Decentralization Requires Serious Consideration
The following letter was written in response to
“‘100%
Solution” Fails the Test,” an editorial
by Access Executive Director Michael Rebell.
Dear Mr. Rebell:
Your recent Access editorial about the Fordham Institute’s
Fund The Child position paper expresses some
valid concerns about weighted student funding (WSF).
However, we believe there are worthwhile reasons for
giving the Fordham proposal a wide hearing.
We agree that WSF is a complex issue dominated by political
considerations. It would be best if it worked better
than it does, and your knowledge of “promising
methodologies for developing fair and accurate weightings”
deserves greater dissemination. We believe that shifting
from district-level to school-level control of funding
expenditures can help to clarify WSF issues, which are
often hidden within the bureaucracies that make such
decisions. Also, if – via school-level funding
– we can learn what schools need to spend to accomplish
their goals then we will have a better grasp of the
political exigencies for additional funding (both in
court, and through legislation). Further, it does not
seem that seeking adequate funding need wait on getting
WSF right. Both efforts can proceed simultaneously.
What we like most in the Fordham proposal is a more
important concept – which you describe as “radical
decentralization of educational governance.” Our
position is that Fordham should have put decentralization
ahead of WSF. It is, as you say, a radical concept –
though a good one, supported even by the likes of the
Education Commission of the States – and deserves
serious consideration by politicians and policy-makers.
We do not subscribe to Fordham’s view that gradual,
whole-district development of decentralization will
work. We believe that a good beginning towards wholesale
decentralization would be for small numbers of individual
schools to volunteer for “decentralization.”
Individual schools should be able to contract with their
districts to accept responsibility for deciding how
to spend up to 95% of their per-pupil allotments (we
estimate that about 5% of district-level activities
deserve funding). We see this as a way to experiment
with the concept of decentralization, assess its value,
and gradually expand it as schools beyond the early-adopters
become interested.
Finally, regarding your view that
“There is no credible evidence that decentralization
alone or coupled with WSF leads to improvement in
average outcomes or reductions in achievement gaps…”
This is a legitimate concern also expressed, for example,
in Wohlstetter, Priscilla and Mohrman, Susan Albers.
“School-Based Management: Promise and Process.”
CPRE Finance Brief, December, 1994. However,
we would say that William Ouchi’s research speaks
affirmatively to the question of decentralization, and
his book Making Schools Work spells out a collection
of measures that, taken together with WSF and decentralization
are critical to school improvement. More research would
be worthwhile, and voluntary decentralization should
provide plenty of cases for further study.
We agree with your view that
“School improvement depends on a variety of
programs…and other educational actions, some
of which are more efficiently handled at the district
or regional level.”
But we believe – as most teachers and principals
do – that district and regional level bureaucracies
make a considerably smaller contribution to the creation
of successful schools than that made by those closest
to the clientele. We believe that school-level personnel,
empowered through control of significant resources (produced
by WSF and other means), and given a well-designed state
curriculum and a fair and comprehensive assessment program
(clearly within the purview of district and state agencies),
will produce improvements in achievement that surpass
anything we have seen so far. Fordham’s Fund
the Child will advance this cause.
Sincerely,
Barry McGhan
Barry McGhan is President of the Center
for Public School Renewal
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