Evidence of the Impact of School Reform on Systems Governance and Educational Bureaucracies in the United States

latter half of the 20th century saw an array of reform efforts designed to improve the educational system and achieve other, often ideological goals. These reforms operate within a system that is highly institutionalized, in both its structures and functions, which by design both limit and facilitate particular courses of action. At the same time, reforms often introduce contradictory goals, as is the case with those leading to greater centralization of the system versus those intended to weaken the bureaucracy and inject market principles into schooling. These tendencies give rise to the perception that things rarely change or that reforms have little impact on either school governance or the bureaucracy. Although there is some international convergence of these trends, this chapter examines recent trends in school reform and their impact on school governance and educational bureaucracies in the United States. It takes an institutional perspective, allowing us to examine how the educational system has evolved and understand the implications of particular reforms for educational governance.1 It argues that reform has expanded the federal and state role in education, transformed the organization of interests, and created a national political culture where educational policy priorities increasingly are established nationally. The result has been greater bureaucratization of the educational system and a more formalized and standardized system reflective of a national political culture. However, because these mostly top-down reforms fail to specify the mechanism by which they will transform education, their impact varies widely depending on local conditions and implementation, allowing local districts to retain considerable power within an increasingly bureaucratic system.