This chapter explores the extent of differences among the 50 states in their degree of centralized state control over local school policy, and then further searches for regional variations in the degree of educational policy centralization throughout the United States. Most of the chapter presents and discusses data from a massive content analysis of the laws of the 50 states in 36 areas of educational policy. These data were categorized in terms of a seven-point scale of centralization and an overall School Centralization Score was calculated for each state. Mean School Centralization Scores were then computed for all 50 states together, for the Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, and West regions of the United States, and for particular subregions of the four main regions. (JG)