The challenges of decentralization in school governance: Lessons learned from the Comprehensive Millennium Schools Program in Ecuador

Abstract

The academic field of comparative education increasingly emphasizes the importance of examining institutional arrangements between national and subnational governments to identify the drivers of educational quality and equity. This article examines the experience of an emblematic Ecuadorian school infrastructure program to explore these theoretical considerations within the operation of an education system that, in recent decades, has undergone one of the world’s most significant decentralization reforms. The empirical inquiry, which included consultations with representatives of central authorities, such as Ecuador’s Ministry of Education, as well as interviews and focus groups with regional actors, revealed multiple tensions in terms of coordination between levels of government during the implementation of the Modelo Integral Unidades Educativas del Milenio (MI-UEM). The reported findings align with theoretical precepts from the literature on educational governance and with results from similar studies in Latin American countries, highlighting a certain incongruence between the discourse of decentralization and de facto practices that tend to re-centralize decision-making power within national authorities. The employed research design —rooted in a realist evaluation approach—represents a methodological contribution to this field of study.