Public elementary and junior high schools have accounted for a major part of loal administration and finance and have been managed by the board of education system. Though the board of education is on the brink of losing its political independence, most of the nation or citizens fail to criticize this development. One of the main reasons for this is that the normative purpose of public education to cultivate citizenship has been estranged from by the practical motives of parents to pursue high academic ability. The board of education has to notice an inevitable trend of local endogenous development in recent Japan to unify them. It may improve local administration and finance in order to play a central role in local government.

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In Japan, by way of legal amendment, school boards were reformed in 2014. The aims of this amendment are to increase authorities and to strengthen the responsibility of mayors. Simultaneously, in the United States, especially in urban areas, school board reform has been under way since the mid-1990s. This paper examines the background and reasons why mayors began to take control of educational administration in the United States. In order to discuss them, the author studied the historical relationship between mayor, school board, and superintendent. And the author referred to the application of new public management in accordance with the introduction of mayoral control. And this paper describes the weakening of educators' expertise and the erosion of parents' and community's participation in educational decision making. What is happening in the U.S. can influence our thinking about the future of school board reform in Japan.

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The most recent reform of boards of education has shown three features of current education in Japan; firstly, the tendency of dependence on the power of the state regarding education; secondly, the difficulty of responsibility of education; finally, the limit of simply reflecting public opinion for education. We have to deepen our understanding for the significances of the spirits of idealism for the system of boards of education. In this ideal, that system must have its own terrain separated from general politics and can serve people as a practical sphere for their educational decision-making which will be appropriate and suitable for the future generations. It is one of the most important theoretical challenges to clarify and enrich the concept of politics of education. According to it, we can not only judge whether public opinion is reflected in education or not, but also grasp and describe the spatial dynamics of consciousness and action of people for educational decision-making. It can also be pointed out as an important practical challenge that each regional public sphere for politics of education should be cultivated through our new system of boards of education in Japan.

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This study analyzed the specificity of educational policy from the viewpoint of policy studies, especially two kinds of knowledge: "knowledge in (policy) process" and "knowledge of (policy) process." First, with regard to the characteristics of "knowledge in process" of educational policy, we analyzed the policy knowledge and knowledge production activities of this policy area. We pointed out that experimental knowledge, which was considered implicit knowledge, was turned into explicit knowledge through several kinds of activities. This meant that the field of educational policy was potentially open to actors outside the policy community. Second, with regard to the characteristics of "knowledge of process" in educational policy, we analyzed three factors in the educational policy process - actors, institutions, and ideas. We pointed out that, since the 1990s, several reforms to the Japanese policy-making system have changed the educational policy process. Particularly within the educational policy community, core actors have formed close relationships, while also allowing outside actors to access this community. Therefore, we could not demonstrate the specificity of educational policy. However, we pointed out the possibility of policy process analysis from the viewpoint of policy studies.

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In this paper, I examine the difficulty associated with the education policy from an economic point of view. At first, I comment on the "market failure" caused because of the special characteristics of the goods of "education" while being based on a standard concept of economics. From there, it is shown that public intervention by the government, that is an education policy, is necessary for education. Then, the political agreement formation pays its attention to a necessary point for the realization of the education policy practically. From there, it is clear that the incentive structure of society is likely to cause difficulties to the realization of education policy. Finally, for the realization of the education policy, I show that a framework of policymaking that interwove the concrete measures of the education policy to be required and in addition the social incentive structure is necessary, and examine the framework.

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The goal of this study is to argue about the role and possibility of the educational policy study through confirming the difficulty of the data relating to educational policy. There are problems such as the shortages of data, difficulty of access, difficulty to open to the public, the low level of the degree and precision of the quantification, the discrepancies between official and private data, a shortage of studies to contribute to making a new indicator for evaluating educational policy, and so on. This situation leads to studies that indicate not causal relationships between variables but only circumstantial evidence. Considering that any policy is not independent from a standard of value, we have to not only present the results of analysis - circumstantial evidence, but also investigate, conceptualize, and show the new policy norms.

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The time taken to transition from school to work is lengthening and becoming more unstable for young people. There have not been good surveys of early school leaving and effective strategies for reducing the number of high school dropouts in Japan, although it is one of the most important educational issues. We conducted interviews in depth for about 60 high school leavers and analyzed early school leaving as a phenomenon of social exclusion. The European Union is implementing countermeasures. In the case of Denmark, they have set up career guidance centers over the country and there are schools which provide a second chance for early school leavers. We should conduct surveys on early school leaving, construct high schools more relevant for disadvantaged students, and provide a second chances for early school leavers to study again, which is including high schools, vocational schools and alternative schools. Social exclusion is one of the indispensable themes for development of studies on educational policies, though it has not been seen such a significant one in Japan.

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This article analyzes 3 focus points of the recent educational crisis in Tokyo under the Structural Reform. Firstly, I explore the strengthening power of the Tokyo governor on educational policy under the structural reform in the latter part of the 1990's, and how this causes a crisis for the constitutionally-guaranteed right to learn. Secondly, I point out the need to establish the form of democracy which can support autonomy of educational practice to limit the influence of the governor on educational practices. Thirdly, I propose theoretical key points agenda toward creativeness on educational politics. Especially, I point our the need to research the form of relations between education and politics which can support a stable autonomy of educational practice. I do not intend to simply criticize the intervention of politics into education.

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This essay presents a review of the way of implementing educational poliy by the Obama Administration, which succeeds in upholding the spirit of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA) to improve social inequality by closing achievement gaps. Contrary to the Bush Administration's hierarchical style of implementing educational policy, Obama's way is fully putting educational interest group's activities and advice to practical use and constructing a policy network among them. Especially, the administration's strategy to improve labor-management relations accelerated the construction of policy network among 8 influential interest groups, including the National Education Association (NEA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). The Administration believes the network will help improve social inequality. Inspired by this policy network among leading national organizations, the Obama administration acknowledged the importance of the teaching profession, and committed itself to comprehensive improvements of the profession, including the teacher preparation and pay system. These approaches lead to the cooperation between states and districts governments and labor unions like the NEA, and to promoting motivation for attaining the above mentioned ESEA goal. We can see an example of such developments in the State of Wisconsin.

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The aim of this study is to trace the historical development of theories on parental participation in the running of schools in Japan so that we can precisely grasp educational policy on it after the late 1980s and conceive our ideas on a parental participation system based on the rights and responsibilities of parents. This paper divides the understanding the public sphere into 3 types, state-controlled, labour-controlled and citizen-controlled. Focusing on the work of H. Ebihara, E. Mochida and T. Horio, this article then examines the 2 types of arguments which are against state-controlled public sphere from the late 1950s to the late 1980s. By doing so, this paper clarifies the understanding of how parents participate in school-running is dependent on the recognition of the public shpere and civil society, i.e., the placement of parents, teachers and administrative bodies or the state in the public sphere. This paper also suggests the argument for a citizen-controlled public sphere has been challenged and has diverged after the 1990s.

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The OECD's influence in educational evaluation is becoming significant. The purpose of this paper is to examine its review to clarify OECD's suggestion on school evaluation policy and provide considerations for Japanese school evaluation research. The review uses a lesson drawing method and makes concrete suggestions to implement rigorous professional evaluation. It insists the common and ultimate aim of all evaluation activities to be students' learning and tries to utilize teachers' and researchers' professionalism in evaluation. However, the reveiw itself admits its limitation of not taking into consideration the possible variety of evaluation methods in each country's context, and not showing which school evaluation policy have what effects. Therefore, the research to classify the school evaluation policies should proceed, and case studies to reveal the impact of each evaluation policy should be accumulated. Based on the findings of the OECD, the following considerations for research on Japanese school evaluation systems are proposed. First, the function of school evaluation for the achievement of student learning objectives should be reexamined. Second, it is recommended that researchers on school effectiveness and lesson study discuss the creation of Japanese educational quality indicators.

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