The “Action Plan for University Reform” was issued under the previous government, the JDP (Japan Democratic Party) in 2012. The purpose of this plan was to make Japanese universities “engines for social innovation”, and it brought about a change in the traditional idea of a university. Even though there was a change of government in December that year, higher education policy has actually continued to follow most of that plan. The current government, the LDP (Liberal Democratic Party) issued a “Plan for Reform of National Universities” in 2013. In this plan, each national university has been requested to clarify its strong points through the process of “Re-definition of National University Mission” for fulfilling its role in society. This policy is different from the quality assurance policy which used to be a keynote of the former higher education policy. These policies focus on the fundamental problems of universities. However neither has been a magnet for critical controversy on higher education research. There is a growing need to debate, research and analyze the position of universities and the relationship between universities and society from a historical perspective.

The purpose of this study is to trace the process of “the university evaluation” changing from the self-improvement oriented to the guided or forced reform oriented in these 40 years. The study shows that university evaluation for self-improvement remains only in name and that the evaluation is used for standardizing universities without considering university autonomy. In order to prove this, the author divided these years into three periods as follows: ⒜ the 1970s and 1980s, in which “the convoy system” for colleges and universities was in place. However some people in the university bodies and in government realized that the system could not continue just before the rapid decrease in the population of 18 year olds. ⒝ the 1990s, in which the university evaluation system was set up by the ministerial ordinance of the Ministry of Education. Not colleges and universities themselves but the Ministry of Education took the lead in establishing this system. ⒞ the 2000s and later, in which the Prime Minister led the deregulation and used university evaluation as a basis for allocating financial resources.

In the first period ⒜, some university bodies tried to develop a self improvement-oriented evaluation system. Although they seemed to find it very difficult for university evaluation to seek improvement and accountability at the same time, “Rinji kyoiku shingikai”, an advisory panel to the Prime Minister established in 1984, did not take this issue seriously. Its Final report simply listed both improvement and accountability as functions of university evaluation. this appeared to be a factor in the failure of university evaluation in Japan. University evaluation has not worked well either for improving universities or for providing useful information to the public since then.

In the second period ⒝, the age of rapid decrease in the population of 18 year olds caused almost all the universities had to face a struggle in enrolling students. the Ministry of Education deregulated the university establishment and reorganization in order to cope with the situation. Universities were obliged by the ordinance, university establishment standard, to work on self-education at the same time. Evaluation for selfimprovement ought to be voluntary, but universities were reluctantly engaged in the self-education in order to obtain authorization for the reorganization, a kind of self-improvement, from the Ministry of Education.

In the final period ⒞, the “Amendment of School Education” law set up a third party evaluation system for universities, “Ninsho-hyoka”. In addition, national universities were incorporated and the evaluation system for national university incorporation was introduced. The original plans of these evaluation systems were based on the mission and objectives of universities, that is the evaluation to respect the individuality of each university. But those plans were changed 6 or 7 years after being introduced. Some measures were carried out to standardize the mission and objectives of each university. Moreover, the government has often used this evaluation for financial resource allocation in recent years. The indices used in the evaluation force universities to improve or reform universities in the same direction.

This article focuses on the influence of a local assembly in education policy formation. Using a case study of former Sowa town, Ibaraki prefecture, the author examined the employment of part-time teachers for implementing a Team Teaching (TT) policy. TT is a policy that aims to improve the educational environment by reducing the teacher-pupil ratio.

Since decentralization reform of the national and local government has been progressing, the mayors have relatively more authority in their local government. Consequently, the mayors have strengthened their involvement in education policy making. On the other hand, although the members of the local assembly are elected, and they can and do participate in debates in policy making, such as through the budget deliberations, we have not so far examined their participation in educational policy making.

In 1999, when the town introduced TT in junior-high schools, the mayor took on the leadership of it. In the process of decision-making, the assembly aimed at reducing the number of proposals from the mayor. As a result, the TT policy in junior-high school was slimmed down. In an to expand the TT policy to the elementary schools, the mayor proposed budgets to the assembly in 2000. However, because of insufficient deliberation time, in addition to the “petition problem”, this proposal was not given approval from the assembly.

Based on these studies, and applying the veto players’ theory, the author analyzed the case studies theoretically. The author showed diagrammatically the interaction between the mayor and assembly. Sowa town assembly focused on reducing the estimated budget for the TT policy. In 1999, they were able to persuade the mayor and the school board to compromise the budgetary limitation. On the other hand, when the mayor tried to extend the TT policy to elementary schools in 2000, the assembly rejected the expansion because of the “petition problem” and the poorly-thought-out nature of it, and the assembly took a tougher line.

Education Reform in universities is one of the most important issues in Japanese higher education. In spite of many policies by Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) and efforts by various universities, there is a serious problem: the absence of a clear perspective on “diffusion of educational reforms.”

Because of the shortage of revenue, most of the policies proposed by MEXT have the same pattern: MEXT supports only good practices by a limited number of universities and each of other universities follows them with their own responsibility. For example, the GP projects by MEXT aimed to improve higher education by (1) providing competitive funding for selected good educational practices and (2) making information about this public so that other universities could refer to it. However, the actual GP projects have not achieved the second goal-promoting mutual references. MEXT can provide the information, but it cannot force universities to accept such practices. It depends on the autonomy of each institution whether universities implement the reforms.

Meanwhile, diffusion of educational reforms has hardly been a topic in Japanese higher education researches. There are many studies about educational reform projects, but most of them intend “to introduce the respective practices” or “to make networks for reform by universities themselves. These research studies also presuppose the autonomy of universities. On the other hand, a few studies show that, for diffusion of educational reform the improvement of awareness in universities by external pressure is important as well as their autonomy.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a systematic model to promote the mutual reference between universities and diffusion of educational reforms. Some research in the USA has applied the theory of “diffusion of innovation” by E. M. Rogers to educational reforms. Here we focus our attention on a study by A. Kezar. Her model shows the factors within a higher education system which interconnect universities and promote innovations. This model suggests three factors for diffusion: (1) deliberation, (2) networks and (3) external support and incentives. These factors are interrelated in the whole higher education system.

Kezar's model seems to be appropriate, if we consider an additional factor which we explaining later, for a case study about Professional Science Master's (PSM), a new professional degree in the USA which certifies both scientific knowledge and real world skills, for example, communication skills, industrial management skills, and so on. The factor which Kezar did not observe is the role of industrial society. For diffusion of PSM, industrial society is very important. It advises universities to make the curriculum useful for the real world, funds the PSM programs, supports them by internships or cooperated projects, and makes some policy proposals to government.

In the present paper, we propose a new model. It has a triple-layer structure. A new organization called “buffer body” in the second layer integrates funds by industries and make their demands reasonable. In addition, there is a direct path such as the Industrial Advisor Boards in PSM between first layer―universities―and third layer―industries―. The triple-layer system assures the autonomy of higher education and enables close collaboration between industries and universities.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how an ambiguous concept of accountability has functions and consequences for the diversity of teachers and parents and for the relationship between them from a micro-political perspective: focusing on the interactions where teachers treat parents' requests written in a questionnaire for a school evaluation.

My conclusions are as follows. Firstly, an ambiguous concept of accountability makes it possible for every teacher to articulate his/her or parents' claim to a different kind of concept of accountability in interactions with colleagues. Teachers interpret parents' requests for improvement of children's scholastic achievements as inadequate claims with reference to the concept of performance accountability. On the other hand, they interpret their rejection of such requests as adequate behavior with reference to the concept of professional accountability.

In addition, the principal, the vice-principal and others refer to the concept of stretched accountability that teachers are obliged to respond to any parents' requests seeing that they required parents to answer the questionnaire. By narrating such a kind of accountability, they urge their colleagues to respond to parents' claims.

These show that teachers narrate an ambiguous concept of accountability as rhetoric to justify their own claims, to criticize parents' claims and to persuade others to do something which narrators want.

Secondly, teachers' interactions in the school accountability system function to reduce the diversity of parents and teachers. And these have consequences to confirm and construct the division between teachers and parents. In interactions, teachers tend to categorize parents who complain as exceptions or agents for their wayward children. Thus teachers can decrease their responsibility for parents' claims. These narrow stereotypes of parents implicate adversary relationships with parents.

Besides, the diversity of parents is reduced through the process in which teachers select parents' requests to be responded. This reduction is achieved by various concerns of the principal, the section chief and others through various steps of the school accountability system.

In contrast, the diversity of teachers is inspired by parents' claims at first. Some teachers criticize some rules and activities which have not been regarded as troubles in the context of countering parents. But their diversity is not shown to parents in the PTA meeting. This means that their various opinions are eventually discarded in favor of a school official opinion.

That is to say, in the school accountability system parents are not recognized as equal members to teachers in discussing school problems and improvement. School accountability means that the school as a unified official organization gives some accounts to parents after reducing parents' diversity by selection and simplifying their claims.

Thirdly, the accountability system leads teachers to prefer ease of explanations to complication of educational activities. This preference has a risk of oversimplification of the complexity of them.

The macro-policy aims to improve school performance by promoting cooperation between teachers and parents by the concept and the system of accountability. Paradoxically, the micro-politics in the school has functions and consequences to reduce the diversity of teachers and parents and to construct a division between them by the rhetorical concepts and the selection system of accountability.

In California, bilingual education programs, which both English and language minorities' primary language are taught in, have been restricted in all public schools since 1998 due to the adoption of Proposition 227. Since then all students, including language minority students, have been taught only in English as a rule.

However, as the California law does allow parents to choose their children's school, they can choose schools that implement bilingual programs.

Recently, in the U.S., especially in California, the number of schools implementing Two-Way Immersion (TWI) programs has been increasing. TWI programs include a fairly equal number of both native English speakers and English language learners (language minorities). The goals of these programs are for both groups of students to become bilingual and for their academic performance to be at or above grade level. Because the use of minority languages is restricted by Proposition 227, the implementation of these programs is based on parental choice of schools.

Critics of school choice policies, especially charter schools, argue that these policies divide U.S. society along racial or ethnic lines and increase segregation by race and class.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential for school choice to secure equal educational opportunities for language minorities. This will be done by analyzing the racial and ethnic composition and social stratum in TWI schools.

The findings of these analyses are as follows: 1) There are many segregated schools in which the majority of students are Hispanic. But some schools are integrated and the criticism of the disunited society does not always apply to the TWI schools. 2) Most TWI schools have a high percentage of Hispanic students who mainly speak Spanish at home, but these programs integrate Hispanic (language minority) students into English speaking society and the parents of students at the Language Academy of Sacramento (LAS), a charter school, recognize the importance of English in the U.S. and a globalized world. Moreover, it must be noted that the high proportion of Hispanic students is a result of a fair procedure to admit students. 3) At Fairmount Elementary School, which is located in a predominantly white and upper-class area of San Francisco, the students are being racially integrated gradually, because white, upper-class parents take an interest in the TWI program. LAS, which is located in a predominantly lower-class and nonwhite area, attracts parents and students of middle or upper classes outside its attendance area. These schools (re) unite the social classes (lower, middle, upper) as well as races or ethnicities (white and Hispanic).

The existence of so many segregated TWI schools does not allow for any optimism about (re) unification of races and classes. However, the two aforementioned schools, which are realizing (re) unification, show the potential for school choice to secure equal educational opportunities for high academic achievement of language minorities after the passage of Proposition 227, counteracting the criticisms of school choice.

The purpose of this article is to clarify the characteristics of the school evaluation theory that the Civil Information and Education Section (CIE) introduced into Japan after WWⅡ. In particular, this article clarifies what the school evaluation system that CIE had planned is. The author analyzes a report entitled Cooperative Evaluation of Education (kyoiku no kyodo hyoka) that a group of agricultural education teacher consultants and teachers wrote during the fourth session of the Institute For Educational Leaders (IFEL). As the report seems to have been developed in connection with the policy for agricultural high school standards, it is analyzed in this context.

Cooperative Evaluation of Education was edited to review the postwar agricultural high school reform that the CIE vocational educationist Ivan Nelson had been promoting. This report incorporated two school standards into the evaluation standards. The first school standard is the “curriculum standard” (kyoka katei kijun) intended to spread new agricultural education and promote organization of the curriculum reflecting the industrial structure of each area. The second school standard is the “educational condition standard” (kyouiku joken kijun) for agricultural education, which takes into consideration various educational activities. There is another characteristic in the editing procedure that Cooperative Evaluation of Education was written under Nelson’s instruction by teacher consultants and teachers who were practically leading agricultural education. Thi characteristic resulted in the compilation of the “curriculum standard” and the “educational condition standard” with consideration for the specific and inherent nature of agricultural education. Therefore, this report, which is regarded as one of the forerunners based on the doctrine of local autonomy of education, searches for ways to establish what a school should be and to realize it in the field of agricultural high schools.

Now school standards that have provided ideal educational condition over different school levels are weakening. The school evaluation theory of Cooperative Evaluation of Education is significant because it requires the government to fulfill the “educational condition standard” incorporated into the evaluation standards and attempts to attain the “curriculum standard” by autonomous evaluation.

Particularly in the research on educational administration, teachers' collaboration in schools is emphasized in terms of school reform and teachers' professional development. However, there are two problems in the previous research. First, it is not yet clear how collaboration between teachers is established. Second, it is not the case in Japan that school leadership is a promotional factor affecting teachers' collaboration as is the case in other countries where school empowerment is widely promoted. Teachers' collaboration as an inner process of school management is likely to be affected by regional characteristics and institutional conditions; this is decisively important in Japan where public schools have close involvement with to school boards in matters from technical advice on school management to personnel allocation of teachers.

Then, in this study, I try to ascertain the determining factors in the performance of teachers' collaboration, using quantitative data from a survey administered to public elementary school principals. Specifically, I measure the degree of teachers' mutual support in teaching methods and improving the curriculum as indexes of teachers' collaboration. I also clarify social and institutional factors—school size, personnel allocation of teachers, school boards' advice to schools and demands of parents promoting teachers' collaboration to some extent.

Finally I argue that teachers' collaboration has to be promoted by means of a wide range of management including the social and institutional environment around schools, not only an internal approach in school-based management.