The state of Pennsylvania has recently taken control of Philadelphia's schools, Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants control of New York's schools and the Maryland legislature will probably replace Prince George's County's dysfunctional elected school board with an appointed one. There's a big debate in Cleveland about whether mayoral control should continue. Other American communities are weighing the merits of elected versus appointed boards.
Citizens and journalists call to ask which model works better and what does the research show. The short answer seems to be that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence and there's no solid evidence favoring either elected or appointed boards.
But that begs the truly interesting question, which is why do we need school boards at all? Why not entrust local education to the mayor (and to an education director or commissioner appointed by him/her) and state-level education to the governor (and his/her "secretary of education" or "commissioner")? Why complicate it with a separate board?
The classic answer is that local boards assure local control, express the community's priorities and assure that its values are honored and its needs met.
No doubt America still has some places where school boards do those things well. But there are way too many, particularly in big cities and poor communities, where this is a fraud or illusion. Far too many of today's school boards are dysfunctional creatures that micro-manage, promote patronage (and featherbedding), and deflect authority and responsibility from the mayor, while making it harder for him to coordinate this huge and costly enterprise with other municipal programs that should mesh with it, such as health, welfare, job training and law enforcement.
Too many school boards are scenes of bickering, log-rolling and vanity, comprised of aspiring politicians (for whom this is the first rung on a ladder that goes on to city council or state legislature), aggrieved former employees of the school system (often with a grudge to settle) and fanatical boosters of single-issue causes who are bent on imposing their peculiar enthusiasm upon every child in town.
When elected, they often wind up being pawns of the teachers union. When appointed-particularly when appointed by multiple power brokers, as in New York City today-they mainly work to secure the interests of their patrons. Besides, if a school system's governors are appointed, why bother with a board? Why not just appoint someone to run the schools?
Better still, let's face contemporary reality and redefine "local control" of education. Matching it to municipal boundaries may have made sense in the 19th century but it doesn't today, when vast school systems have enrollments the size of entire states or even countries. With more of public education's financing shifting to the state capital and with more basic policy decisions also getting made there, who needs municipal education agencies anyway? In an era of charter schools and smart corporate restructuring, we should re-allocate decisions away from these "middle managers." We should kick some decisions (having to do with standards and accountability) to the state and others-essentially everything concerning school operations and educational delivery-to individual buildings. We might simply eliminate school districts and their attendant boards and bureaucracies. Tomorrow's boards, if any, should be school-specific, not district wide. And at the building level, we should experiment with every sort of governance-including elected and appointed boards-and carefully evaluate them to see which works best under what circumstances.
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Earlier this month, The Detroit News featured a debate between Michigan Governor John Engler and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Watkins over who should be in charge of state education policy and whether the state board of education should be appointed by the governor, elected by the public or even abolished. See "Yes: Create accountability by letting governor choose superintendent," by John Engler and "No: Framers didn't want governor to dictate state education policy," by Tom Watkins.
