Decentralization in the educational system calls for empowerment, autonomy, decision-making, accountability, resources allocation, and restructuring. Stakeholders in different levels: societal, institutional, and instructional, may encounter driving and restraining forces in the decentralization process.
Geography is a constraining force even in an online university and high school. We still need to meet with students face to face occasionally at the high school level and the distribution of students across a state makes it difficult to serve all their needs. I also work for an online university and geography is not as limiting here but knowing how each state and local educational system works helps one give better advice on how to conduct research that is context appropriate. Distributed staff and students solve some problems of access but create others. Centralized curriculum can also limit how teachers approach their content. Open curriculum also has limits as it is never quite what you are looking for in a lesson. If you want more info on decentralized learning (at least in a geographic sense) feel free to contact me.
Hi Beth Robelia. Thank you very much for suggestion and sharing of experiences. It's well appreciated
I would argue there are two main factors lhat limit the decentralization of education. First being whiteness, and the second being whiteness and capitalism. Please read Lipsitz, G. (1998). The possive investment in Whiteness (1998); Lewis, A. (2009). Race in the school Yard; Omi, M. & Winant, H., (1994). Racial Formation in the United States (1994); Leonardo, Z., (2009). Race, Whiteness and Education, (2009) and Bowels, S. & Gintis, H., (2011). Schooling in Capitalist America Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life. Hope this helps.
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