School Based Management

School-based management (SBM) is a "strategy to improve education by transferring significant decision-making authority from state and district offices to individual schools" (Myers & Stonehill, 1993, p. 1). The traditional participants in the educational process, specifically, principals, teachers, students and parents, are given "greater control over the education process by giving them responsibility for decisions about the budget, personnel, and the curriculum" (Myers & Stonehill, 1993, p. 1).

School-based management owes at least part of its roots to the business concept of total quality management, which asserts that decisions made closer to the actual product will produce a better product. Translated into school district language, the quality of the educational experience provided for students will improve if a partnership comprised of teachers, parents, business leaders and school leaders is the entity that creates the decisions affecting students and schools. (Barely discussed in the early literature are the concepts of accountability and performance measurement.)

Some school districts have preferred to jump in with both feet, adopting a sink or swim attitude toward the process; others began with something as small as an advisory council; but "most begin restructuring by developing a project or projects. Examples include new governance models, block scheduling, integrated curriculum, or technology labs" (Conley, 1992, p. 1). If they are to have any hope

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to school-based management does not guarantee subsequent school improvement" ("Generating", 1996, p. 2). Strictly speaking, "as a form of governance, SBM will not in itself generate improvement in school performance�SBM is simply a means through which school-level decision makers can implement various reforms that can improve teaching and learning" (Wohlstetter, 1995, p. 3). The Department of Education funded an assessment of school-based management, which stated, "So far, there is scant evidence that schools get better just because decisions are made by those closer to the classroom. That deceptively simple change in how schools are managed and governed, as attractive as it is to many teachers, principals and parents, turns out to be rather meaningless unless it is part of a focused, even passionate, quest for improvement. School-based decision-making is one aspect of systemic school reform--an approach to improving schools that also includes changes in instruction and curriculum and in the institutional web that surrounds schools to achieve an integrated focus on the outcomes of education" ("School-Based Management: Promise and Process", 1996, p. 1). Contrary to one of the pro-arguments, group empowerment may n

Category: Psychology - S