The Japanese Constitution defines the popular sovereignty and local control of education in order to pursue the fundamental right to education. It is also provided in the Article 10 of the Fundamental Law of Education that education shall not be subject to improper control, but it shall be directly responsible to the whole people. Under these legal circumstances Japanese school board system, which is somewhat autonomous from the municipal governing agencies such as mayors and municipal assembly, has been introduced since 1948. Does local control of education work well under the current school board system? Local governments assume direct and highly regulatory responsibility for change. During the decade of the nineties, choice was added to this mix as an important factor in school governance reform. Then political scientists have found the school board less responsive to the entire community. Some argue that boards should be abolished or removed from the educational policy process because they block the reforms. They say that local control by school boards was little more than popular mythology. To think about these problems we try to make the concept "local control of education" clear and practical. The governance function in local control of public schools is very central to achieving children's rights to education. Educational governance is a complex term, covering both political and administrative dimensions of educational decision making. The concept refers to administrative and professional authority. But governance authority should be exercised through establishment of goals and objectives and use of administrative power, not through direct engagement in the teaching and learning process. Then we can say that "local control of education" consists the following three elements: First is the political educational governing process through people's representative government such as boards of education which make educational policies and regulations; Second is the administrative and managerial educational governing process through educational administrative professionals who provide instructional leadership for all educational programs within the board policies; Third is the teachers' and other professionals' education practice which is directly responsible to the student learning. To realize this notion of "local control of education," we must pursue three tough research and practical problems: How to develop municipal ordinances, rules and regulations for the full realization of the human right to education; How to make superintendents and principals improve professional knowledge and skills enough to develop a comprehensive educational plan in the municipal level and a school building level; how to make the teachers' practice leadership more influential and effective in the whole process of political and administrative educational governing process.