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Abstract
The reform of school district system is an important measure in promoting the high-quality, balanced development of compulsory education, as well as promoting the modernization of regional educational governance systems and governance capabilities. China’s school districts exhibit characteristics differing from Europe and the United States in terms of their functional orientation, management system, and structural configuration. Reforms to the Chinese school district system have been designed from the top down on the level of policies at the national and local level, giving shape to four models on the practical level, including the bundling model, the trusteeship model, the network model, and the expanded model. In existing research, the topic of discussion largely consists of research from the perspective of equity, and in the future, it will be necessary to carry out systematic, in-depth exploration of regional educational governance systems in the context of the school district system on the level of governance, the impact of the school district system on schools’ operational autonomy, as well as the future trends of development of the school district system, and other areas. The existing types of research tend to consist of descriptive research, and in the future, it will be necessary to increase explanatory research based on influencing factors and mechanisms of influence as well as evaluative research based on proposals for reforms. In terms of research methods, in the future, it will be necessary to carry out empirical research based on large-scale questionnaire survey studies as well as qualitative research based on in-depth interviews.
Acknowledgment
This paper is a partial research result of “Jianli jiaoyu ‘guan, ban, ping’ fenli zhidu tixi de yanjiu” (Studies on the establishment of systems separating ‘administration, operation and evaluation’ in education) (Project No.: AEAA17002), a priority research topic in the year 2017 under the “Thirteenth Five-Year” Plan of Beijing City for Education Science.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Qinghuan Zhu
Qinghuan Zhu is affiliated with the Beijing Institute of Educational Supervision and Evaluation, Beijing, China.
Lengxin Liu
Lengxin Liu is affiliated with the Office of International Exchange and Cooperation, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.