Governing hybrid schools: polycentricity and institutional change in American education policy

Hybrid and microschools have expanded rapidly in the United States. These models do not fit neatly within existing governance categories, raising questions about how authority, accountability, and decision-making are organised in American education. This paper applies Ostrom’s Institutional Analysis and Development framework, widely used in natural resource and infrastructure governance but rarely applied to education, to compare institutional arrangements in conventional public schools and hybrid schools, where education is co-produced by families and providers. The comparison generates five propositions about how differences in physical arrangements, actors, rule systems, action situations, and accountability mechanisms shape governance outcomes. Hybrid schools exhibit characteristics of polycentric governance that conventional schools largely lack. A section on economic implications examines demand, supply, and information-cost dynamics. The paper concludes that Ostrom’s framework reframes education reform not as a contest between markets and governments but as an evolving search for effective rule systems in a polycentric public economy.