ABSTRACT
Two competing reform movements structured debates around school management in the late 1960s. One was an impulse toward decentralization, and the other was toward community control. Many writers, then and now, confused or conflated these two currents, for both movements are informed by an effort to enlarge democratic participation in the running of public schools. They differ fundamentally, however, in the means and ends envisaged by their respective advocates. This difference, in turn, is rooted in fundamentally different understandings of the politics of schooling and its relationship to U.S. democratic life.
