Coordinating Top-Down and Bottom-Up Strategies for Educational Reform

Abstract

Neither top-down nor bottom-up strategies for educational reform work. What is required is a more sophisticated blend of the two. In this paper I examine the problem in three ways. First, I review briefly some evidence that corroborates the proposition that neither centralized nor decentralized change strategies work. Second, I present the conceptional and empirical case that a blend of the two strategies is essential. Finally, I consider two levels of the problem school-district, and school/district-state to illustrate how simultaneous centralized-decentralized forces can be combined for more effective results. Thus, centralized and decentralized are relative terms that can be applied at any two adjacent levels of hierarchical systems.