An op-ed column last month carried the headline, "School boards are an obstacle to education refom." The author of the screed, Chester Finn Jr., has been a persistent critic of public education as undersecretary of education in the Reagan administration and as head of conservative think tanks. He believes that school boards are resistant to educational reform and that they are declining in influence. The "reform" to which he refers is the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) program of the federal government.
Rather than celebrate the prospective death of elected school boards, as Dr. Finn has done, we need to celebrate the important role that they play. But state and national legislators also need to be aware of the extent that school boards have been marginalized as federal and state bureaucracies intervene more and more upon local schools.
Public schooling is the responsibility of each state. Until after World War II, in Pennsylvania virtually every municipality had its own school board. During the early 1960s, many districts merged, and there now are 500 school boards for the 500 districts outside of Philadelphia.
A historic change in relationship took place in the mid-1960s, when the federal government began to impose itself upon public education. In the "Great Society" programs of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, federal funds were authorized to provide remedial programs for the poor. A decade later, the federal government undertook a special education initiative. The most recent federal intervention is the NCLB legislation.
The Great Society programs had a great deal of promise, but were soon hampered by bureaucratic regulations. The special education initiative has been chronically underfunded and has left local school districts to finance expensive programs for the handicapped. Until recently, most conservatives such as Dr. Finn were advocates of local control of education. Conservatives professed to fear that a federal bureaucracy would indoctrinate children in a liberal ideology. The federal Department of Education is now controlled by right-wing ideologues. Although they may still give lip service to local control, they are really in favor of federal control, at least as long as the current administration is in power.
NCLB presents bureaucratic, financial, and operational problems. Educators are forced to spend scarce resources of time and money doing reports and keeping statistics. The financial costs of NCLB have been calculated in several states, and they are huge. An operational issue is state testing of academic achievement. For example, there are profound questions of fairness regarding the testing of the handicapped and of those for whom English is not the first language. Many thoughtful educators are skeptical that all children can meet the standards that have been spelled out by the Pennsylvania Department of Education in its PSSA tests, but are reluctant to speak out, because they will be labeled as having low standards.
School boards must navigate between mandates from state and federal bureaucracies and the financial resources of their local community, while keeping the best interests of the children in the forefront. Local school boards must assure that there are sufficient funds for their schools. Federal funds pay only a small portion of the costs of public education. The state government pays less than 40 percent of the expenses of the public schools. School boards raise the remainder through taxes on their neighbors.
School boards are the victims of federal programs that promise a great deal but ultimately dump the responsibility for making them successful upon the local school district. If any reform is to be successful, there must be sufficient resources and authority at the local level to make it work. This means that school boards need to be strenghtened, rather than hamstrung by oppressive federal and state unfunded mandates.
The rationale for elected school boards is as valid today as 150 years ago. The members are residents of the community. They serve without pay. They represent a variety of backgrounds. On our present Quakertown Community School Board are parents and grandparents of children in the schools, persons with backgrounds in construction, an engineer, a retired state policeman, a university professor, a Realtor, a social worker, and a retired educator. All of us have put our roots down in our district.
School boards need to be given more authority, not less. Local school boards should have authority equivalent to the portion of funding that is provided by local taxpayers, rather than the reverse, which is the case at present. Effective school boards are the crucial ingredient in assuring that educational reform is in the interest of the students, not in the best interest of pundits, ideologues, or politicians in Washington.