This chapter is developed in two sections. The first section discusses traditional patterns of thinking about the roles and responsibilities of those who take part in the governance of learning. The remaining pages address an emerging community context in which the governing function may occur. In both sections, an assumption is made that improvements in community governance of learning are not only warranted but achievable.

In this volume, the authors wrestle with the changing contexts that surround the work, the roles, and the responsibilities of educational leaders for the next generation of children and youth. What we have learned and are learning about children, their families, their teachers, their schools, their communities, and about how children learn and how they are taught is important for how we plan to organize and administer tomorrow's schools. The focus is on how educational leadership relates to ideological, institutional, and individual transformations that occur in abundance as society evolves. It is a volume where the authors audit some dimensions of the human condition relevant to teaching and learning and extract meaning and significance for those who expect to lead and administer our schools.

In this chapter I argue for substantial change in the structure and management of local governments, including school districts. I also call for reconsideration of the philosophy, leadership, and management of local-level institutions that affect the lives of children and youth in particular. I propose that the focus of local government be fixed on well-being, acknowledging education as primary to the quality of life for Americans of all ages. Over the next generation or two, communities need to phase out local school districts, local school boards, and local school superintendents in favor of new jurisdictions and authorities through a carefully developed and statutorily approved reconstituting process centered on the notion of well-being.

The mission of this Yearbook is to probe and analyze issues of educational policy posed by microcomputers and associated technologies. In Part One the authors address issues related to the impact of computers on the educational program. The chapters in Part Two consider some of the administrative aspects of the use of computer technologies in school situations. In Part Three, the authors deal with some of the broader social issues raised by the applications of technology to education.

The subject of this chapter is the application of computer technology to educational governance. According to Mitchell, three important aspects of educational governance attract scholarly attention: (a) the congeries of constitutional, statutory, and regulatory policies that are the parameters within which educational goals and objectives are prescribed; (b) the exercise of power and authority over education within the legal machinery of government at federal, state, and local levels; and (c) the linkage between, as well as the interdependency of, the managerial and political (executive and policy) functions.

The Board of Directors of the National Society for the Study of Education first considered a volume on the law and education in 1973. Authorization for the preparation of the volume was given in 1974. Discussions of the role and function of the courts with respect to education, especially regarding educational policy, were then on the increase. The desegregation of northern and western school districts escalated the visibility of the courts as policy makers. So did the litigation regarding equity in school finance, testing, corporal punishment, privacy, censorship, collective bargaining, compulsory attendance, and nonpublic schools.

The organizational structure through which education is governed and administered in the standard metropolitan statistical areas (SMSA's) of the nation has seldom been the subject of critical appraisal. The variety of public and private organizational arrangements for carrying on educational activities within a single SMSA is usually extensive. Similarly, the variation among the SMSA's of the nation is remarkable. An attempt is made in this chapter to describe some of the patterns of governing public education in the SMSA's, to develop some criteria for the construction of new patterns or for the appraisal of existing ones, to present one metropolitan design for public school control and administration, and to review some of the crucial issues that are imbedded in local educational government reform.