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Highlights • Argues for thinking about community-based management in terms of community organizing, building, and empowerment. • New and critical insights are shared on the well-known Education with Community Participation program from El Salvador. • The concept of social capital is highlighted as one aspect of the shift away from technical approaches to community-based management. • Underscore the many issues that confound the operation of community-based management as envisioned by development professionals. Abstract The present paper is both a critical analysis of an example of community-based management of education (CBM) and a call for a shift in perspective related to how we think about CBM, particularly in marginalized and low-income contexts. The example of focus that serves as the basis for critical analysis is the "Education with Community Participation" (EDUCO) program in El Salvador, which achieved fame in the late 1990s and 2000s because it formally transferred, among other things, the ability to hire and fire teachers to a committee of parents at the community level. Given its fame and the fact of its imitation elsewhere, it is important to have an in-depth understanding of how this program operated at the local level, with what limitations, and with what implications for CBM programs more generally. For the second purpose—related to shifting perspectives on CBM—this paper draws on concepts related to systems theory, social capital, and community empowerment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plan 2021 is a national education strategy released by the Salvadoran Ministry of Education (MINED) in March of 2005 to guide education policy through 2021. According to the policy itself, preparation for Plan 2021 began in June 2004 and was the product of four disparate inputs. These include: (a) review of existing research on education produced between 2002 and 2004, (b) creation of a Presidential Commission to offer recommendations, (c) inclusion of commitments made by El Salvador to international agreements (e.g., Education for All and the Millennium Development Goals), and (d) execution of a series of consultations at the local level throughout the country (MINED 2005b). Thus, according to the policy document itself, not only were each of these four inputs given equal weight, but, additionally, there was no involvement by international actors, with the MINED alone managing the process. However, even a cursory search for information related to Plan 2021 indicates that a range of international actors was involved, thus raising questions about how official accounts of the policy’s formation diverge from the process as it actually happened. The case of this policy likewise raises questions about how to investigate and interpret such processes. The present paper not only reveals how Plan 2021 was actually made but also attempts to make a contribution by suggesting the relevance of multi-perspective analysis, in addition to applying multiple perspectives—namely, rational, organizational, and political perspectives—to the interpretation of this case. The content of this analysis is particularly relevant at this point in time to the field of international education policy as scholars are grappling with how to understand and investigate processes of education policy formation characterized by involvement and influence from external (i.e., international) actors. The article concludes by underscoring the utility of this framework while also recommending that it be used in conjunction with insights from recent scholarship on the global governance of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]