State Efforts to Reform Schools: Treading between a Regulatory Swamp and an English Garden

School Management: How Much Local Autonomy Should There Be?

“…The availability of measures of state-specific school centralisation suggests that a cross-section study which seeks to explain an efficiency measuresay unit costsas a function of, amongst other things, organisational structure, might be instructive. In spite of the imperfections of the indices of school autonomy, such an analysis ought to be able, at the least, to tell us whether an optimal level of centralisation existsor, on the other hand, whether a monopoly of truth is enjoyed by either the 'hyper-rationalists' or the 'romantic decentralists' (Timar and Kirp, 1988). Organisational structure is not, of course, the only factor which influences costs.…”

In search of cost‐effective schools

“…However, if this is the only way schools can operate, we must expect questions about whether they can operate at all. At some point, we will face the choice between running programs or financing the "monitors for monitoring the monitors" instead (Timar & Kirp, 1988). We may also have to strike a different balance between our commitment to specialization and the need for cost-effectiveness.…”

State full‐service school initiatives: new notions of policy development

“…States may offer some incentives or general guidelines to local districts, but for the most part appear to be leaving local districts to develop the programs on their own. Thus in the full-service school movement we are seeing more of the political action model of implementation than we are of Timar and Kirp's (1988) other two models of implementation, rational planning and market incentive. In the political interaction model the state articulates broad policy goals but allows discretion and flexibility in local implementation.…”