ABSTRACT

Unlike almost any other country in the world, the United States has over 13,000 decentralized, fragmented, and locally controlled educational districts, mirroring the thousands of state, city, and county political systems that control their funding and resources. This structure is dominated by local community values and isolated from central government or corporate direction and control. The constitutional structure of federalism encourages such broad decentralization of power, but also makes it more difficult to define, measure, and improve quality in this vital national public service. Nearly everyone in society is either directly or indirectly a stakeholder, including taxpayers, parents, teachers, and students in private, faith-based, and public schools.