A reader explains why local control works in her community’s public schools. She realizes the downside of local control. She knows that local control can be a way of maintaining ignorance and rejecting science and knowledge. But there is a danger in standardization, and she explains why we must seek to find the right balance between the forces of localism and the forces of standardization. If we don’t, we lose something of value.
| Local control also allows for some pretty different and interesting curricula options. Our local high school, a rural school in California, has a vineyard, an orchard, pigs, and sheep. The program is very successful at this school. I daresay if I proposed this as a statewide standard and suggested that LAUSD implement it at all their high schools the suggestion would be laughed away as absurd. And yet, rarely does anyone wonder if choices that originate at urban schools fit for the rural ones.It would be wonderful if every kid in every zip code had access to every type of school. I’m sure there are many urban kids who would be totally on board with the idea of sheep or having recess under the redwoods. There are kids in our community who would benefit from an all-gifted STEM magnet. Neither school can fit in every neighborhood. But we as parents also need to appreciate that we make school choices based on where we choose to work and to live whether we mean to or not.Local control can be a source of ignorance and oppression. It can also be a source of freedom and creativity. Making all schools the same in the name of avoiding oppression is probably not going to turn out well… and it probably won’t serve the interests of the kids, either. Teaching a reading unit that’s all about playing in the snow is one thing in Michigan and something altogether different in Phoenix. Kids in California learn California history that kids in New England never even thought to ask about. Kids in small villages in Alaska take field trips by airplane where part of the adventure may be learning to order in a restaurant.
Education is about giving kids tools to unlock the world around them. It’s only right that they start by practicing on the problems and the history and the science and the geology of their own local community. Schools need the freedom to do that, and to gauge the needs and desires of their local students, parents, and communities. |
Diane Ravitch's blog 
There are two sides even to the points that this teacher makes.
Yes, a school should be able to have sheep without that being part of the statewide curriculum.
Yet children in Phoenix should get to read “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” The fact that they don’t see snow around them shouldn’t prevent them from reading about it. The teacher just might have to explain a little more about snow.
I see no reason why there couldn’t be a slim (but high-quality) common curriculum that left plenty of room for variation and choice. (I distinguish between curriculum and standards–the standards, as I see them, are not curriculum.)
Otherwise you could end up with schools that didn’t offer physics because they didn’t think the kids needed it; that didn’t teach Sophocles because his message isn’t Christian; that didn’t teach poems or stories about snow because, well, they weren’t relevant to the kids’ lives.
You’d have schools that based their curriculum on student and teacher preferences, with little or nothing to counterbalance them. Yes, I enjoy teaching my favorite works of literature, but I also want to be challenged to teach something outside of my preferences, provided it’s good.
Local control could also subject schools to the temporary emotions of the community. A few years ago, a Sixth Circuit panel in Ohio decided that a teacher’s curricular and pedagogical choices are not protected by the First Amendment. Parents had petitioned against a high school teacher who was teaching Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha (which the school board had ordered). There was more to this than Siddhartha alone, but still, it’s disturbing that the parents had more say than the teacher here. There should be some protection of subject matter. (I wrote about this case in a guest blog: http://www.joannejacobs.com/2011/05/evans-marshall-and-the-canons-of-the-profession/)
What I find constraining is not curriculum but the packaging of it–big, bulky, cluttered textbooks; bad tests; constraining pedagogical directives; and misleading jargon and buzzwords.
I hope kids in Phoenix read books set in snow… but I hope kids in Maine read just as many books set in the desert and lauding southwestern traditions. 🙂
They may read books set in many places, especially with programs like Accelerated Reader, but when it comes to testing, the standardized tests seem to be all about the North. They don’t adjust for regional conditions and vocabulary. When I taught an after school testing class to 4th graders in New Orleans there were questions about a footbridge across a ravine and hearing echoes bouncing off mountains. If you know anything about south Louisiana, it is totally flat although there are a few hills in the northern part. A lot of it is below sea level. The kids had never seen a hill, much less a ravine or a mountain. But ask them about a bayou, alligators, jambalaya, and crawfish (not crayfish) and they are right on. There were also some questions about playing in the snow in a snowsuit. Right. In a place where people where shorts and flip-flops to church in November!
My friend from Massachusetts was doing vocabulary work with 2nd graders in New Orleans. She called and asked me what you call the bag women keep their things in. Of course, good southern woman that I am, I replied, “A pocketbook”. “I thought so” she replied. “That’s what the kids say. The test wants “purse”. Oh, I also taught her that tea is a sweet, cold, drink and that a carbonated one is a soda, not a pop. Pop might be your granddaddy unless you are Cajun.
There is nothing wrong with the vocabulary of southern and Gulf south children, but the tests need to be normed on them, not just midwestern and northerners. Why do they take the IOWA Test of Basic Skills? Our babies are not stupid and their language needs to be included. That is one of the places where local control of the schools would be the best thing is in giving content choices and variety in social studies and reading comprehension. You teach the subject matter. You also respect the culture and use it to teach the children. And you expose northern kids and kids from Phoenix to Southern vocabulary and lifestyles. And on the standardized tests, maybe you need two right answers for that bag and a story about taking a pirogue down the bayou as well as a hike across a ravine.
The testing industry screens out any words or stories that are geographically specific.
See my book “The Language Police.”
Your commenter makes one of the best arguments for school choice.
In this area, because of declining enrollment, nearly all the public schools have excess capacity, and California law allows the state money to follow the child, so it is relatively easy to elect a different school (and because of our peculiar location) even across different districts. However, to exercise those choices require parents willing to commit to transporting their kids to the alternate schools. In our area, we tend to see a pretty balanced wash of students in and out of their home locations, not a pathological bunching at one particular school.
To create school choice, perhaps the most important factor is to have inefficient schools – schools that always have some empty slots for new students. That’s not exactly fashionable in school finance these days.
I think school choice among non-profit options can still be very positive. If a family wants to choose a school where the kids can walk home to grandma’s house after school, that’s something we should support. Variations in curriculum and style can be positive too. We don’t need for-profit entities to create this, nor do we need schools controlled by organizations with no ties to the local community.
The needs/interests/desires of the student have to be considered in education. We need to listen to them and allow them to listen to their own inner guidance because they know more about what they want than we give them credit for.
Local democratic control of schools is the last remaining obstacle to the complete privatization of public education. For that reason alone, the movement to save public education needs to make this a central program tenet.
Locally elected boards are the only entity that has the mission of keeping public schools public. They have a vested interest in retaining public control of schools and ensuring quality education since their actions directly impact local community life. That don’t always live up to that mission, but democracy allows us to hold them accountable.
State control is no different than federal control since state elected officials are more susceptible to lobbying and legalized bribery (called “campaign distributions) and nearly impossible to access and recall. Local board elections, unlike any other elected office, provide an opportunity for voters to specifically vote up or down education issues and not compromise their vote because they agree with a candidate’s stand on other non-education policies. Local school board elections are normally the only opportunity for the direct expression of the will of the people on education issues.
I agree that local democracy is rife with problems. But democracy, unlike privatized education, is self-correcting. Corrupt and incompetent boards can be thrown out of office. Local democratic control does not preclude state standards and state and federal protection for liberties, equal rights and due process. There is an appropriate role in local education for state and federal government and there is also an appropriate role for locally elected schools boards.
In the past when local boards have done stupid and corrupt things and violated the rights of students and teachers, we have often turned to the judiciary and state and federal government for remedies. But local democracy has always been a balance of the rights of a community and the rights of individuals that the community has the power to neglect or abuse. That balance has shifted dramatically toward hierarchical and corporate control of education which now makes paramount the role of local democracy as the guardian of public education.
This is the time to put aside our misgivings about aspects of local control and make common cause with all who want to keep public education public. Once we save public education from the usurpers, we can return to fighting (with each other) for intelligent, honest, and accountable education. If we lose local control of schools, we permanently lose the right and ability to control those elements of a good public education.
I deeply disagree (and I may be on my own here). I see both local and state/federal control as potentially corrupt. You yourself acknowledge this and suggest that they should balance each other.
In some cases, the local community can be the most oppressive of all–precisely because of the social element, the fact that people know each other and can create “in-groups” that ostracize those who disagree with them.
The challenge then is to find a balance of powers that actually makes sense. That’s different from embracing local control as if it were a good in itself–or embracing it for temporary political reasons.
Moreover, “making common cause” should always leave room for differences and disagreements. (This is not the same as in-fighting.) If we stop thinking on our own and speaking our views, what are we upholding? What sort of education is it, if its defenders don’t dare differ from the group? How can you even think an issue through, if you feel you have to reach a certain conclusion?
I am grateful for people who sort things out for themselves, who aren’t certain about everything, who change their mind when they see fit, who acknowledge error, and who articulate positions that don’t completely align with anyone’s platform. I am not referring to myself here. I am thinking of a number of people who do this in different ways–such as Diane, Rachel Levy, Gary Rubinstein, Robert Pondiscio, Michael Lopez, and many others.
Diana,
I am not sure we disagree on that much.
I wrote that we need a balance of local, state, and federal governance in education. The conflict between individual liberty and democracy is a permanent challenge for democratic government and self-government ultimately rests on the confidence that the majority in the long run will respect the rights of minorities. The federal government, like local government, has never been immune to popular prejudices. It is at the local level that we first learn how to govern ourselves in fair and just way–but we have to have that opportunity.
Here in Louisiana we have had to develop state-wide coalitions defending the right of local governance, and that has required all sides to put aside differences on other educational issues within that coalition work. I am not suggesting that we stop debating the issues within our own grouping; only that we don’t make agreement on our viewpoint a condition of uniting with others.
You are right: I do believe that local democratic control of schools is “a good in itself.” In fact, I believe it is right, whether or not it always produces good.
“But democracy, unlike privatized education, is self-correcting. Corrupt and incompetent boards can be thrown out of office.”
With school choice, it’s much easier for parents to remove their children from a failing school (or simply a school that doesn’t fit their child’s particular needs for any of a thousand reasons) than it is to elect a new school board.
In New Orleans 79% of the charters are failing schools–and charters comprise 85% of the schools. So “choice” means withdrawing your child from one failing school and placing them in another failing school. That’s a dilemma, not a choice.
But assuming you don’t live in a city of failing charters,choice certainly solves the problem for your child and but leaves the problem for thousands of others. That is a individual solution, not systemic education reform. I don’t want to advance my child’s education at the expense of another child. Choice encourages people to think only of their own self-interest and ignore the common good.
Unless you have a plan (a la Plato’s The Republic) to remove all children from their parents’ care, school choice is part of the mix. In fact, the overwhelmingly most common form of school choice exists entirely within the public school system — by virtue of the very fact that parents can (and most certainly do) decide where to live based on what the school district/zone looks like.
If you don’t like charters/vouchers, you’re not arguing against school choice; you’re arguing against poor people having choices that everyone else takes for granted.
Slowly but surely local school boards are losing their place in establishing hiring and dismissal policies, student policies, and curriculum. Don’t kid yourself, when school board election time comes around, money comes to those candidates that will support the reforms the reformers want from outside the immediate community which they know nothing or little about.
http://www.cbs12.com/news/features/treasure-coast/stories/vid_164.shtml
Local School Board Meeting in action