Can Schools, Districts, and Central Offices Find Their Way to Autonomy?

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Education Sector's new report takes a closer look at the theory behind the autonomy movement, with a particular focus on D.C. Public Schools.


When policymakers begin to think of ways to help schools improve, they often settle on the idea of giving individual schools greater independence. This led to the "site-based management" movement of the 1990s. Today, granting schools autonomy from some or all rules remains a popular strategy for reform and has helped fuel the growth in charter schools and district-operated schools that are granted more freedom and flexibility.

With expanded autonomy, districts let the schools themselves—the principals and the teachers—make big decisions like how to spend the budget, what curriculum to use, and how to hire and train teachers. Those who know students best, the theory goes, are best able to direct the resources and take the actions that most benefit them.

Experience with charter schooling and other autonomous school reforms has shown that granting schools more flexibility can yield more innovation in school management, staffing, and instruction, bringing examples of success to neighborhoods where high-performing schools are rare. But experience has also shown that not all schools have the capacity to fill the space created by autonomy with actions that actually improve student learning.

In The Road to Autonomy, Education Sector's new report, author Erin Dillon takes a closer look at the theory behind the autonomy movement. She also looks at how the District of Columbia and other school districts are translating this theory into practice.

One important issue, Dillon notes, is a school’s capacity to govern itself. "Decades of research on school autonomy show that to really improve student performance, schools need not just freedom from central regulation, but the tools with which to exercise it." Dillon also looks at "portfolio management," now being implemented in Chicago, New York City, New Orleans, and others.

The key question for districts considering autonomy, the report concludes, is not just how much freedom to give schools, but what balance to strike; it’s determining which operations are best left to individual schools and which are best controlled by the central office. Finding this balance is especially important for districts in which students move often and which have common ways of measuring achievement, says Justin Cohen, president of the School Turnaround Group at Mass Insight and former director of the DCPS Office of Portfolio Management. "You can't give absolute autonomy to every school," he says. "The question is autonomy over what? If you're going to expect that students are going to move and switch schools, you have to have some consistency across schools."