Educating New York City: Does School-Based Management Have What it Takes?

Abstract

This paper examines the contribution that school-based management and shared decision-making (SBM/SDM) can make to New York City's education system. We review the theoretical literature on education reform in general and on school-based management/shared decision-making in particular. We then examine implementation of SBM/ SDM, focusing on the administrative and bureaucratic constraints of the New York City educational system. The experiences of two schools under the reform serve as case studies. We find SBM/SDM can offer limited educational improvements for New York City, but does not solve the problems of a defective incentive structure. In addition, we found that it does not transfer any real power to the schools. In the absence of more radical education reform, however, SBM/SDM can offer an improvement over the present system.