The School Board as an Agency of Legitimation

Abstract

Although school boards are elected to represent the community to the school administration, there is a variety of circumstances which convert the school board into an agency which legitimates the goals of the school administration. The conditions which promote this displacement of goals are described by reference to survey studies of school boards and, particularly, to observations and interviews conducted by the author in two suburban school systems over a period of a year. School board politios, the process of socialization onto the board, and community pressures are the main sources of goal displacement which are discussed in detail. A flowzohart (Figure 1) summarizes the influences found to be most critical. The conversion of school boards into legitimating agencies is viewed as a mechanism for reducing the threats to the institutional security of school systems which come from this environment.

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