Educational Achievement in Centralized and Decentralized Systems

Abstract

School decentralization arguments have been widely adopted in the rhetoric (if less in the practice) of educational reform in many countries around the world, and particularly in the English-speaking states. Claims that decentralization will enhance the effectiveness of school systems have formed the central plank in the work of many prominent school reform advocates (Chubb and Moe, 1990; Sexton, 1987). However, the logical arguments advanced to support these claims are much contested (Ball, 1990a; Carnoy, 1993; Green, 1994; Whitty, 1992) and the empirical evidence, such as it is, has yet to substantiate the case. Decentralizing measures, such as ‘school choice’ and ‘local management’ policies in England, New Zealand and the USA, are too partial and too recent in origin to permit any definitive analysis of their effects on aggregate national outcomes; and the evidence proffered by advocates from within-country cross-school comparisons only weakly supports their case, if at all. Chubb and Moe (1990), for instance, find that private (i.e. less centralized) schools in the USA rate higher than state schools on school effectiveness traits but this could be simply the result of their ability to select pupils with whom it is easier to display effective schooling. Comparative studies have not adequately established that they can achieve higher levels of ‘value-added’ than the supposedly more centralized schools in the public systems (Carnoy, 1993).