by Lynn J. Stinnette, Director of Urban Education, NCREL
Decentralization has become one of the cornerstones of the urban education reform movement. During the 1980s, following the first wave of reports on the crisis in American education, as many as 60 percent of the nation's school districts with 50,000 or more students decentralized (Ornstein, 1989). Faced with pressures as never before - low achievement, pervasive teacher and student disengagement from teaching and learning, inefficient bureaucracies, collapsing facilities, declining parent involvement, and fiscal cutbacks - many large urban school system superintendents and school boards turned to the business management practices of decentralization of authority and participatory decision-making for solutions.
Decentralization rests upon two major assumptions. The first is that by moving decision-making and accountability closer to the child and classroom, education will improve (Smith & Purkey, 1985). Shifting decision-making responsibility to local schools means redistributing power among various groups - principals, teachers, and parents - who have a legitimate stake in the content and quality of education. Proponents of decentralization believe that reallocation of power and authority to these key stakeholders will make schooling more responsive to the unique needs of local communities and will capitalize on the knowledge, creativity, and energy of people at the school and community level (Murphy, 1990).
The second major assumption underlying decentralization is that the most persistent problems in education can be attributed to the structure of schooling. The deeply ingrained ways of organizing and delivering educational services, often bolstered by long-standing statutes and regulations, must change fundamentally if schooling is to improve. Reformers who see the structure of schools at the root of education's problems have proposed essential revisions in the ways in which school systems are governed and structured, the roles adults play in schools, the content of the educational programs, and the processes used to educate children.
Yet, operating against the national trend toward decentralization is a tendency to recentralize. In 1988, a survey of large districts revealed that the percentage of urban districts that were decentralized had dropped from 60 to 31 percent (Ornstein, 1989). Is decentralization a waning fad? Has the road to decentralization proved to be so rocky that districts are abandoning it as a viable strategy for systemic improvement? Can we learn any lessons from districts that have successfully decentralized? This special issue of Policy Briefs will examine these questions and describe the practice and progress of decentralization in 13 urban districts in the north central region of the United States.
Posted on April 26, 1995
URL: http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/envrnmnt/go/93-1intr.htm
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