Governing the Nation's Schools: The Case for Restructuring Local School Boards

Abstract

Ms. Danzberger recommends reforms that will actually re-create local boards so that they can become influential forces for change and improvement. Without such reforms, she points out, attacks on school boards will continue and escalate, thus diminishing what credibility boards have maintained. Local school boards are among the most venerable of U.S. public institutions, embodying many of our most cherished political and cultural tenets. One of these is a distrust of distant government that dates back to Colonial times, when Americans were ruled from afar by governments that had little knowledge of the Colonial experience and no knowledge of local conditions. Lay school boards are also valued because of Americans' ambivalence regarding experts and expertise. This profound ambivalence accounts for much of the motivation to elect laypeople to make local education policy and for the expectation that they will act as buffers between citizens and the possible excesses of professional educators. Historical experience also explains Americans' fondness for keeping school boards independent of units of general government. In the late 19th century, city school boards, controlled by the political ward system, were patently corrupt. This corruption led in the first two decades of this century to a major movement to reform school governance. The familiar form of school governance - a central board for each district with a professional chief executive, the superintendent - emerged from these reforms. The current grassroots commitment to separating the governance of education from general purpose government in order to keep education out of the hands of ordinary politicians is rooted in these almost century-old reforms. The governance system for the nation's schools evolved over more than 200 years, starting in Massachusetts when local selectmen determined that running both towns and schools in expanding communities was too great an administrative burden. Although states increasingly provided for a statewide system of primary and secondary schools in their constitutions, they did not immediately establish a state governance structure specifically for education. It was not until 1837 that the first state board of education and the office of state superintendent were established (another first for Massachusetts). Local control remained preeminent, although the innate public suspicion of state control manifested itself frequently in complex layers of legislation that carefully defined local prerogatives. Today, the governance system for public schools is complex, incorporating multiple players and decision makers, including federal and state courts, the U.S. Congress, state governors and legislatures, and so on. These policy makers often respond to the concerns of the unofficial players in education policy: special interest groups, the business community, and groups of citizens who want their perspectives reflected in the policies governing schools. Even at the local level, the school board is not the only local institution whose decisions determine what will or will not occur in schools. Teacher and administrator unions, principals and teachers in individual schools, and, increasingly, planning or governing bodies in individual schools all make decisions or share authority once lodged with the school board. Unquestioning acceptance of school boards, as currently structured, cannot be equated with protecting local control, for local control is increasingly diffuse. Thus the issue is not local control, as many defenders of the status quo would have us believe, but how to ensure an effective central policy-making body for public education at the local level. Citizens can continue to exercise some control over the education of their children and the expenditure of their tax dollars, while also providing for effective leadership and governance of the schools, through reformed and strengthened school boards. …

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