Organizing the School Structure: a Review of the Literature

There has been an ongoing debate about the control of the organization of the schools. There are two different sides to the debate. The Liberal side is for the decentralization of the schools. What this means is that communities and school officials themselves are the ones who should have the responsibility of making decisions when it comes to the schools. The other side of the debate is the Conservative side. They are for the centralization of the schools. This means that it is up to the state to make decisions when it comes to the schools. However, even though the debate is ongoing, for now, public schools are controlled by the state. This has been so since the early 1980s. According to Janet S. Hansen, decentralization is beginning to raise interest once again. It was tried out in the 1980s and 1990s but the students’ performances only improved by a small percentage. Today, attention has been turned to decentralization again. It is the belief that the improvement of student learning relies on transferring the decision-making and authority of budget and resource allocation to that of the school level. One very good argument that she makes for decentralization is that, since teaching and learning occur at the school level, then things can be made to adapt to the current needs of the students. In addition to that, time and resources will be prioritized towards the student and teacher. An argument that she makes is that, in order for decentralization in schools to work, schools need to have that as their main priority. It should be the school’s main reform, not just one of a few. The result of decentralization being one of a few reforms was that it was disconnected and incomplete. Even though Janet S. Hansen brings up very valuable points, she does not mention anything about the roles of the parents. She keeps talking about control from the school level, but doesn’t decentralization also include the parents as well? Nevertheless, she tries

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