In 2006, the election process for superintendents in Korea drastically changed. Since the change in 2006, Korean education has been facing many new unprecedented situations in terms of the governance of education, as well as education policies. This thesis examines the development and current issues of the election of superintendents in Korea focusing on the following three topics: the historical development of superintendent elections, the consequences of the superintendent elections, and current issues regarding the superintendent elections.

The superintendent election process has had three reforms since 1991. When the local education autonomy was revived in 1991, the superintendents were elected by members of the local boards of education, who themselves were elected by local assemblymen. However, this election process was overshadowed by several corruption scandals implicating incumbent superintendents and candidates, leaving society feeling a lack of representation. In 1997, the election process was reformed. The superintendents were then elected by members of school governing bodies. It was the objective of this reform to prevent election offences and to strengthen the representativeness of superintendents through expanding the Electoral College. The election process for superintendents was reformed for the third time in 2006. Superintendents are now elected by citizens, a compromise that was adopted to appease the resistance of the opponents.

In 2007, the first superintendent election was carried out and several elections have taken place since then. Low voter turnout and high election costs emerged as the most serious problems of the new election process. Another problem included ballot position effect. However, many problems have been solved over the years through experience, as well as trial and error, of running the elections.

Despite criticism, the new superintendent election system has made a dramatic change in Korean education. Most of all, the appearance of many “progressive” superintendents, who have been recently elected, has been a catalyst for great change. After the new election, the relationship between the government and local education government became more lateral. The liaison and cooperation between the local education government and local government was more solidified. Furthermore, newly elected superintendents introduced new school policies, such as innovation schools, free lunches, and student human rights ordinance, breathing new vitality into Korean education policy.

However, there is some contradiction from the founding principles guiding the superintendent election process of the past and the present day election process. The new election system has made a momentous enhancement of the representativeness of superintendents, which had been criticized in the past as the most serious problem of the local education autonomy in Korea. On the other hand though, one of the most important principles that had been used in the past to defend the local education autonomy, the political impartiality of education, has now turned into an almost fatal principle that is threatening to abolish local education autonomy.

This paper consider the issue of educational professionalism and political intervention focusing on the registration of the “School Standards and Framework Act 1998” in the UK. The paper argues that the crucial issue in the present circumstances for this theme is the institutional fatigue, and its maintenance. The paper suggests that political intervention can be an effective method to recover the institutional fatigue of the system based on educational professionalism.

The School Standards and Framework Act 1998 enabled LEAs to intervene into schools and the Secretary of State to intervene into LEAs, when they find failures there. Although the question was raised wheather this act would further enforce the power of the government, no substantial oppositions was raised in the Parliament Debates. This was because this registration intended to deal with a specific case of failure, and this intention was shared among the House members as a reasonable ultimate solution. The case was that of the London Borough of Hackney. As the local authority itself was already assessed as failing in Hackney, arguments were focused on Article 8 of the act, which gives the Secretary of State the power to take over the failing local authorities.

Hackney Council had been struggling to improve its education since the previous Conservative government revealed the troubles Hackney had in the early 1990s, but there were no significant improvements. The new Labour government, in 1997, immediately launched a series of powerful actions to support Hackney including dispatching the Hackney Improvement Team, whose recommendations, however, the Council would not implement entirely. This was the background to the introduction of Article 8 of the act.

As soon as the act was enacted, Article 8 was adapted to Hackney, and its school improvement services and its ethnic minority achievement service were taken away from the Council and transferred to a private company Nord Anglia in 1999. Three years later, in 2002, all educational services were taken away and transferred to the Hackney Learning Trust, which was a non-profit private organisation established in Hackney specifically for this purpose, with a 10-year contract. Thus, time-related powerful political intervention was employed as a tool to repair the institutional fatigue. This project has turned out to be successful.

This paper interprets this registration of the radical article and its adaptation to Hackney as an emergency method for educational governance reform, which means a governance reform adjusting custommade tools with a non-regular governance logic, but effective to recover the damage. The reason why the Hackney case was successful is because two factors: first, radical but effective tools were successfully programmed for Hackney, second, the case where the radical tools would be applied was clearly targeted and shared. Without these factors, the tools would not be effective but could cause harm, because the logic of the time-related radical tools and the actual education situation are not necessarily compatible.

The Purpose of this paper is to clarify the characteristics of national policy on teacher evaluation in Japan, from the view point of the comparative study on those policies in the United States.

To make the comparative view point, this paper analyzed on the following law reforms and policies surrounding the teacher evaluation in the U.S: 1)the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), 2)the Race to the Top Program (RTTT), 3)the NCLB waiver policy, and 4)the state education policy centralizing the teacher evaluation system. Through the analysis of those matters, the author found that, under the federal education initiatives, most states were urged to amend teacher tenure laws and collective bargaining laws so that students' test scores could be significant evidence to dismiss the “ineffective” teachers. Under the competitive based federal grant and its selection criteria of the RTTT, as well as the conditions to waive the duty of the NCLB, the federal government strengthened its political influence on the teacher policy which had been within the authority of each state and local government.

In order to examine the teacher evaluation system in Japan, the author focused on the political background and the purpose of the new Local Public Employee Act (LPA) of 2014, which mandated all public employers to implement the new personnel assessment system for local public employees including public school teachers. The author clarified that the purpose of the law was to decrease the personnel expenses, and that the law provided the public employers with comprehensive discretion to conduct the assessment, while the law strictly ordered them to use the assessment for personnel decisions and to take actions against the ineffective public employees. In addition to the analysis of the LPA, the author inquired into the personnel assessment for national public employees, which had already been implemented from 2008 and was supposed to be the model for local public employees. The author found that the assessment system was strictly systematized on usage of the assessment for personnel decisions including promotions, pay raises, and dismissals.

Through those findings, this paper examined the similarities and the differences of the teacher evaluation policies between the U.S. and Japan. The similarities could be found in the centralization of the teacher policy, and in the consequences of which those policies transformed not only the teacher evaluation system but whole traditional teacher law system in both countries. The differences of the policies also could be found; while the U.S. federal government intervened into the teacher evaluation system at the expense of federal grants, the national government in Japan introduced the new assessment system with the aim of decreasing the personnel expenses. Whereas the federal government placed the teacher evaluation at the core of the “education policy,” Japanese government introduced it without “educational” policy, but with a policy of structural reform to decrease the national public expenses.

The purpose of this article is to analyze the meaning and importance of the policy of professional and cultural standards in the neo-liberal educational reform in the U.S..

The first national professional standards for the teachers were made and published by the NBPTS in 1989. In California, California Standards for the Teaching Profession was established in 2009 by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing. As for the standards for principals, ISLLC made the first national standards for principals in 1996. The purposes of these professional standards were:

１．To make clear the content of professional ability of teachers and principals.

２．To reach an agreement among interested parties by involving them in making these standards.

３．To strengthen the professional autonomy of teachers and principals by involving them in making the standards.

４．To improve the academic achievement of children by strengthening the professionalization of teachers and principals.

‘Standards’ are also utilized to guarantee the cultural diversity and democracy by community involvement. This is called a cultural standards. In Alaska, the educational policy for indigenous people was changed from a policy which promotes the assimilation of indigenous people to American culture to the one which respects the culture of indigenous people in the 1990's. Alaska Standards for Culturally Responsive Schools was established in 1998. There is a state educational content standards for all the children in Alaska, but, cultural standards are made for the indigenous people by indigenous people. Cultural standards do not deny but make up the content standards.

Neither professional nor cultural standards reject the neo-liberal education at all, but make up and strengthen the teacher’s professional ability, cultural diversity and democracy which were weakened by neoliberal reform.

In conclusion, the history of educational reform since the 1980's was an effort to unite the neo-liberal reform with anti or revised reform. The professional and cultural standards policy were the typical strategies for these unifying efforts.

However, there is now a big problem with these unifying efforts, because neo-liberal education movements began to enforce the accountability policy which criticizes and weakens the professionalization of teachers and empowerment of teachers. Diane Ravitch who was once at the center of neo-liberal reform and Linda Darling-Hammond who have tried to unify the neo-liberal reform with the professionalization of teachers began to criticize these policies. As for the cultural standards, in Alaska, by the federal NCLB law, cultural diversity of indigenous people began to be ignored in order to improve the academic achievement. In addition, the academic achievement of indigenous children has been lower than the average level of all Alaskan children. The Obama administration recently admitted that there is an achievement gap between indigenous children and another children and announced that the federal administration would begin to guarantee the indigenous children the chance to learn their indigenous language and history and support indigenous children in getting sufficient education including higher education.

A new accountability system would be required to respect the teacher's professionalization and cultural diversity which the two standards policy had pursued to improve the achievement for all children successfully.

This article examines issues regarding the reform of Japan's board of education system, and the new system in terms of the expertise of the educational administration. This paper focuses on the expertise of the educational administration as it relates to general administrative jobs.

The findings of this paper are as follows. First, the distrust surrounding the expertise of Japan's educational administration has caused the reform of the board of education system. The discussion regarding the reform included arguments about the reinforcement of political control for the educational administration; however, I did not discuss how we could improve the expertise of the educational administration and restore the trust of the educational administration. In the new board of education system, the problems faced by the bureau of the board of education and issues concerning the expertise of the educational administration still remain unresolved.

Second, it is important to examine the expertise required for general administrative jobs. In the field of education reform, there are many professional members of staff in the office. When we discuss the expertise of educational administration, we often focus on the expertise of the professional personnel, for example, superintendents or school education supervisors, etc. There are a large number of general administrative staff members in the bureaus of the board of education; however, nobody has analyzed their expertise in educational administration.

Political and market control are often used to govern educational administration and schools, as well as bureaucracy. These controls sometimes influence education policies and practices; however, they often create confusion for schools, teachers, parents, and pupils. Educational bureaus require self-directing governance, and the role of general administrative jobs in the board of education is important to prevent professional personnel from being self-serving and self-enclosed.

Third, this study examines how local governments in Japan hire and transfer general administrative personnel in the bureaus of the board of education. The results revealed that about a sixth of the prefectures hire general administrative staff personnel in the bureaus of the board of education separately from the governor's offices. Many of the local governments hire general administrative staff personnel in the bureaus of the board of education and the governor's office together.

In the latter case, a few prefectures or big cities make some general administrative staff members put the bureaus of the board of education for many years and make them experts on educational administration. However, almost all local governments keep transferring general administrative staff members in the short term.

We have little knowledge about how general administrative staff members improve their expertise in a specific area. Especially in the field of policies, which includes several professions, the expertise of the general administrative staff members tends to be underestimated. We have to conduct research on the expertise of general administrative jobs.

The purpose of this study is to clarify the role of the school board in expanding education for foreign children in Japanese public schools.

The education policies related to foreign children in Japan, mainly serve the purpose of supporting children's entry to elementary schools or junior high schools and for teaching Japanese as a second language. On the other hand, at the national level, the concrete education policies that immigrant nations adopt do not exist in Japan, for example policies on second language education, improving students' achievement, and the way to guarantee rights on ethnic education for foreign children under the compulsory education system which educates the nation.

Therefore I focused on the role of the local school board to examine the possibility of guaranteeing or improving the academic achievement of foreign children especially in learning Japanese as a second language. As an example, I chose the policy adopted by the school board in Matsusaka City, Mie Prefecture. To analyze the characteristics of these policies, I quoted the analysis framework of international investigation that OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) investigated from the viewpoint of emigrant education policy analysis, that is “OECD Reviews of Migrant Education, Closing the Gap for Immigrant Students: Policies, Practice and Performance”.

As a result of the analysis, I found that the role of the school board in Matsusaka City in expansion of education for foreign children is to bring about“ the spread” and “the guarantee of the quality”. “The spread” was carried out from two directions, namely, the spread of the practice for many schools and the common understanding between teachers or the people concerned. “The guarantee of the quality” was carried out from two directions, namely, the guarantee of the quality of educational practices and the professional teaching skill of teachers.

As a result of example analysis of Matsusaka City, what became clear was that it may guarantee “an opportunity to access the fundamental education” for foreign children, if it is supported by statutory grounds at a national level, but it cannot necessarily guarantee “the quality of education” for foreign children. The reason is because what kind of education and teaching systems are necessary differ according to the residence situation of the foreigner (for example, whether they are living concentratedly or dottedly, whether they are permanent residents or not, and whether they are multilingual). Therefore I concluded that the role of local school boards especially at a city level that can achieve “the spread of and the guarantee of the quality of” education for foreign children is to make policies based on the residence situation of the foreigner.

This article analyzes the influences and challenges of urban redevelopment policies on school restructuring in Chicago, U.S. from a spatial perspective by focusing on the works of Pauline Lipman. This article focuses on 1)the interaction and dynamics of the educational policy, the housing policy, and the economic policy, and 2)how the circumstances and process of children's development are influenced by the dynamics of these policies in the city. Through these analyzes, this article makes theoretical and practical suggestions for Japan.

In 2004, Mayor and Chicago Public Schools (CPS) started the “Renaissance 2010” plan which has closed public schools and reopened them as choice schools. School closures have been concentrated on the inner city. These have been caused largely by the housing policy.

The City of Chicago has conducted a plan for transformation of public housing. This plan started with the good intention of demolishing the decaying public housing and building mixed-income housing to overcome the social isolation and poverty of low-income families. However, this has resulted in “gentrification”. It means the rapid upgrade of the inner city unsuitable for residents. There is a hidden intention behind it to make Chicago one of the most economically powerful cities, “Global City”.

This article found that the school restructuring is forced to function as a key factor to achieve this aim. Closing public schools increases the instability of low-income families who have been already distressed by the demolition of public housing. Finally it also makes doubly sure to push them out of the city. Reopening new choice schools becomes the key aspect which shows urban renewal to the middle class families and attracts them from suburban areas. Through these processes, Chicago's political and economical structures have been transformed to make them suitable for the new industrial structure. This is the new trend of educational policy under globalization.

Next this article examines the process of closing and reopening schools. In Chicago, the disinvestment to public schools and the educational accountability policy by CPS have made it easy to bring about school closures. In the process of reopening schools, people have been deprived of their voices for decision-making regarding new schools. In addition, the new choice schools can get money to build new school buildings from the city funds for urban renewal. As a result, 150 public schools have been closed, and reopened as a “beautiful” “choice” school. Low-income students tend to lose access to good schools.

This article concludes with suggestions that 1)if the educational policy is influenced by urban strategies, schooling may alienate children's development, and 2)under globalization with scarce resources, the improvement of schools and communities has to be achieved exclusively at the sacrifice of other things. Educational administration will play a more important role in coordinating resources among them.

The purpose of this article is to clarify the commitment to educational administration by the ward mayor of a government-designated city. First, it analyzes educational works which were relegated from the board of education to mayoral departments and agencies, focusing on the difference between delegation and assistance in execution. Second, it analyzes the case of Osaka City Board of Education Ward Commissioner System. The reason I chose Osaka City Board of Education Ward Commissioner System as the sample is the following：after the mayoral elections, Toru Hashimoto progressed with decentralization reform from city to ward in Osaka city and gave more power to the ward mayor. Therefore, I analyzed this case to clarify the commitment to educational administration by the ward mayor.

In analyzing the case of Osaka City Board of Education Ward Commissioner System, this paper focuses on the related policy process and the role of the ward mayor in implementing school choice. In addition, I consider the concept of“ integration or separation”.

The following is the findings of this research. First, from the result of comparison of the regulations of inter government-designated cities, it adopts typical assistance in execution between the board of education and mayoral departments and agencies. Second, Osaka City Board of Education Ward Commissioner System is the key concept in the commitment to educational administration in Osaka.

Based on the case study of Osaka, especially regarding educational administration issues, decentralization reform from city to ward has naturally strong aspirations of integration. This is because the ward has no board of education system. In addition, it pointed out problems such as “double principals” in setting a Ward Commissioner System like that of Osaka.