Faced with shrinking society and the emergence of great earthquake in Eastern Japan in 2011, the framework for the discussion of the reform for local sovereignty for about a a decade in central government needs to be reconsidered from the standpoint of view for sustaining or strengthening effective educational system in Japan. In realize it we need to focus our attention on "school effect" in public schools and creating local sovereignty especially in local education governance as its conditions. Topics of this paper are as follows. (1) A depiction of the recent trends of school consolidation policies of local boards of education in Japan as a reliable source of shrinking society and the topics to be solved for confronting with the reduction of the number of schools without inventing too big social cost to educational system. (2) Topics on how to sustain small schools and how to restructure school governance without school consolidation policy in sparsely populated location are argued by using national data for inquiring the consciousness of each local boards of education. (3) Topics for the recovery from great earthquake in Eastern Japan in 2011 and how to restructure educational governance in stricken area by introducing special ward for recovery from great earthquake in Eastern Japan in 2011 by central government are argued. (4) Lastly, topics on the restructuring local governance of education including the abolition of school boards are argued in light of the creation of "effective school" and effective educational system in Japan.

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The ministry of education has recently announced a change of policy to transfer the administration of teacher assignments form the prefectural level to the local boards of education. The implementation of such a drastic change will surely bring many problems and opportunities. Using a case-study approach, the aims of this paper are to clarify the national plan, to analyze the issues involved, and to consider the significance and problems related to it. Based on the interim report of the district and an interview of various personnel concerned, the efforts to implement the transfer of powers is highly commendable but there are some issues that have yet to be resolved. The first problem is ensuring a fair distribution of excellent and capable teachers among the various local areas in a prefecture, even if there are no differences in a teacher's pay as this is based on national laws. Secondly, because many small towns face financial constraints, they are not able to afford the necessary expenses for exercising their new personnel administration authority. Thirdly, under the present system, each prefectural board of education has the power to transfer personnel within and between the areas under its jurisdiction. However, if the power is given over to each local city and town, problems will surely arise in the transfer of personnel over a wider area, such as at the prefectural level. The local boards of education and schools will surely resist their better teachers being transferred away. Fourthly, at present teachers' in-service training programs are at provided by prefectures and large cities that have been granted special rights under the central government ordinance. However, if the local education boards are given the authority to conduct in-service training programs, it will be difficult to ensure that the quality and number will be maintained. In conclusion, the prefectural board of education should provide the necessary manpower and funds to support any seriously disadvantaged local education boards which are not able to maintain educational standards in their area on their own, in order to correct the disparities arising.

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Since the late 1990s the influence of neo-liberalism has spread through the economy and each administrative domain, and for these past several years the transfer of national authority to local public entities has been proposed in the name of "local sovereignty". Thus, the number of the community schools has grown to some extent, but how should we evaluate this trend? Is the community school a effective device to increase the participation of parents and residents? We should consider it carefully. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the process of establishing the community school policy and the resulting change in the characteristics of community schools. A "community school" policy was proposed for the first time on July, 2000 at the fifth meeting of the second subcommittee (school education) of the National Commission on Educational Reform (private meeting with the prime minister). The opinions of subcommittee members were divided on this proposal, but eventually a plan was included among the Commission's 17 final recommendations. This plan can be summarized in the following three points : Firstly, any person with the same vision and sense of values can create a school, with the approval of the Board of Education. Secondly, the community school has the right to recruit its own principal and teaching staff. Thirdly, School Management Committee will evaluate the school's performance regularly. Considering these points, the community school being envisioned were clearly on the "charter" model. For the implementation of the new community school policy, however, it was necessary to pass the scrutiny of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology and the Central Council of Education. Generally, the bureaucrats have a tendency to think about reform based on an existing frame. As a result, no new law was established. Instead, the new community school policy was described in the "Law on the Organization and Operation of Local Educational Administrations". The intent of the resulting article is accountability (i. e. the "accountability" model). In other words, parents and residents are considered to be consumers of the education service, and the law demands that the school should be accountable in response to the needs of the consumers. Hence, under this new policy a community school can be appointed by a prefectural Board of Education, but the number of appointed schools will not necessarily increase. The reason is that many principals prefer to avoid including lay persons in school management policy, curriculum design, and teacher personnel affairs. In fact, many appointed community schools are set by the School Management Committee, whose function is to support school activities (the "school support" model). It is desirable that parents and residents participate in various aspects of the school system, but when their participation at this level immobilizes it, there is a risk of falling back into established patterns. For the new policy to succeed, it is necessary to advance to a "participation/shared decision-making" model.

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The principle of subsidiarity and the principle of proximity are critical principles that support devolution. There underlies a complex structure containing quite versatile meanings. Both aggression and passivity inherently exist within the principle of subsidiary, so that there is a risk of fueling an even wider range of emphasis on political convenience. Therefore, it has been vital to incorporate measures that would ensure the principle of proximity to be followed through in a true sense. In the process of promoting devolution, while local independence and self-reliance have been kept as its principles, the critical challenge is how to incorporate the system that allows the "vertical" principle of subsidiarity to be highly functional. In the field of education, it must ensure equal opportunity for all students, regardless of area of residence. This can be considered as both old and new challenge to overcome. On the other hand, it has been an absolute necessity to also have a system that could strengthen the essential structure of a government narrowed in scope and secure its independence and self-reliance. This means an introduction of "horizontal" subsidiarity, and it can be categorized into three different types : i) the restructuring/merger of autonomy, ii) the consolidation of the administrative committee (the board of education) into the department of the governor, and iii) the support and involvement of the private sector. For the fundamental government and schools that form the essential part of devolution, it is necessary to carefully evaluate and determine which political measures are most suitable by examining the reality of the regional areas. As a part of the recovery and reconstruction process of the education in areas affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake in March, the government may be presented with choices, from among which mandatory action must be taken. In addition, another challenge is to assess the enforcement of control over both the vertical and horizontal shiftings of responsibility that are backed up by "appropriate allocation of roles" that underlies within devolution. It is necessary to investigate the ideal "local governance" of education that would enable it to secure enough public service and prevent the reduction of government territory (range of responsibility) as well as streamlined public space. As a lesson from this recent earthquake and nuclear disaster, in order to promote a swift recovery and reconstruction with limited remaining resources, I speculate that a school version of a BCP (Business Continuity Plan) will be developed in the field of education. When developing a meticulous support network and a functional replacement plan, it is necessary to reexamine the truth about the principle of subsidiarity that is integrated with risk management, which includes an anticipated super crisis while having the principle of proximity as its center. I look forward to the findings in regards to the future research on this issue.

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Most studies of school committees have focused on how schools should be governed. However, little is known about the process of improving school education by the establishment of school committees. This study investigates how one school's education was improved by establishing a school committee. For this study, the history of one elementary community school (school B) was selected for analysis and its teachers were interviewed. The main results of this study are as follows: Before the establishment of the school committee, the principal determined that the problems to be solved by the school committee were to make the teachers more open to the community and to improve the conditions of children and school environment. When a conflict developed over the committee's functions, the principal tried to take the initiative to manage the committee. After the establishment of the school committee, a conflict over its functions developed. The teachers thought that its function should be to contribute to the cooperation between teachers and the community. In contrast, some of the committee members thought that its function was to evaluate the school management and education. Two factors contributed to solving the conflict. One was the support the chairperson gave to teachers. The other was the joint educational activities carried out by the teachers and the committee members. Thus, the function of the school committee was understood to contribute to the cooperation between teachers and community. As the function of school committee was understood to be to contribute to the cooperation between teachers and community, joint educational activities with community and parents were created. Including community resources into the curriculum contributed to the creation of joint educational activities with the community and the parents. These joint educational activities contributed to the improvement of student leaning. The communication in school committee and the joint educational activities contributed to making a network among teachers, community, and parents, which promoted the joint educational activities. With positive feedback such as this creating a virtuous cycle, school education was improved in school B.

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Prior studies of educational administration around 1880 have understood that educational administration was absorbed into general administration under Kyouiku-Rei (the Japanese Code of Education 1879) and that a centralized bureaucratic mechanism was formed. On the other hand, at this time some prefectures attempted to establish their own independent educational administrations at the county level. To clarify the relationship between independence and professionalism of educational administration from a historical perspective, this paper examines the circumstances of an 1880 proposal in the Mie prefectural assembly to establish a county superintendent of education. This particular proposal was submitted by one of the pillars of the educational circle in Mie, Hiroshi Kawamura, the Principal of Yousei elementary school. The purpose of his proposal was to establish a county superintendent for the spread of education. According to the proposal, the county superintendent would be required to have a high degree of professionalism and would have a status equal to the county chief. The others of the prefectural assembly member agreed with the purpose of Kawamura's proposal, but they refused to establish an educational administration independent of the county chief, and his proposal was eventually rejected. The findings of this analysis are as follows : 1) The need for direction and supervision of the internal matters of education demanded professionalism. 2) The independence of educational administration and a guarantee of status were required as preconditions for establishing professionalism. 3) The introduction of a popular election system was proposed, so as to reflect public opinion on education. That is to say, an independent educational administration was requested, in order to combine professionalism with public opinion. However, it was not realized after all, because of a preference for facilitating smooth administration.

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The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between organizational decision-making in the school and teacher autonomy by focusing on cultural, organizational and pedagogical discourses narrated by teachers in regard to their own organizational behaviors and autonomous practices. The main data for this paper was gathered in a public junior high school over two years since April 200X. Various discourses not only regulate teacher's organizational behaviors and autonomous practices but also function as interpretive frameworks with regards to their actions to students. Through the medium of various discourses, reciprocal regulations between organizational decision-making and teacher's autonomous practices have emerged as follows. Teachers interpret their silent membership in the organizational decision-making process as appropriate behavior by narrating "new comer", "plural values of education" and "busyness". These patterned discourses function to allow teachers to avoid conflict with their colleagues. The tendency of concert with colleagues is one of the characteristics of the culture as a Japanese teacher, so these patterned discourses can be called "cultural discourses". Since cultural discourses regulate and interpret the teacher's silent membership in staff meetings, bills are passed without making a fuss. However, this undermines the efficacy of democratic characteristics, which are the basis of organizational discourses. Such cultural discourses result in teachers treating organizational decision-making as someone else's problem. Teachers share the organizational discourses that staff must accept organizational decision-making. However, they counter this norm by narrating pedagogical discourses that teachers sometimes need to behave free from organizational decisions to value a trustworthy relationship with students. Thus teachers can interpret their deviant practices from organizational decisions as appropriate. Pedagogical discourses enable teachers to practice autonomously. Teachers will accept organizational decision-making because in reality they can practice free from determinations. The relationship between organizational decision-making and teacher autonomy can be explained through the paradox that teachers decide to do something so as not to be obliged to do it. On the other hand, in order to make teachers perform their duties devotedly, some actors make an attempt to narrate other discourses, which articulate some determinations about school rules with imperative duties, such as avoiding public nuisance or risk for students. The relationships which emerge through interactions of various discourses can be understood as dynamic micro-politics rather than static orders among actors in the school.

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In the U.S., system-wide approaches for school improvement have drawn much recent attention. For instance, educational accountability systems developed after the 1990's were characterized by "rewards" and "sanctions" approaches, but it was pointed out that working on school improvement by individual schools could possibly weaken the capacities and strain the resources for other nearby schools. Therefore, the district central office came to be expected to play a role in supporting district-wide improvement. The purpose of this article is to clarify the characteristics of "district accreditation," in terms of school improvement and quality assurance in education. AdvancED is a corporation that was established in 2006 for the purpose of "advancing excellence in education worldwide." The primary work of AdvancED is to provide accreditation, research, products, service, and professional training. These tasks are not limited to the work had done by NCA CASI and SACS CASI, which are the base organizations of AdvancED. AdvancED is now the organization providing the comprehensive services for school improvement. This is the most important characteristic of AdvancED. AdvancED started district accreditation, which is targeted not at the individual schools but at the entire school system. District accreditation considers systems perspective, systemic improvement, and sustainable improvement. It emphasizes three characteristic points: meeting standards, continuous improvement, and quality assurance. Meeting standards means that a district must undertake school improvement according to AdvancED's seven accreditation standards. Continuous improvement is the cycle that consists of vision, profiling, planning, implementation, and monitoring the results. Quality assurance consists of internal reviews by the district itself and external reviews by peers, based on the internal review report. As a result of the external review, one of four different accreditation statuses can be conferred on a district. This article concludes that the features of this evaluation system for driving school improvement are as follow : an emphasis on continuity, setting the same framework of standards for improvement between schools and district central office, and an emphasis on network building for peers who have similar problems.

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The main purpose of teacher evaluation has been, in general, to identify incompetent teachers, but another purpose has attracted attention recently. Although teacher evaluation is still used for firing incompetent teachers, it is also able to contribute to teacher competence improvement. In Minnesota, the Quality Compensation Program for Teachers (Q Comp) has been in use for several years, enhancing the teaching competence of all public school teachers. Q Comp is adapted from the Milken Institute's Teacher Advancement Program (TAP), a pilot merit pay program currently being implemented in several test schools across the country. The program has three components : 1) alternative compensation and performance pay/ career ladder for teachers, 2) standard-based assessments / measures to determine student growth, and 3) job-embedded professional development. These components involve establishing additional jobs, which typically include mentoring positions for experienced teachers. The program also allows districts to establish a new teacher compensation system. The primary goal of this paper is to examine the positive and problematic characteristics of Q Comp and to provide some suggestions for teacher evaluation systems in Japan. This study examines Q Comp's implementation by the Minnesota department of education by analyzing related official documents and interviewing Q Comp coordinators, teachers, and administrative staff members. One of the main study findings suggests that the Q Comp legislation requires creating comprehensive tools for the accurate measurement of teacher performance. Teacher performance is divided into two aspects: input and output. Input performance is measured by using standards-based assessments and teacher observations. Meanwhile, output performance is linked to results of student test scores. Second, to ensure validity of evaluation, the Q Comp legislation provides annual trainings for evaluators. In addition, leader teachers, who mentor new teachers and career teachers, assess teacher evaluation results, and their involvement enables other teachers to accept their evaluation results easier. Third, Q Comp is utilized as a piece of the organizational system of the school to support teachers in meeting organizational goals and expectations. Teacher compensation is a valuable organizational tool that could be used to support teacher skills and knowledge development of teachers, and provide incentives for teacher teams to improve their students' achievement.

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