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This study examines the impact of school-district governance characteristics, which include board and management entrenchment and budget and audit committee expertise, on fiscal measures. Despite the significant influence school boards have over the determination and use of the bulk of property taxes, virtually no empirical research exists that examines the influence of school-district governance structures on fiscal outcomes. We find a positive association between board entrenchment and spending and find a negative association between budget and audit committee expertise and spending. The findings of this study confirm that governance structure matters for fiscal outcomes and recommendations are provided to support efforts to improve fiscal efficiency of school-district governance.

Although it is assumed that school district governance by districts leaders can impact schools’ capacity to improvement and educational quality, there is little systematic evidence to support this claim. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how governance goals and interventions affect school districts’ social capital.

The empirical enquiry used quantitative data on district leaders enacting governance as perceived by their school principals. These data were collected among 399 school principals of 23 Dutch school districts in elementary education, using a survey. Social network data on social capital within school districts were collected using a social network survey among educational administrators (i.e. district leaders, central office administrators and school principals). Additionally, examples of the relation between school district social capital and governance at six school districts were described.

Results suggest that district leaders can promote the organizational social capital of their school districts through focusing on educational goals. In addition, the findings show that they can reinforce their impact by using interventions varying in coercion level, of which offering support to school principals appears to be “a golden button” to make organizational social capital thrive.

Limitations to the study are the generalizability of the findings (they can be questioned because “convenience sampling” was used) and warrant a longitudinal design to examine how organization social capital develops over time.

The study is unique as it addresses the impact district leaders may have on their districts’ social capital by focusing on social network approach in the study of school district governance.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an in‐depth analysis of a major fraud case in a local government setting, specifically a public school district, as a guide to managers and overseers of such organizations and as an instructional resource. Fraud cases outside the corporate arena have not been well represented in the literature.

The paper describes the multi‐faceted fraud that occurred, identifies the control, oversight and auditing deficiencies that permitted it to happen, and suggests how adherence to good practices contributes to fraud prevention. What happened, why it happened, and how it might have been prevented are discussed. An extensive state audit provides richness of detail for this case study.

The absence of, or non‐adherence to, internal controls, failures of oversight by the supervisory board, collusion among top executives, and substandard auditing all contributed to a multi‐million dollar public fraud extending over several years. The case led to new requirements for the financial management of school districts.

The case provides guidance to management, board members, auditors, and regulators as to how fraud can thrive when control and oversight deficiencies exist, and demonstrates how adherence to good practices can reduce the occurrence of fraud in the local government environment.

This paper provides a broader exposure to a major, multi‐faceted fraud case in a non‐corporate environment.

The purpose of this study is to explain the need for the implementation of decentralization of Indonesia social health insurance (INA-Medicare), with particular emphasis for Aceh Province. First, it discusses the inconsistency of Act on National Social Security System (ANSSS) to the 1945 Constitution, because certain rules in ANSSS are contrary to the 1945 Constitution. This weakens the practice of broader regional autonomy, lessens the importance of public service quality in health care and ignores specific cultural and religious values of the regional people. Then, it explains provisions on central and regional government authority in the 1945 Constitution, Act on Regional Autonomy and Act on Governing of Aceh. Later, it explores current law and practice of INA-Medicare under the national social security system and the centralized administering body. Finally, it provides reasons for decentralization of INA-Medicare, as the solution.

This study uses doctrinal legal research. It relies on both primary and secondary legal authorities. In additions, it also uses sociolegal research by relying on non-legal materials, including empirical data from books, journals and newspapers. Analysis of legal authorities is by legal reasoning process, whereas analysis of non-legal materials is by qualitative approach.

This study argues that the decentralization of INA-Medicare is more suitable for Aceh Province because of several reasons, including implementing broader regional autonomy, improving public service quality in health care and implementing the principle of sharia social health insurance.

The study is original because it focuses on a specific regional area of Aceh Province, Indonesia. It concentrates on specific legal issues and provides unique reasons for argumentation. Therefore, it provides important specific information for journal readers.

For a good part of the U.S. system of federalism municipal incorporation has been the formal structure for local communities. Over the last 60 years there has been a shift in this structure to special district government. The Woodlands, Texas presents an interesting case study on the incremental development of a former New Town community, the change in formal government organization and the potential for a different model of local governance structure in the 21st Century. The authors explore the four stages of development for The Woodlands over the past 40 years and assess this development through several model theories including institutional, urban regime, and urban governance. Contrary to some current literature on governance, The Woodlands appears to have transitioned from decentralization to more centralization while at the same time avoiding full incorporation as a municipality. It may be indicative of the new governance.

The purpose of this research was to determine the extent to which American school board members faced electoral competition, as well as the factors influencing the likelihood of competition.

The authors utilized original national survey data of American school board members linked with school district demographic data obtained from the National Center for Education Statistics. Several hypotheses were tested using three state-level fixed-effects logistic regression models predicting electoral competition.

The authors found that 39.6% of American school board members reported not having an opponent in their most recent election. School board members serving larger urban school districts with higher percentages of special needs students and racial minorities were more likely to have faced electoral competition.

The authors highlighted potential flaws in the traditional model of local democratic governance and helped expand understanding of the dissatisfaction theory of American democracy and continuous participation theory. The authors concluded with several suggestions on how the results can be used to inform future local governance reforms that increase electoral competition and/or create more effective governance models.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether Washington State school district financial reporting and budget reporting meet the information needs of school board directors charged with governance.

Washington State school board directors were surveyed and asked to rank information items’ usefulness in carrying out their governance role. School district annual reports, budgets and websites were examined to determine whether the identified information was reported and easily transparent to those charged with governance and the public.

Directors rank information on strategic oversight, budget planning and student outcomes as more useful, consistent with the strategic role of new public management. Follow-on analysis of district annual financial reports, budgets and websites reveal that the availability of the information ranked useful by directors is limited. The findings suggest an information gap exists between directors’ information needs and school district reporting. Annual reports and budgets, when provided, often provide typical financial statements and variance data, respectively, rather than reporting on mission-aligned performance measures. The main consequence of the information gap may be compromised decision-making effectiveness.

By directly asking those charged with governance what information they identify as useful and then examining whether the information is reported in the annual report, budget or website, the study links user information needs to information transparency.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a postdoctoral research study examining the importance of multi-level leadership and health governance for ensuring the implementation of national and provincial health sector strategies that aim to improve maternal and neonatal health (MNH) in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

A descriptive-interpretive qualitative, institutional approach was undertaken to explore the impact of provincial and district governance mechanisms on the delivery of MNH services in two districts in East New Britain Province (ENBP), Papua New Guinea (PNG). Data were collected from 12 key informants. Informants were selected on the basis of their direct involvement in health system management and deployment of health at provincial and district health governance levels.

The analysis revealed alignment between global strategies and national and provincial policy, suboptimal provincial government support related to implementation of policy, divergent data between districts and a disconnect between the local governance mechanisms and a donor-funded initiative for raising midwifery education.

This qualitative study was limited by the small sample size and does not claim to be representative of ENBP or other provinces in PNG.

This paper contributes empirical evidence to the literature on health policy, leadership and governance for MNH, by recognising and exploring the formal and informal rules at play in a given context, and examining how they are made, changed, monitored and enforced. These insights are critical to understanding how the system actually functions (or not) to implement MNH strategies in LMICs.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of monitoring local authorities on the quality of governance and public services reported by citizens in Vietnam, using the Vietnam Governance and Public Administration Performance Index (PAPI) surveys.

PAPI randomly selected 200 locations in 93 districts of 30 provinces to conduct its survey in 2010, and subsequently rolled out the survey nationally in 2011 and 2012. Using 2011 and 2012 survey data, the authors compare the quality of governance and public services reported in provinces and districts that were covered in the 2011 PAPI survey with those that were not surveyed in 2010. Theories suggest that local authorities may improve their behavior if they have been surveyed and are, thus, aware that they are being monitored, leading to higher quality governance.

In this paper, the authors find that governance quality reported in later years by citizens in the surveyed provinces and districts of the 2010 PAPI survey was significantly higher than the quality reported by citizens in locations that were not surveyed in 2010. Monitoring appears to improve a wide range of governance aspects, including local participation in village decisions, transparency of local decision-making, accountability, administrative procedures and public service delivery.

The main innovation of this study is to use a randomized survey on governance as a natural experiment to measure the impact of monitoring on the quality of governance and public services, as reported by citizens.

The purpose of this paper is to present the author's commentary on the special issue of Journal of Educational Administration entitled “Systemwide reform: examining districts under pressure”.

The major thesis of this commentary and reflection on the preceding papers is that there is a need to recognize that “school districts” as known in the USA are examples of a more general phenomenon of intermediary organizational entities in education systems in North America and elsewhere in the world and that there is a need to problematize, not take for granted, the form, purpose, and influence of these mediating layers of the school system on the quality and improvement of schools, and on the implementation of government policies that are intended to regulate and support education in schools.

This issue of the Journal of Educational Administration presents a series of papers that highlight different aspects and contemporary trends in school district practice and research – organizational characteristics associated with district effectiveness (see Trujillo this issue), how districts are responding to political and public demands for accountability (see Hamilton et al., this issue), the invention of school district authorities as portfolio managers of diverse school provider systems (see Marsh et al., this issue), and how social communication networks linking school and district staff interface with the use of evidence to support school improvement (see Finnigan and Daly, as well as Wohlstetter and Smith this issue).

The simple thesis of this commentary is to argue that school districts function as an intermediate level of education governance, management, and support within national and state education systems, and that current research and discussion on the school district role in improving and sustaining the quality of education would be strengthened by broadening the scope of research and discussion to alternative kinds of intermediate level governance and support systems that exist in North America and in other regions of the world.