The Contexts of Children's Lives in Asia: Families, Schools, and Communities

As Jennifer Adams notes in her paper, a number of studies within the U.S., as well as some studies in China and other low- and middle-income countries, have begun to address the ways that communities impact schooling outcomes. The potential role played by communities in local education has strengthened with the shift toward administrative and fiscal decentralization in many developed and developing countries. Often, fiscal decentralization results in a greater reliance on community financing of schooling, which, in turn, strengthens the association between where students live and the quality of educational services they receive (Bray, 1996a, 1996b).