This paper examines the role and status of the teacher in the real decision making process in the public schools.
In all ways of American life, the last thirty years have witnessed the triumph of organization and bureaucracy and ouur public schools are no exception. Nothing has affected the role and status of the teacher more than the emergence within these vast oranizations, of the new managerial class that exists solely to keep the organizational machine running. This new class has gradually arrogated to itself all the real decision-making power. Decision-making in the schools has imperceptibly drifted out of the hands of the faculty and into those of managerial bureaucracy.
Traditional centers of faculty decision making have been bypassed while important decisions are made at the level of bureaucracy, which traditional facutly agencies are incapable of reaching effectively. Whenever a faculty clashes with the …