Administrative decentralization and community policy: Review and outlook

Conclusions

The issues related to administrative decentralization, community control, and community participation have not been satisfactorily resolved by the various proponents. Do students, schools, or society really benefit? There is little research evidence that any one of these three administrative models, alone or combined, have positive effects. If no systematic response to these models is provided by the proponents, they are operating on unsupported assertions or questionable assumptions, reform slogans, and political pressures, and many of their concusions, either stated or implied, are probably unjustified.

The lack of data on administrative-community “solutions” (decentralization, community control, even community participation) means there are more slogans than carefully worked-out concepts with consequences understood and accounted for. We often assume that the “community” voice is the most vocal and articulated, and we have yet to hear from the majority of silent parents, who have their own aspirations for their children and their own ideas about how the school should fulfill them. Indeed, we need a partnership between practitioners and researchers, among the various interest groups, and especially between blacks and whites, if a breakthrough is to be made to a higher level of mutual understanding and quality education for all children and youth.