Essay 4 – Vic Vuchic
Is Decentralization of School Management/School Finances Good for Student
Achievement? Is It Good for Equity?”
Decentralization of school management and school finances has been a hot topic in
education policy for the last fifteen years.
Decentralization has been championed as the
solution to many of education’s woes including eliminating government bureaucracy,
increasing efficiency and accountability, and improving the quality and relevance of K-12
education. While decentralization has many positive aspects to it, it is not the panacea it is
often portrayed to be. In this essay I will review the four primary structures of the
decentralization/centralization debate, and then I will discuss some of the dynamics
decentralization may impact in the realms of student achievement and education equity.
The following are the four main categories of school management and financing
structures:
1. Centralized Financing and Centralized Management
Complete centralization of the school system provides the federal government with
total control over almost all financial distributions to schools as well as all administrative
and curriculum decisions. There are several strengths of this approach. The government
has the ability to ensure equity in both the financing and the quality of education. It is also
able to provide consistent curriculum and assessment throughout the country, and it can
enforce that a bare minimum level of educational support is provided to all of its citizens.
This approach is often criticized because government bureaucracy is perceived as wasteful
and inefficient. It is difficult for schools and communities to give feedback about their
needs to the government. Lastly, it is more of a one-size-fits-all approach; for example,
schools in rural areas will likely not benefit from policies meant to help urban school
districts.
2. Centralized Financing and Decentralized Management
Centralizing financing while decentralizing management allows government to
control equitable financial distribution based on federal tax revenues while giving local
governments and municipalities more control over how that money is spent and how the
schools and curricula are run. This type of a setup works well for some areas, especially
affluent ones, because it gives them more freedom to cater their schools around local needs
and issues. However, it is sometimes very difficult for lower income areas to take
advantage of decentralized management because they neither have the local expertise nor
the resources to handle the responsibility of school management, and they often need to
rely on the government for the planning and management of any school system.
3. Decentralized Financing and Centralized Management
Decentralized financing makes communities raise funding for schools on a local
level. This can obviously help affluent neighborhoods, but poor neighborhoods will tend
to suffer due to lower local tax revenue. In these circumstances, government sometimes
provides targeted support so that the community has at least a minimum level of funding.
This practice is fairly common in the U.S. Unfortunately, this does not address the
problem that children in lower income neighborhoods actually need more funding per
student to achieve the same quality of education as a student in a more affluent
community. Decentralized financing creates the biggest increase on inequalities in
education.
4. Decentralizing Financing and Decentralizing Management
Full decentralization gives local communities all of the freedom as well as the
entire burden of raising funding and managing the provision of education in the
community. While certain affluent areas can handle this, many lower income communities
or regions just do not have the tax base or the resources to handle this situation.
Each of these four approaches can be administered in a hybrid manner. For
example, rather than completely decentralizing the financing or administration to
communities, some countries like the U.S. and Australia tend to delegate only certain
aspects of management from federal to the state level so that states manage financing and
budgets along with the communities or districts themselves. This helps provide some level
of redistribution and economies of scale for management.
As it pertains to student achievement, decentralization may help kids in affluent
areas because they will not have to share revenue with lower income neighborhoods. On
the other hand, without any significant centralized support (even at the state level) lower
income neighborhoods would struggle greatly. They would lose revenue that they used to
get from the common pool. This creates a major problem because children in lower
income neighborhoods actually require more capital per student in order to provide the
same quality of education of higher income neighborhoods. Even with extra financial
support from a centralized source, lower income communities need support and expertise
in school management that they do not have locally.
In conclusion, there are many different ways to centralize or decentralize various
aspects of the provision of education. In some cases decentralization of certain areas may
make sense and work for some communities. However, in other cases it can greatly
increase inequality, while only improving education for a few select groups or
communities.
1. Very well-structured.
2. 18/20