Some of the planning and most of the action of school improvement takes
place at the school and community levels. Decentralization places additional
expectations on school management at the site and community levels.
Planning and sustaining changes in classrooms and schools depends on the
ability to develop collaborative relations with the community; monitor school
quality and efficiency; generate, understand, and utilize information on
interventions in progress; and to respond to the emergence of new priorities.
Principals and citizens’ committees may need to (i) promote access and equity
by adjusting costs to ability to pay through modification of fee requirements,
development of student loan programs, reduction of opportunity costs by
incorporating income-generating activities into the curriculum; (ii) adapt the
quality and relevance of the curriculum by including local materials, providing
initial instruction in the child’s home language, and developing self-instructional
and modular materials; and (iii) develop school programs to respond to
community problems - by sharing school resources, information, ideas, and
labor.