R ELATIONS between school administrators and teachers have always evidenced strains arising from the clash between the professional norm of individual autonomy for the classroom teacher and the bureaucratic requirement of hierarchical authority in a school system. In the past, internal squabbles generally remained muted, as American schoolmen stood shoulder to shoulder pleading the cause of better education. The show of professional unity was remarkable indeed. Such unity, however, rested on sand. Now school administrators are being harried by more, and more compelling, pressures from outside their professional ranks. Proposed changes in curriculum and instruction, problems of disadvantaged pupils, and dilemmas of de facto segregation, among others, pose new threats to administrative equanimity. At the same time, they are being challenged from within. Even their "friends" seem to be conspiring to complicate further their already complicated lives. As the president of the National Education Association (NEA) said: "It is understandable that a superintendent faced with such problems might be disappointed when teachers whom he has looked upon as supporters make a public issue of their desire for a more responsible role in the decision-making process for the school
