Historians Cite 'Steady Erosion' in Local Control
Public-school boards have over most of their history faced challenges from education professionals on the one hand and from larger units of government on the other.
But in recent years,
Historians Cite 'Steady Erosion' in Local Control
Public-school boards have over most of their history faced challenges from education professionals on the one hand and from larger units of government on the other.
But in recent years, analysts argue, school boards have lost the battle.
"In theory, local control enables citizens to determine the purpose and character of education in their schools, presumably ensuring a type of schooling that is consonant with, and responsive to, local community values,'' writes William L. Boyd, a professor of education at Pennsylvania State University.
"In practice, however,'' Mr. Boyd continues, "the cherished American value of 'local control' of schools has been undergoing a steady erosion for many years for a variety of reasons.''
Legislators in the Massachusetts Bay Colony adopted the first law governing education in Colonial America in 1642. It required that all children be taught to "read & understand the principles of religion & the capitall lawes of this country.''
Five years later, the Massachusetts Bay General Court ruled that every town of 50 or more families must hire a teacher of reading and writing, and that townships of 100 or more families must establish a grammar school. By vesting responsibility for education in the hands of townspeople, historians have noted, the Massachusetts statute set down the principle of lay governance.
The first permanent school committee was appointed in Boston in 1721. This began the process of separating school-governing bodies from other units of local government.
Diffuse lay control of education in cities like Boston persisted into the 19th century, when a growing population made it unwieldy. In 1850, for example, Boston had 161 one-room grammar schools with 11,000 pupils, and 261 students in two high schools. There was no superintendent; 97 school committeemen chose textbooks, examined students and teachers, and supervised classrooms.
Seeking a 'System'
Led by Horace Mann, the first secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, educators in that state began what the historian David B. Tyack calls a "crusade'' to rationalize control over schooling.
Over the objections of many local residents, who regarded any form of centralization with suspicion, these reformers argued for a "system'' that would impose some organization on the schools.
In part, the reformers based their arguments on the failure of the existing amorphous structure to educate children adequately. One of Mann's allies, Samuel Gridley Howe, demonstrated this failure in 1844 by using a now-familiar tool: a standardized test.
Administering a uniform written test to the top classes in each of the grammar schools in Boston, Howe found large gaps in knowledge, and, in what has become a common complaint, found that students knew rote facts but not principles.
End to Political Control
The drive to create centralized school systems also reflected growing tensions between education professionals and their lay boards.
As early as the latter part of the 19th century, educators were complaining about the revolving door of superintendencies. The average tenure for a superintendent in Los Angeles and San Francisco, for example, was two years.
Educators also objected to some of the policies boards foisted upon them. Fueled by the growing power of immigrant groups, for instance, locally elected boards in cities such as Cincinnati required bilingual instruction in German.
What helped the advocates of centralization win the day, however, were good-government appeals against the political control of education. In cities such as New York, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh, hundreds of ward committeemen held the responsibility for running schools, and had the power to hire teachers and choose textbooks. For some, such authority became an invitation for graft: In Philadelphia, for example, teachers paid dues to a political machine.
"The unscrupulous politician,'' wrote L.H. Jones, Cleveland's superintendent of schools, in 1896, "is the greatest enemy that we now have to contend with in public education.''
Outraged by such practices, superintendents, business leaders, and university presidents banded together in several cities at the turn of the century and reshaped school-governance systems.
In place of a plethora of powerful local boards, the new systems created a small central board--elected at large, rather than by ward--with substantial authority delegated to the superintendent.
While these reforms had the virtue of "keeping schools out of politics,'' as Mr. Tyack notes, the new structures also placed schools firmly in the hands of education professionals.
Centralization of school systems continued through the first half of the 20th century, as the population shifted from rural communities to urban areas.
Consolidation was also enhanced by the emergence of school buses in the 1930's and 40's, which made larger school districts possible. Between 1937 and 1960, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, the number of school districts shrank from 119,001 to 40,520; it is now down to fewer than 16,000.
Rocked by Desegregation
Then, in the 1950's, two cataclysmic events further threatened the power of school boards and brought a new actor into education governance: the federal government.
The first bombshell was the U.S. Supreme Court's unanimous ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, which held