The purpose of this article is to examine the concepts of "Organizational Capacity of schools" by summarizing the development of organizational theories in Educational Administration. School organizations are loosely coupled. Teachers don't work cooperatively. However, in recent educational reform, schools have been required to function effectively and enhance their organizational capacity. Organizational capacity varies by organizational images and theories. We can divide the development of organizational theories into the following five phases. (1) Structural approach, which emphasizes the capacity to get given things definitely done. (2) Human resource approach, which emphasizes the capacity to get things done by Integration and Self-control. (3) Open Systems Theory, which emphasizes enhancing Self-Renewing capability. (4) Organizational culture theory, which emphasizes strengthening School Identity. (5) Learning organization theory, which emphasizes enhancing the ability to learn or Self-Renewing capability through reflection. We can consider these phases as the maturity of Organizational Capacity of Schools.

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The purpose of this paper is to clarify the possibility of newly located positions in school, which are registered in the act of school education in 2007 suchas fuku principal (vice principal), shukan teacher (senior manager) and shido teacher (mentor teacher). An analysis of the recruitment for these positions and their respective career paths, revealed that the vice principal is often treated practically as head teacher (kyouto teacher) and the senior manager as shunin (senior staff member). Shido teachers are not allocated enough and seem to fall short of one's expectations. These facts show that the definitions of their roles are ambiguous and vague, and they do not currently occupy own positions in the school. Three unique points resulted from a reexamination of the characteristics of work in the school. First, teachers work not only partially for students, but comprehensively around them. It indicates that the profession as a school teacher could not be as stable and structured as medical staff. Second, considering the background of the number of staff in each school, school work should not be divided irrelevant to the organization size. Third, the circumstances inside and outside the school usually vary that instead of school works running between the school staff and workers, it's actually the case that workers run between school works which are not constant and perennial. With these findings, we could assume that in the near future the function of vice principal will be as head teachers. Similarly, Shukan teachers will be shunin, especially in curriculum arrangement and shido teachers will possibly even suffer among other teachers, who work very similar to them in the same school. As for school organization, it could be more consistent, that schools will be more effective with dispersed works, rather than concentrated.

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It is considered that the improvement of the scholastic ability is influenced by the organizational capacity of schools. In particular the multi-layer phase of the issue of scholastic ability improvement and the problem of the organized correspondence of the school were also considered by the method of organizational capacity of schools. As a result the following conclusions were generated. (1) Various measures of the scholastic ability improvement were accomplished from national level to each school level. Consequently each school has to cope systematically on the basis of the purpose of the scholastic ability improvement. Therefore organized actions become necessary in each school under the support of the Board of Education more than before. (2) Because a national achievement test was carried out, the inspection-improvement cycle is performed nationwide in each Board of Education. As a result of reporting the analysis of the national achievement test, the correlations of scholastic ability of the student and their habits at home came to be recognized widely. The support of the Board of Education seemed to be important considering the results of the national achievement test from the viewpoint of knowledge management. It is important to constitute local educational practices again with more variations for teachers. (3) Based on PDCA cycle of school management, organization purpose is shared by setting a clear aim of the scholastic ability improvement as a theme of the in-service training in the school. Clear vision and communalization of the education purpose are a basic condition to achieve organizational capacity of schools. It is the key point for organization administration to grasp whether facilitating function is accomplished smoothly. In the formation of a corporate culture it is important to have a structure which facilitating function operates continuously.

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The purpose of this paper is to reveal the strategies and system of community management that schools should have. Firstly, the principal and managerial staff of schools have to set up the section for the community management. Second, managers have to improve their accountability and develop their competency in negotiation with community people. Third, managers have to devise effective assessment of community school. Fourth, managers have to plan the curriculum in cooperation with the community. Finally, managers have to cooperate with community coordinators and school volunteers. Nowadays, community management is one of the important strategies in school management. Principals should include the community in planning the manifest for parents and the community people.

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The purpose of this article is to provide a suggestion to the current system by paying attention to pre-establishment period of the Municipal-Financed Teachers System. Prior case to this system employed original teachers through the budget of cities, towns and villages. In my attempt to provide recommendation to the current system, I focused on the prior case by clarifying its purpose. A-town is the primary case examined in this article. A-town has employed original teachers with the town's budget since 1977. The following points about A-town were generated. First, the teacher whose salary was paid by town had lower salary. If the salary is low, the policy depends on the teachers' technique and enthusiasm. Second, the application of the policy was flexible, but it can be pointed out that the possibility of the selection and placement of the teachers may have been unfair. Because the teacher was employed through "the network" among the teachers, some biases could arise. Third, I put forward a proposal to the current system, the point being that at that time, the Prefectural Subsidies for Teachers' Compensation System was not able to support the situation when the number of the children sharply decreased. From this analysis, the following findings were clarified. The previous cases have the same structure as the current Municipal-Financed Teachers System. The examination of these cases leads to a suggestion to improve the current system. It is necessary to continue this type of research in future.

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The purpose of this paper is to show the theoretical potential of dividing education matters into internal items and external items, considering the actual situation of local educational administration and management. This addresses the follwing points: (1) for reconstructing the theory of dividing education matters into internal items and external items from the perspective of educational administration and management, the conception of this theory and its substantial points should be clarified, (2) to analyze the construction processes of administration and management of internal items and external items in the area of Souya region in Hokkaido, Japan, (3) and to create a model of the development of the structure in the area. From this analysis, the following conclusions were generated. First, the theory of dividing education matters into internal items and external items is not only a concept of dividing a field but also a concept of process of internal and external. Second, the curriculum should be decided by the schools, and not left up to State control, and the parents and committees should be involved in the curriculum making process as an invaluable contribution. Thus reconstructing the theory of dividing education matters into internal items and external items from the perspective of educational administration and management does not lead to teachers' self-righteousness but to cooperation and partnership between teachers, parents, committees, and educational administration.

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Nowadays, school evaluation practices are quite active on one side, but on the other side the logical issues around them, especially in so called external evaluation should also be examined. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the institution, organization and management of external evaluation in the case of Hessen State in Germany from the perspectives of speciality and concernment with public education. The condition of external evaluation "Schulinspektion" in Hessen is as follows; 1. (1) The evaluation team, organized solely by school teachers with a teacher who has experience in the same type of school to be evaluated, takes the task. (2) They are public officials of the state who need to receive training as evaluators for 3 months in fields such as analyzing data, accompananied by school visits and preparing final report. 2. (1) The external evaluation is exempted by state educational administration "Qualitats-institut" that stands under the Ministry of Education. (2) Evaluators are in neither temporary nor part-time employment, but in full-time work. (3) They undertake their roles with very defined procedures, including summarizing school-portfolios, visiting schools and inquiring of or interviewing students and parents (without residents who live in school district), until they bring the final report, wherein the school should talk with their bearer about school policy. In the former elements, external evaluation takes specialty in teaching vocation, not by "school relatives". Also in the latter elements, concernment is ensured by state institutions, not by "outsiders". Considering these points, we could suggest to analyze more the both side of "inside-outside" or "self-others" of school.

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Though recent educational reforms have led to decentralised school management and parental participation in school administration, the basis of these reforms is thought to be vulnerable. In particular, some researchers express concerns about the relative inferiority of parents. Sociologists in the United Kingdom indicated the marginalization of parent governors by governors from other categories such as co-opted governors from industry or local governors (Vincent 1996; Deem et al. 1995). Thus, this paper aims to clarify the following two issues in Japanese context; (i) to affirm the existence of inactiveness of parents in School Management Committee's discussion and (ii) the reason of parental inactiveness. To approach these issues, I use a case study method in a specific school, which has a School Management Committee (shorten as SMC). I use the following three data sources; the minutes of SMC, interview transcripts, and field notes of the transaction in SMC. There were three main findings from my analysis, (i) There are so-called "silent members" in the formal discussion within SMC, who rarely, if ever contribute to the transaction, and they are unevenly concentrated in parent category. (ii) These "silent members" felt the restrictive condition which has resulted from following two points; 1) Local power relations affect the atmosphere of SMC discussion. 2) Parent members felt the difficulty to represent the large diversity of parents' views to education. (iii) However, across the years, the difference of activity between categories has been maintained and reproduced by the following two points; 3) Local residents become good advisers for the head teacher so that the agenda of SMC come to be preset between the head teacher and local residents, excluding parent members. 4) Local residents also become enthusiastic school supporters. In contrast, parent members are relatively busy because of everyday child rearing, their own job and regular PTA tasks so that the attitude of parents is seen somewhat "unsupportive". As a result, preferential value-adding to locals silenced parent members. As a proposition, I assert that the position of parents among the actors in governing schools reflect the micro social relationship within the school community.

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The purpose of this study is to provide suggestions to restructure a public school system by clarifying the mechanism and the actual condition of a charter school (CS) evaluation by a sponsor. This is a case study of "Parents, Allied with Children and Teachers" (PACT) CS and Bethel University (BU) as a sponsor in Minnesota. Three points were clarified in this paper. First, twenty-nine CSs have been closed in Minnesota so far because of the competitive environment among urban and suburban schools. Second, the case study shows that three factors have made PACT successful. Concretely speaking: 1) The teacher came from BU to PACT as a liaison and attended all board meetings at PACT. 2) PACT teachers have been able to share problems by making a detailed school evaluation report. 3) PACT realized improvements through the accreditation of AdvancED, the third party evaluators. Third, BU found out through its evaluation of PACT that: 1) The self-evaluation sheet developed by BU, concerning the development of school organization, is very valuable. 2) The self-evaluation, critical friend visits, and school improvement plans have an organizational relationship with each other. It follows from this paper that in the case of PACT, the reason that the school improvement at PACT and the renewal of the contract with BU have been accomplished, is that the sponsor, BU, provided a liaison and carried out critical friend visits, based on the self-evaluation by PACT. In conclusion, I should note that the reason PACT evaluation by BU worked is that PACT has a right to choose another sponsor if they are not satisfied with BU. The relationship with PACT as a public school and BU as a sponsor might be a new way of restructuring the public school system.

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The aim of this symposium were 1) to clarify present state of teachers' mental health and organizational health of school, and 2) to explore issues of managerial approach to achieve a balance between teachers' health and school organizational health. The present states and problems were reported based on the following perspectives, 1) from educational counseling standpoint, 2) from principal's standpoint, and 3) from researchers' standpoint. A range of issues were discussed dynamically, and some valuable steps were proposed.

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The session entitled "Toward Establishing Research Methods for School Organization Studies: Problems and Solutions in Research Acts" was one of the series of exploring research methods in school organization studies, promoted by the research committee of JASEA for the last three years. Four reporters have presented their views in improving methodologies in their studies. The reporter and themes are as follows: (1) Hidehiro SUWA, A Survey on Collegiality as Organizational Culture (2) Ryou TAKAGI, From Field of Stress Studies among Japanese Teachers: Suggestion from Psychological Method (3) Yasuki OONO, Investigation of Principal's Duties / Management Behavior (4) Tomoko KASHIWAGI, The research focusing on collaboration between School and Community Each report was focused on actual use of methods, technologies and skills they have applied in their research with its difficulties and limitations. The discussions after the reports varied, but the prime focal point was on building methodologies that are linked with the character of school organization. The uniqueness of school organization compared to other organizations are creating difficulties and needs to build up the intrinsic approach for the promotion of school organization studies. It is planned to publish a book on this theme mainly by those who took initiative in the series of exploration in JASEA to inspire and to supply "food for thought" for further discussions.

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In Japan, consolidations of schools and districts have been increasing year by year because of declining birth rates and financial difficulties coupled with recession. The study of educational administration seems to be challenged by this situation. In this session we discussed the potentials and problems of consolidations of schools and districts through clarifying fundamental points of the issue and analyzing some practices in each local area. First, the focus of our discussion was on the relationship between financial situation and educational administration in local areas in Japan. It should be considered how the inter-governmental relations affect educational administration and school management and how we can organize the number and the location of schools in the near future. Second, we discussed about the management of the process of school consolidation. In the past, there were many conflicts with closing schools. One of our speakers said that the less concerned we are about the transparency and the accountability of the consolidation process, the more troubles we have. The study of educational administration has to deal with the sensitive relationship between politics and management of education. Third, it was argued that consolidations of schools and districts had to be linked with the development of education and school organization. The question here is whether each local agency of education or office of board of education has enough capacity to plan the big picture all over the education of the area after school consolidation. Finally, Japanese researchers have hesitated to discuss issues on the consolidation of schools directly and actively for a long time. But many people working at schools and local educational agencies expect us to address these issues. We have the responsibility to provide them better answers by innovating the study of educational administration.

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