Recently I was reading Joseph Viteritti's Choosing Equality: School Choice, the Constitution, and Civil Society.  On page 45, he makes an interesting observation:

The governance of urban schools represented a particular challenge for proponents of participatory democracy.  While municipal institutions had been created on the premise of representative government, urban school systems deliberately had been designed to remove education from the political process.  Organizationally, they were closed systems.  In fact, school boards were set up as an antidote to local politics, which the progressive architects of reform rightly perceived as corrupt and unworthy.  Although the school board allowed for some semblance of democratic control, it originally was conceived as a sacred trust to protect the upper class's vision of the public good, rather than as a representative body that would provide channels of access to school clientele.

I found this highly compelling.  In this light, it would seem the people behind the creation of school boards had designed them not to be vehicles for popular control of education, but to protect schools from the political process.  Meaning that goals of taking over a school board to shake up the bureaucracy, while well intentioned, will leave that school board looking and behaving very differently from what its creators had envisioned. 

I contacted Viteritti to explore this, and he was kind enough to share his perspective.  He explained that the democratically elected school board is a fairly new concept from the Progressive Era of the 19th century.  The aim of reformers was part of a broader fight against dirty municipal politics: it was the age of political machines, patronage and favoritism, and progressives saw that public education was just another cog in the greasy wheel.  As Viteritti put it, "It was really part of campaign against municipal corruption—reformers from the era said 'We need to get education out of politics.'"  

One facet of all this, the Efficiency Movement, is also important to recognize.  Reformers felt there was too much waste and inefficiency within society, and that the solution was research and proper application of scientific principles.  Let the experts find the problems and fix them, activists said, and the world will be a better place.  This is where research universities and schools of business and engineering got their start. 

With this in mind, they settled on the idea of elected school boards.  "Progressives wanted separate school boards of citizens that wouldn’t be politically motivated, but would function as wise, well-meaning individuals interested in removing education from many of the problems of government, from many problems of the political process," Viteritti said.  In this way, Progressives sought to kill two birds with one stone: public education would be insulated from City Hall politics, and it would empower Efficiency Movement professionals to study education and professionalize teaching.  So separate boards of education were established, accompanied by layers of bureaucracy that were intended to distance schools from the corrupt workings of regular municipal government.  "The idea was to set up separate school boards of citizens that wouldn’t be politically motivated, but would function as wise, well-meaning individuals interested in removing education from many of the problems of government, from many problems of political process." 

However, there were, and are, a number of inherent problems with this approach.  One is that the education bureaucracy removed the process not only from grubby politics but from accountability as well, particularly from parents.  This is something that Viteritti decries.  "What we did was legitimize an edubureaucracy not accountable to anyone.  You can’t buy into that anymore.  There are a lot of decisions made in education that don’t beg for professional judgment but are a matter of values that belong to parents."  By extension, it also legitimized the idea that these newly professionalized educators knew best--that they even knew better than parents what students need.  (For an example of what I'm talking about, go here.)

But the school board model has a particular weakness--that the groups end up being not terribly representative of the communities they purport to represent.  "What we know about American politics," Viteritti said, "is that the closer you get to the local level, the less public interest there is.  When you have low participation in elections, groups active in one or two elections can control them."  In other words, it's not hard for interest groups, i.e. the NEA or AFT, to take over school boards, meaning that come time for contract negotiations they're on both sides of the bargaining table. 

Most interesting to me is that school boards represent a group of people who wield considerable power but operate in relative obscurity.  If you were to poll 1000 people, you'd be lucky to find five able to name just one member of their local school board.  But your state legislators, particularly those serving on education committees, know exactly who they are. 

The unions, of course, weren't the only ones to see that school boards represent an opportunity to acquire influence.  After the Colorado Supreme Court shut down a very promising school choice program, Alliance board member Steve Schuck decided to explore alternative routes to provide school choice to Colorado schoolchildren.  He decided to elect a slate of choice-friendly candidates to a single school board, eventually settling on Colorado Springs.  "I felt the community itself would be more open to reform," Schuck said.  He also liked the size of the district: at around 32,000 students, he believed the district was "large enough to be representative, small enough not to be politicized."  The intention was quite open and frank: to offer a district voucher to children in poorly-performing schools.  "The new school board was going to take the culture of the district and turn it on its head and put the needs of the children before those of the district." 

Schuck said his efforts paid off--briefly.  In 2003, a slate of four choice-friendly supporters won election to the seven-member board.   But one of the four promptly caved to the union and violated all her campaign promises.  "It’s no different from dealing with the legislature—the unions have a good deal of power and influence," Schuck said.  "School board members are no more principled than legislators as a group." 

However, he is still a proponent of taking over school boards to bring about reform.  "School boards are usually comprised of fewer people—usually single-digit numbers.  The campaigns are usually substantially less expensive.  There’s more local buy-in than with a legislature.  And after you win and the new board implements new policy, it takes effect immediately—it doesn’t have to go through the legislative sausage factory." 

Schuck also sees school boards as too easily controlled by groups who may not have the wishes of parents in mind.  "The true facts are that the unions have dominated and controlled school boards for decades, and the most insidious result of that is that the union is sitting on both sides of the bargaining table in the negotiations for provisions of the union contract.  And it’s very rare that the citizens have any advocate fighting for what’s best for the kids and the taxpayers during those negotiations.  So notwithstanding the history and textbook definition of the purpose and nature of school boards, the reality is that they were politicized long ago, and the time has long passed for the community to have its interests represented." 

All this illustrates a deeper problem that sharp-eyed readers have probably already spotted: with the best of intentions, those Progressive reformers sought to depoliticize education by way of a political vehicle, an inherently contradictory proposition, making the whole enterprise misguided from the get-go.  Viteritti agrees that the original architects were a bit idealistic in thinking a popularly elected school board--by definition, a political device--would somehow remain apolitical.  Or that school boards wouldn't fall victim to takeovers.  "It’s not something that would have been envisioned by those who originally set up school boards.  But it’s pretty naïve to say the system wouldn’t have ended up this way.  They’re playing the game according to the rules." 

Schuck is more blunt, especially towards critics.  "Where have they been the last 20 years?  The union took control of their vision.  Don’t come out of the woodwork now that we’re trying to level the playing field.  They should have been outraged decades ago—the unions politicized this process."

In short, it really is quite inappropriate to talk about the local school board as a mechanism for local, democratic governance of schools.  Their creators intended nothing of the kind, and their very makeup frustrates attempts to make schools more responsive to their communities.  Worst of all, school boards by their very nature frustrate the creators' original vision of non-political control of schools. 

But is democratic governance of schools even a desirable thing?  Stay tuned for part two.