Centralizing the administration was assumed to be necessary to advance what OISE’s Dr. Ben Levin champions as “macro-directions” and presumably to minimize the dissonance and local resistance emanating from “micropolitics” in the schools. The then Chair of the Board Irvine Carvery defended the move as sound financially and claimed that the then Chief Superintendent Carole Olsen saw the need for a much bigger central headquarters to facilitate large scale professional developmemt activities. Some 30 years after the advent of School-Based Management (SBM), this school board, like many across North America, remained wedded to system-wide management of virtually every aspect of educational service.

School-Based Management arrived in Canada in the early 1970s when an American educator, Dr. Rolland Jones, began experimenting with the concept as Superintendent of the Edmonton Public School Board. Described as “a visionary 20 years ahead of his times,” he favoured local decision-making and espoused “site-based budgeting.” From 1976 until 1995, his successor Michael Strembitsky and school planner Alan Parry effectively dismantled a centrally-managed school system and operationalized school-based decision-masking.
After a flurry of school-based management initiatives in the mid-1990s, including some school districts in Ontario and Nova Scotia, school administrators pulled back from the whole approach. Centralization and administrative build-up proved to be powerful forces, strengthened by the consolidation of school boards, .

In Australia, Johnson contends that ”bureaucratic managerialism” has been used to “construct a seemingly irresistible top-down juggernaut of reform that largely excludes the possibility or desirability of local agency.”

School-based management has considerable appeal because it fosters a ”positive politics” of negotiation, collaboration, and conflict resolution to address issues of local concern in schools.”