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform, the report of the National Commission on Excellence in Education, the focus of thinking about public schooling shifted from efforts to assure equity in educational opportunity to efforts to improve the outcomes and efficiency of America's schools. During the three decades prior to the report's release, the Supreme Court had outlawed segregated schools, several state supreme courts had overturned their state's school finance schemes, and Congress enacted legislation providing compensatory funding for economically disadvantaged students and mandated equal treatment for students with special needs and