Every public school principal has two big books: one of state laws and
regulations, and the other of old and current school district directives.
California's book is best moved by wheelbarrow, and many district policy
binders expand by hundreds of pages each year. Audiences for reformist
speakers can easily be convinced that these documents contribute little
to effective teaching and learning.
The politics of public spending creates these tomes. Rules and regulations
guard against charges of favoritism or loose management of funds. But
they also burden schools, imposing time-consuming tasks and robbing educators
of flexibility.
Over-regulation is tragic because it is unnecessary. The key to ending
it is to change the powers and missions of local school boards. In big
cities, boards now meet frequently, often more than once each week. They
spend the bulk of their time on budgetary and personnel issues and on
resolving complaints, leaving little time for discussion of school performance.
The key to reform is to take away the school board powers that lead to
the greatest disruption -- the power to hire and assign staff and reallocate
funds among schools -- and to strengthen their power to ensure that
there is a school for every child. This could be accomplished by three
changes in state law.
Locate decisionmaking as near the child as possible. Every school
faces unique challenges, and good schools adapt to the needs of the children
they serve. In big cities, where every school serves a different mix of
language and income groups, schools can't all be the same. Important decisions
must be made at the school level. In most school districts, however, decisions
about hiring, teacher assignments, and spending are made centrally, far
from the site of problem-solving.
In education as in politics, the power of the purse trumps all other
considerations. Money needs to go directly to schools, so they can pay
for the teachers, equipment, and other services they need. This can be
done if states allocate dollars for each student, and give schools a check
for every student who enrolls.
Limit the powers of school boards. Boards focus on patronage and
interest brokering because they hire everyone who works in a school and
authorize all purchases. States could remove these powers by making schools,
not boards, the agencies that hire teachers and decide how money will
be allocated among competing budget demands: salaries, class size, technology,
and other services to children. This change would give the school board
only one job: overseeing its portfolio of schools, pruning out the ones
that consistently under-perform, and nurturing new ones to take their
place.
Make everything -- including the existence of individual schools
and the continuation of the school board itself -- contingent on performance.
Even if they can make their own key decisions, not all schools will work.
School boards need to identify schools that do not teach effectively,
and create new schools for children whose schools fail them. As suggested
by the Democratic Leadership Council's charter district proposal, school
boards would not operate schools, but charter them. Schools would receive
public funds as long as their children were learning, but the charters
held by failing schools could be reassigned to new groups.
School boards' existence should also depend on performance. States should
not tolerate school boards that allow certain schools to under-educate
generations of children. At present, states have few options: They can
threaten or exhort, but school boards can continue to neglect certain
schools, especially the ones in poor neighborhoods where parents lack
political clout.
States could regain the leverage they need by chartering not just schools,
but school districts. Like charter schools, school boards could have performance
contracts with the state, renewable every five years. In the case of a
negligent school board, the state could hold new elections, or allow neighboring
districts to compete for control of a failed school board's schools. States
could also place school boards under the pressure of competition by authorizing
two or more school boards to serve an area now served by one, or by creating
multiple boards able to operate anywhere in a broad area, such as a large
metropolitan county.
Taken together, these changes would create a public education system
in which families and teachers have options, schools have a good balance
of accountability and freedom of action, and school boards have fewer
temptations but enough powers to provide good schools. Under this proposal,
everything would depend on school performance. Schools boards could focus
on what matters, and would have neither incentive nor opportunity to burden
schools or meddle in personnel or purchasing.
