Regionalization as a justice-based support strategy for school improvement

Abstract

Currently, various measures of regionalization in the educational sector can be observed in Germany. These can be understood as a decentralized and cooperative reform strategy in the post-PISA era, next to the rather centrally organized governance reforms. These measures are attributed with programmatic objectives such as the promotion of educational equity. In the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia the local education offices are a central actor in these schoolsystem related regionalization processes. The paper theoretically considers possible justice-based support services that regionalization measures can provide for the school system. Empirical evidence of a baseline survey of the local education offices is presented to show the support services of this actor and to relate them to the considerations of justice.