Besieged: School Boards and the Future of Education Politics / Edition 1

by William G. Howell

Overview

"School boards are fighting for their survival. Almost everything that they do is subject to regulations handed down from city councils, state boards of education, legislatures, and courts. As recent mayoral and state takeovers in such cities as Baltimore, Chicago, and New York make abundantly clear, school boards that do not fulfill the expectations of other political players may be stripped of what few independent powers they still retain. Teachers unions exert growing influence over board decision-making processes. And with the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act, the federal government has aggressively inserted itself into matters of local education governance. B esieged is the first full-length volume in many years to systematically examine the politics that surround school boards. A group of highly renowned scholars, relying on both careful case studies and quantitative analyses, examine how school boards fare when they interact with their political superiors, teachers unions, and the public. For the most part, the picture that emerges is sobering: while school boards perform certain administrative functions quite well, the political pressures they face undermine their capacity to institute the wide-ranging school reforms that many voters and local leaders are currently demanding.

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780815736837
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	04/01/2005
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	366
Product dimensions:	5.99(w) x 8.93(h) x 0.96(d)

About the Author

"William G. Howell is an associate professor in the Government Department at Harvard University and deputy director of the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard."

Read an Excerpt

Besieged

School Boards and the Future of Education Politics

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Brookings Institution Press

Copyright © 2005 Brookings Institution Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-8157-3684-3

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Chapter One

Introduction

WILLIAM G. HOWELL

Today, as at no other time in American history, the federal and state governments enshroud public schools. From above, presidents, judges, legislators, governors, and bureaucrats mandate all sorts of education reforms, covering everything from curricula to school lunch programs. With their consent and under their direction, mayors have begun to enter the fray, casting an even longer partisan shadow over public schools. Today, professional politicians regularly drown out the voices and displace the visions of the individuals who have governed public schools for centuries: locally elected (and occasionally appointed) school board members.

It wasn't always so. In the beginning, schools in the United States were locally controlled. First in New England and then in the South and the West, town selectmen directed the financing, building, and governing of public schools. Then, as populations increased and diversified, special boards (sometimes called committees or commissions) assumed responsibility for overseeing and supporting schools. In many regions, these boards gained functional autonomy and a measure of independent legal authority. Given their focus on a single objective -providing educational services to the community-school boards became the engine that drove the most rapid expansion in educational opportunity the world had ever seen.

Through much of the nineteenth century, school boards were the central governing institution of U.S. schools. Although ultimately subject to state law, most school boards nonetheless assumed primary control over hiring and firing, curricula, the length of the school day and year, and the observation of holidays. These quasi-municipal corporations took primary fiscal responsibility for schools, writing budgets, levying taxes, and ensuring that schools spent their allotted funds appropriately. Their members debated a host of issues that now seem somewhat antiquated, such as religious education in common schools, parental fees, and corporal punishment. And when they were not acting as executives or legislators, board members often played the role of judge, hearing and ruling on public objections to their policies.

Their control, of course, was imperfect. As public education took hold in the United States, school boards had to contend with schools whose teachers retained considerable autonomy to do as they pleased. Though superintendents managed to impose a modicum of order on and control over a decentralized system of schooling, school board members rarely could be sure that teachers would faithfully implement their policies. Data on student performance and the quality of classroom teaching were sparse; board evaluations of schools rarely took a school's employees to task; and the particular mix of school board responsibilities and powers varied widely from district to district. As the education historian David Tyack notes, "public education ... seemed to reformers more a miscellaneous collection of village schools than a coherent system. Responsibility was diffuse, teachers had considerable autonomy in their decentralized domains, and the flow of information was erratic and insufficiently focused for purposes of policy." Given that state of affairs, board members could hardly impose their will whenever and however they chose. Changing school policy often required considerable care, powers of persuasion, and attention to the various needs and interests of parents and teachers.

Still, as governing institutions, school boards were basically the only game in town. The federal government did grant public lands to states for the purpose of promoting public education, but it had little say over what actually happened within the newly constructed school houses. The Office of Education, established in 1870, collected descriptive statistics on public schools but otherwise rarely interfered. While most states had statutory and constitutional requirements for the provision of public education, local school boards retained broad discretion in administering education services. State superintendents and departments of education, such as they were, exercised only modest oversight.

Accordingly, localism thrived during the nation's early years. The purposes of schooling, public funding of schools, and even the languages of instruction -all were locally determined. Striking regional differences defined the era-in the number and quality of schools, the length of the school year, and the representation of religious and cultural norms. What held true for Boston did not necessarily apply to Newton, just ten miles west, and the instruction in New York schools differed markedly from that in Illinois and South Carolina. Working through lay school boards, communities built public schools in their own image and for their own objectives; the federal and state governments had little say in the matter.

Federalism Asserted

Localism would not last. Beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century and picking up steam at the turn of the twentieth, new efforts to "professionalize, homogenize, and organize common schooling threatened highly prized local control." Rising immigration and heightened demand for skilled labor to meet the needs of an industrializing economy became a driving force for change. Businessmen, professors, and politicians lobbied for the transformation of an agrarian, decentralized pattern of schooling into a bona fide public school system that promoted the values of centralization, efficiency, modernization, and hierarchical control. Over time, as states began to insist on the imposition of fixed standards based on scientifically proven practices, control over curricula and course offerings shifted from lay school boards and local educators to trained specialists.

Changes in schools reflected and in many instances were induced by larger developments in the nation's political structure and economy-specifically by Progressive Era efforts to remove politics from local and state governance of schools. The order of the day put rational control and expertise in the service of objectivity and efficiency; the result was the birth of the civil service, the exaltation of meritocracy and modernity, and the rise of Taylorism, the scientific management of industries and businesses. In an effort to maximize their bottom line, factories standardized almost all aspects of their operations, down to the very hand movements of assembly line workers. Concomitantly, government reformers targeted provincialism, corruption, and patronage-and by extension, the values of local control, diversity, and tolerance. Public schools and the structures that governed them could hardly avoid the political and economic reforms sweeping the nation.

Loosely knit schools, held together by school boards alone, soon gave way to a more unified, centralized system of public education. State superintendents mounted consolidation campaigns to reduce the number of school districts, each with its own local board of education. As a result, school districts declined in number, while their populations (measured at both the district and school level) increased in size. Indeed, one of the most striking developments in public education during the twentieth century was the staggering consolidation of school districts and their governing boards. In 1936, the first year for which reliable counts are available, the nation had 118,892 school districts with an average of 218 students each; by 1997, just 15,178 districts attended to an average of 3,005 students each. As the number of school boards rapidly declined, so did the number of members serving on them. At-large elections replaced ward-based elections, and membership on most urban school boards fell precipitously. In 1893, the twenty-eight cities with populations of more than 100,000 residents maintained school boards that had an average of 21.5 members. Two decades later, that average dropped to roughly seven, and it has not recovered since.

During the second half of the twentieth century, challenges to the autonomy and prerogatives of local school boards only intensified. With the Soviet Union's launching of Sputnik in 1957, public education in the United States quickly came to be considered a matter of national security, and the federal government burst on the scene. Initially, its role was quite circumscribed: it provided funding for school construction and established grants for post-secondary scholarships. Over time, however, the federal government created funds for, and regulations governing, the provision of education services for the handicapped and the poor; wrote strict antidiscrimination statutes; required public schools to provide equal opportunities for male and female students to participate in sports; and, more recently, entered the business of demanding strict accountability systems in public schools nationwide.

School boards increasingly turned to the federal and state governments for funding, and in doing so, they relinquished considerable autonomy. In 1920, public elementary and secondary schools relied on local governments for 83 percent of their funds, on state governments for 17 percent, and on the federal government for less than 1 percent. By 2000, local revenues constituted just 43 percent of total expenditures, while the federal and state governments kicked in for 50 and 7 percent, respectively. Federal agencies and state legislatures imposed an increasing number of regulations on schools, affecting what was taught, how contracts were written, and who was hired and when they could be fired. In addition, state boards of education began to do more than just provide support services for local boards; increasingly, they asserted significant control over administrative and curricular matters.

The courts, especially since the Supreme Court ruled on Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, have had a profound impact on public education. Leading the fight to desegregate public schools in the 1950s and 1960s, courts have mandated all sorts of education policies. They have set rules, for example, on which student organizations can assemble in public schools, what kinds of religious references valedictorians can make at graduation ceremonies, and what allowances and accommodations must be made for students with disabilities. State courts have had a definite impact on school finance, setting fixed standards on the level and type of funding inequalities permissible between and within school districts. And by court order, many urban districts have had to reform their school enrollment policies to advance the twin goals of racial and economic integration.

Various interest groups, teacher unions foremost among them, now influence public education. Through collective bargaining, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, along with their state and local affiliates, have gained a foothold in public education, which has given them considerable say in the kinds of curricular and administrative reforms that school board members will even consider. Unions have transformed school hiring and firing practices, arbitration procedures, tracking systems, teacher assignments, class sizes, and pay scales. Any reform-minded school board members must deal with unions; indeed, success may ultimately depend on their ability to garner union support.

Whereas school board members governed virtually all aspects of public education during the nineteenth century, today members must compete with political actors scattered throughout the federal, state, and local governments as well as organized interests in the private sphere. Almost everything that school boards do is now subject to regulations handed down from city councils, state legislatures and boards of education, the federal government, and federal courts. In 1980, J. Myron Atkin lamented:

Increasingly local school administrators and teachers are losing control over the curriculum as a result of government action. Minimum competency laws determine which fields are to be tested, and the curriculum is expected to reflect that political decision. Teachers and school administrators are told the techniques to be used ... in developing instructional programs for handicapped children. Vocational education and drug-abuse protection education are similarly mandated. In this process, the local administrator becomes less of an educational leader and more of a monitor of legislative intent.

Since then, from Atkin's perspective, matters have only worsened. Teachers may stand alone in their classrooms and principals alone in their schools, but the voices of judges, legislators, mayors, interest groups, and even U.S. presidents bombinate ever more loudly.

During the last two decades, four trends in public education reform have beset school boards. The first took hold in the 1980s under the banner of site-based management. Touting the professionalism of teachers and disparaging bureaucratic waste, organizations such as the Carnegie Foundation called for the wholesale restructuring of public education. Rather than strictly abiding by school board rules and regulations, principals, parents, and teachers would assert new control over and inject much-needed vitality into the education of children. While continuing to function under the direction of school boards, site-based councils (consisting of some mix of principals, professional aides, teachers, and parents) would set standards, develop the curriculum, and design programs around students' needs and interests.

While site-based management reforms failed to reorganize the basic structure of public education, they did usher in a new wave of education reforms in the 1990s that threatened the very existence of school boards. In cities such as Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, and New York, mayors and states began to eliminate or seriously constrain the powers of independently elected school board members and to assume primary responsibility for the functioning of the public schools within their jurisdictions. To be sure, only a handful of mayors thus far have assumed control of school board operations, either directly or through a board that they appointed, and all of these takeovers have occurred in large urban districts, with the exception of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Still, even a few cases are enough to send a clear and potent message: school boards that do not fulfill the expectations of other political players may be stripped of the few independent powers they still retain.

Whereas takeovers shift political power away from school boards to other political actors, choice-based reforms threaten to limit government power more generally. By introducing choice and competition into an expanding education marketplace, vouchers, intra- and interdistrict public school choice, and magnet and charter schools all empower parents.

Continues...

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
1. Introduction -- by William B. Howell 
2. The Local School District in American Law -- by Richard Briffault
3. School District Consolidation and Student Outcomes: Does Size Matter? -- Christopher R. Berry
4. When Mayors Lead Urban Schools: Assessing the Effects of Mayoral Takeover -- by Kennety K. Wong and Francis X. Shen 
5. Desegregation and School Board Politics: The Limits of Court-Imposed Policy Change -- by Luis Ricardo Fraga, Nick Rodriguez, and Bari Anhalt Erlichson
6. Local School Boards as Authorizers of Charter Schools -- by Paul Teske, Mark Schneider, and Erin Cassese
7. Democratic Accountability in Public Education -- by Christopher R. Berry and William G. Howell
8. Minority Incorporation and Local School Boards -- by Melissa J. Marschall  
9. Electoral Structure and the Quality of Representation on School Boards -- by Kennety J. Meier and Eric Gonzalez Juenke 
10. School House Politics: Expenditures, Interests, and Competition in School Board Elections -- by Frederick M. Hess and David L. Leal
11. Teacher Unions and School Board Elections -- by Terry M. Moe
12. Contextual Influences on Participation in School Governance -- by David E. Campbell
13. The End of Local Politics? -- by Joseph P. Viteritti
14. What School Boards Can and Cannot (or Will Not) Accomplish -- by Jennifer L. Hochschild
Contributors
Index

Editorial Reviews

"If the intuition that academics tend to romanticize local school boards is only half right, these rigorous, fine-grained essays on one area of education politics will intrigue more than just political scientists...The data, as Howell acknowledges, are at times drawn narrowly from particular populations. But they are also carefully culled and felicitously organized...Moe takes the reader, step by step, beyond platitudes about local politics to a careful analysis of which factors may and may not limit the prima facie influence that a powerful interest group like a teachers union may have on school board elections...We learn a lot from this collection about what school board members actually do these days, and it often has little directly to do with making decision about educational policy." —Stephen L. Esquith, Michigan State University, Perspectives on Politics

"This volume explores the past, present, and possible future of the school board....It is the best volume this reviewer has seen on the subject. Highly recommended." —K. R. Kosar, Congressional Research Service, CHOICE

"An impressive and non-partisan overview of the realities of school control." —Michael Duffy, Times Educational Supplement

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