Research Catalog

Title

Battling corruption in America's public schools / Lydia G. Segal ; with a foreword by James B. Jacobs.

Author

Segal, Lydia G., 1962-

Publication

Boston : Northeastern University Press, ©2004.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xxv, 257 p.; 25 cm.

Summary

• "This book exposes how embedded waste and fraud deplete classroom resources, block initiative, and distort educational priorities and explains how to remedy the problem. Drawing on extensive interviews and investigative research in America's three largest districts. New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago, Segal argues that the problem is not usually bad people, but a bad system that focuses on process at the expense of results.
• She shows how regulations that were established to curb waste and fraud provide perverse incentives. Districts following rules designed to save every penny spend thousands of dollars to hunt down checks for amounts as small as twenty-five dollars.
• To fix leaky toilets, caring principals may have to pay workers under the table because submitting a works order through the central office, with its many fraud checks, could take years, Meanwhile, those who pilfer from classrooms may get away because the pyramidal structure of large districts makes schools inherently difficult to oversee."
• "Drawing on initiatives in successful districts, Segal offers pragmatic solutions and a detailed blueprint for reform. She calls for radically restructuring districts, empowering principles, and establishing new, less stifling forms of accountability that put a premium on performance."--Jacket.

Subject

• Public schools > Corrupt practices > Illinois > Chicago > Case studies
• Public schools > Corrupt practices > California > Los Angeles > Case studies
• Public schools > Corrupt practices > New York (State) > New York > Case studies
• Education, Urban > Illinois > Chicago > Case studies
• Education, Urban > California > Los Angeles > Case studies
• Education, Urban > New York (State) > New York > Case studies
• Education, Urban
• Public schools > Corrupt practices
• Bekämpfung
• Korruption
• Öffentliche Schule
• California > Los Angeles
• Illinois > Chicago
• New York (State) > New York
• USA

Genre/Form

• Case studies
• Case studies.
• Études de cas.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [197]-249) and index.

Contents

Public education as big business -- Charting corruption, waste, and abuse -- Where the money goes -- The toll on education -- The quest for accountability -- The centralization mess -- Toward a theory of school waste and fraud -- Watching the pennies but missing the millions -- The cost of managerial paralysis -- Creative noncompliance : information power networks -- When anticorruption machinery breeds corruption -- Lessons from local political school control -- Lessons from bureaucratic autonomy -- Lessons from resistance to reform -- Establishing independent inspectors general -- Removing the dominant coalition -- Restructuring school districts to push power downward -- The model of Edmonton, Canada -- Loosened top-down controls and trust.

ISBN

• 1555535844
• 9781555535841

LCCN

2003008319

OCLC

• ocm52085944
• 52085944
• SCSB-8920590

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library