IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/ororsc/v17y2006i2p298-307.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Power to the Principals: Decentralization in Three Large School Districts

Author

Listed:
  • William G. Ouchi

    (Anderson School of Management, University of California, Los Angeles, 110 Westwood Plaza, Suite B523, Los Angeles, California 90095-1481)

Abstract

School districts have made several attempts at decentralizing. However, decentralization in school districts can mean so many different things that the term has nearly lost its meaning.This paper reports a study of three large urban school districts that, over almost 30 years, adopted nearly identical approaches to decentralizing, granting control to principals and expanding freedom of choice for families. In all three cases, the goal of improving student achievement was achieved, although with a very small sample.These three districts are compared to the three largest public districts in North America. The comparisons reveal that the three decentralized districts attained a high level of principal control over school budgets, staffing, schedule, and teaching methods.

Suggested Citation

  • William G. Ouchi, 2006. "Power to the Principals: Decentralization in Three Large School Districts," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 17(2), pages 298-307, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:inm:ororsc:v:17:y:2006:i:2:p:298-307
    DOI: 10.1287/orsc.1050.0172
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1050.0172
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/orsc.1050.0172?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Marguerite Roza & Katherine Hagan & Laura Anderson, 2021. "Variation is the Norm: A Landscape Analysis of Weighted Student Funding Implementation," Public Budgeting & Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(1), pages 3-25, March.
    2. Pertusa-Ortega, Eva M. & Zaragoza-Sáez, Patrocinio & Claver-Cortés, Enrique, 2010. "Can formalization, complexity, and centralization influence knowledge performance?," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 310-320, March.
    3. Joseph T. Mahoney & Anita M. McGahan & Christos N. Pitelis, 2009. "Perspective ---The Interdependence of Private and Public Interests," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 20(6), pages 1034-1052, December.
    4. Matthew P. Steinberg, 2014. "Does Greater Autonomy Improve School Performance? Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Analysis in Chicago," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 9(1), pages 1-35, January.
    5. Gloria Agyemang, 2009. "Responsibility and accountability without direct control?," Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 22(5), pages 762-788, June.
    6. Michah W. Rothbart, 2020. "The Impact of School Choice on Public School Budgets: Evidence From Open Enrollment in New York City," Public Budgeting & Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(4), pages 3-37, December.
    7. Alex Bryson & Lucy Stokes & David Wilkinson, 2020. "Can Human Resource Management Improve Schools' Performance?," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 34(4), pages 427-440, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:ororsc:v:17:y:2006:i:2:p:298-307. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.