Introduction

Every state has a big book of laws and regulations governing public schools. This book makes a great prop for a speaker advocating school reform. How can teachers and principals do their jobs when they are burdened by this tome (or in the case of California, this wheelbarrow load) of regulations?

Big city school districts can be attacked in the same way. If (as was recently done in an Eastern city) principals save all the directives they receive from the central office in one 180-day school year, the stack can include as many as 400 items, all signed by a high official and issued under the authority of the school board. How can anyone direct the instructional program of a school and still comply with two new directives every day about how money is to be spent, time is to be used, employees are to be supervised, records are to be kept, or property is to be managed?

These speakers' tricks work because they have a point. Lay persons are shocked to see the documents that regulate schools and instinctively understand that they must be loaded with provisions that do something other than promote school performance.

Most state governments and big-city school boards impede the education of public school students by overregulation. They do so because of the politics of public spending. When there is tax money at stake, regulations are needed to prevent complaints about unfair allocation or inappropriate spending.

Local school boards meet frequently, sometimes more than once each week, and produce a steady stream of policies and initiatives. They spend the bulk of their time on budgetary and personnel issues and on resolving complaints, leaving little time for oversight of instruction or even reviewing data about school performance.

Should Americans be content with the principle that government oversight follows money and jobs? This paper argues to the contrary, that government regulation and oversight are now both excessive in one dimension (budgetary) and shockingly negligent in the other (school performance). It concludes that the work of local school boards can be focused on what children need to know and whether the schools are teaching it effectively. The report has three parts:

• Why the existing structure of oversight does not promote school performance;
• What performance-focused oversight of schools would entail; and
• How the missions and activities of school boards and district central offices must change.

Many people, this author included, have argued that school boards might be less driven by patronage and interest group demands if members were selected differently, either via mayoral appointment or citywide (vs. neighborhood-based) elections. These changes can have positive effects: Clearly, Cleveland's mayor-appointed board is less politically divided than the previous elected boards. Similarly, Seattle's school board, all of whose members are elected citywide, is much less fractious than constituency-based boards in some otherwise-similar cities (e.g. San Francisco). However, it is possible to identify appointed and citywide boards that do not work so well, and even to find instances where cities with appointed or citywide boards are dissatisfied and looking for something else.

Board members' mode of selection is important, but what really matters is the board's basic powers and mission.

In its final sections, this paper proposes ways of transforming public school oversight so that everything depends on performance. It shows how the work of schools can be focused on student performance above all else. It also shows how school board roles can be redefined so that they, too, can focus on school performance. Options include limiting board powers (so that they are no longer directed by opportunities to dispense patronage and pressures to "fix" problems on behalf of influential constituents) and subjecting boards to performance contingency (so boards that fail to provide good schools are decommissioned, and multiple boards can compete in one geographic area).

Blueprint Keywords: Extra Teachers

Paul Hill is a professor at the University of Washington's Evans School of Public Affairs. He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. An author of many books and articles on education, Dr. Hills most recent book is It Takes a City: Getting Serious About Urban School Reform (Brookings Institution Press).