The Fight for Local Control: Schools, Suburbs, and American Democracy

by Campbell F. Scribner

Overview

Throughout the twentieth century, local control of school districts was one of the most contentious issues in American politics. As state and federal regulation attempted to standardize public schools, conservatives defended local prerogative as a bulwark of democratic values. Yet their commitment to those values was shifting and selective. In The Fight for Local Control, Campbell F. Scribner demonstrates how, in the decades after World War II, suburban communities appropriated legacies of rural education to assert their political autonomy and in the process radically changed educational law.

Scribner’s account unfolds on the metropolitan fringe, where rapid suburbanization overlapped with the consolidation of thousands of small rural schools. Rural residents initially clashed with their new neighbors, but by the 1960s the groups had rallied to resist government oversight. What began as residual opposition to school consolidation would transform into campaigns against race-based busing, unionized teachers, tax equalization, and secular curriculum. In case after case, suburban conservatives carved out new rights for local autonomy, stifling equal educational opportunity.

Yet Scribner also provides insight into why many conservatives have since abandoned localism for policies that stress school choice and federal accountability. In the 1970s, as new battles arose over unions, textbooks, and taxes, districts on the rural-suburban fringe became the first to assert individual choice in the form of school vouchers, religious exemptions, and a marketplace model of education. At the same time, they began to embrace tax limitation and standardized testing, policies that checked educational bureaucracy but bypassed local school boards. The effect, Scribner concludes, has been to reinforce inequalities between districts while weakening participatory government within them, keeping the worst aspects of local control in place while forfeiting its virtues.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501700804
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	06/07/2016
Series:	American Institutions and Society
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Campbell F. Scribner is Assistant Professor of Education at Ohio Wesleyan University.

Table of Contents

Introduction. A Past Found
1. The Meaning of Local Control
2. The Long History of School District Consolidation
3. The Exurban Exchange
4. The Struggle for Status
5. The Fight for Funding
6. Tax Revolts
7. The Battle of Ideas
8. Redefining Parents' Rights
Conclusion. A Past Lost

What People are Saying About This

Robert D. Johnston

"Campbell F. Scribner's complex analysis discovers in rural/suburban school politics not just the foundation for much of twentieth-century educational policy, but more generally the grounding of many of the most critical political and legal trends in modern American history. The Fight for Local Control is broad-minded in its intellectual orientation, admirable in its decades-long chronological sweep, deeply respectful of all the actors and ideologies involved, impressively original in its perspective, and worthy of sustained civic consideration. This excellent book will find a broad audience among historians, educational policymakers, and even ordinary citizens."

Andrew Hartman

"The Fight for Local Control is an elegantly written, impressively researched, and persuasively argued history of how the twentieth-century struggle for local control of schools was deeply enmeshed in the politics of suburbanization and also, adding a compelling historiographical twist, the politics of rural consolidation. With a small-'d' democratic sensibility, Campbell F. Scribner shows that a deeper understanding of this history might help us transcend the false choice between community and equality. Must reading for historians, educational specialists, and citizens who care about schools and democracy!"

Editorial Reviews

Especially for a first book based on a dissertation, the reach of The Fight for Local Control—spanning multiple cities and towns across a half-century in realms from court cases to curriculum controversy to fiscal and union politics—is impressive and, at moments, astonishing.... Scholars of history, education, politics, and policy are lucky this important volume exists.

Natalia Mehlman Petrzelan Historical Review

An excellent book forces the reader into such thorny terrain, and Scribner's important and meticulously researched study clearly does that. In sum, his brilliantly argued book should seriously interest this journal’s readers, and its careful and accessible prose also makes it suitable for advanced undergraduates in both history and education policy programs.

History of Education Quarterly - Jon Shelton

As fundamental questions about publicly governed education are intensely debated in the United States today, Scribner makes a valuable contribution to historians' understanding of the freighted and protean concept of "local control."

JOURNAL OF AMERICAN HISTORY

Especially for a first book based on a dissertation, the reach of The Fight for Local Control—spanning multiple cities and towns across a half-century in realms from court cases to curriculum controversy to fiscal and union politics—is impressive and, at moments, astonishing.... Scholars of history, education, politics, and policy are lucky this important volume exists.

American Historical Review - Natalia Mehlman Petrzela

"Campbell F. Scribner's complex analysis discovers in rural/suburban school politics not just the foundation for much of twentieth-century educational policy, but more generally the grounding of many of the most critical political and legal trends in modern American history. The Fight for Local Control is broad-minded in its intellectual orientation, admirable in its decades-long chronological sweep, deeply respectful of all the actors and ideologies involved, impressively original in its perspective, and worthy of sustained civic consideration. This excellent book will find a broad audience among historians, educational policymakers, and even ordinary citizens."

Robert D. Johnston

"The Fight for Local Control is an elegantly written, impressively researched, and persuasively argued history of how the twentieth-century struggle for local control of schools was deeply enmeshed in the politics of suburbanization and also, adding a compelling historiographical twist, the politics of rural consolidation. With a small-'d' democratic sensibility, Campbell F. Scribner shows that a deeper understanding of this history might help us transcend the false choice between community and equality. Must reading for historians, educational specialists, and citizens who care about schools and democracy!"

Andrew Hartman

"Campbell F. Scribner's complex analysis discovers in rural/suburban school politics not just the foundation for much of twentieth-century educational policy, but more generally the grounding of many of the most critical political and legal trends in modern American history. The Fight for Local Control is broad-minded in its intellectual orientation, admirable in its decades-long chronological sweep, deeply respectful of all the actors and ideologies involved, impressively original in its perspective, and worthy of sustained civic consideration. This excellent book will find a broad audience among historians, educational policymakers, and even ordinary citizens."—Robert D. Johnston, University of Illinois at Chicago, author of The Radical Middle Class: Populist Democracy and the Question of Capitalism in Progressive Era Portland, Oregon

"The Fight for Local Control is an elegantly written, impressively researched, and persuasively argued history of how the twentieth-century struggle for local control of schools was deeply enmeshed in the politics of suburbanization and also, adding a compelling historiographical twist, the politics of rural consolidation. With a small-'d' democratic sensibility, Campbell F. Scribner shows that a deeper understanding of this history might help us transcend the false choice between community and equality. Must reading for historians, educational specialists, and citizens who care about schools and democracy!"—Andrew Hartman, Illinois State University, author of A War for the Soul of America

"The Fight for Local Control is a smart, accessible, engaging, and important book. It investigates school conflicts in communities transforming from rural to suburban and in the process offers new insights about education, local control and autonomy, suburbanization and metropolitan development, conservatism and political change in postwar America. Campbell F. Scribner compellingly shows that battles over teacher unionization, school finance, and curriculum were fought intensely on the rural/suburban fringe and that these struggles fashioned legal precedents and a political language that shaped education and politics more broadly. This is a must-read for anyone interested in history of education, metropolitan development, and post–World War II American history."—Tracy Steffes, Brown University, author of School, Society, & State: A New Education to Govern Modern America, 1890–1940

From the Publisher