In the international movement to reform and improve the performance of education systems, various forms of decentralization are among the most popular strategies. Decentralization is thought to provide the means to cure a range of important problems, including bureaucratic rigidity, insensitivity to local needs, and lack of legitimacy and local democratic control. Even a brief review of such efforts, however, reveals that a wide variety of purposes and meanings are attached to decentralization. Indeed, a variety of terms, with varying meanings, are used to label these efforts in the English language — for example, decentralization, deconcentration, deregulation, and devolution — and other languages (and nations) have terms and special meanings of their own.
E-book published in 2016.