School Board Relations

American public schools are still primarily controlled by local school boards. There are fewer boards than in the past: In the early twenty-first century, 14,000 local school boards govern more than 90,000 schools; in the 1920s, there were 130,000 school boards. Although four out of five school boards are responsible for fewer than 3,000 students, the average size of each board has grown over the years. About a third of all boards are located in five states: California, Texas, Illinois, Nebraska, and New York. While 95 percent of the school boards are popularly elected, school boards in Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Boston, and several other cities are appointed by the mayor.

Characteristics of School Boards

Autonomous school board control can be justified by several widely held views in the literature. First, the school board as an autonomous institution is embedded in strongly held public beliefs in democratic, nonpartisan control over public education. The public has traditionally equated local control with districtwide board authority in the constitutional-legal framework of educational governance. In contrasting private and public schools, John Chubb and Terry Moe characterized public school governance as "direct democratic control" (p. 2).

From an economic perspective, the presence of multiple school board systems resembles a quasi-market arrangement that can be cost-efficient to the consumers. States and localities with multiple suppliers of services promise a better fit between consumer-taxpayers' preferences and the level and quality of local services. As Charles Tiebout's (1956) classic work suggested, taxpayers make residential decisions that would maximize the benefits they expect to obtain from public services and minimize the level of taxes that they have to pay for those services. In particular, middle-class taxpayers who can afford to spend more on goods and services are keenly concerned about the quality of basic services, such as schools. As Albert Hirschman (1970) argued, they are more ready to exit when they perceive a decline in those municipal services that they value. Studies of district-level performance in metropolitan areas suggest that interdistrict competition can improve service quality. The out-migration of middle-class families to suburban school districts seems to provide the empirical support for this line of argument. Recent establishment of quasi-public boards that oversee charter schools also shows the increasing popularity of parental choice when the neighborhood schools are failing.

Yet a third view is based on functional consideration. Thomas Shannon, former executive director of the National School Boards Association, has argued that school boards serve several indispensable functions for the common good. They develop strategic plans, manage the operation of the system, comply with federal and state laws, evaluate educational programs, arbitrate complaints from citizens and employees, and represent the collective interests of the entire district. The boards also negotiate contracts with teachers unions and serve as managerial buffers between individual schools and state and federal agencies. In other words, local school boards make a "non-nationalized" educational system functional.

Performance-Based Accountability

As the public increases its demands for performance-based accountability in public schools, the quality of school board governance is called into question. Facing the Challenge: The Report of the Twentieth Century Fund Task Force on School Governance by the Twentieth Century Fund observed in 1992 that school boards "are facing a serious crisis of legitimacy and relevance" (p. 1). According to a 1988 to 1990 survey by Jacqueline Danzberger and colleagues of school board members in 128 districts in 16 states, even school board members perceived themselves as least effective in "the core elements of governance–leadership, planning and goal setting, involving parents and the community, influence on others, policy oversight, board operations, and board development" (p. 56). For example, the survey showed that boards used inconsistent performance measures to evaluate their superintendents. Further, due to the Progressive tradition of taking politics out of schools, school boards are largely isolated from other lateral institutions (e.g., housing and health care agencies) that affect the well-being of children.

The decline in public confidence over school board leadership seems salient in urban districts. Based on a 1998 survey, the National School Boards Foundation found that "[t]here is a consistent, significant difference in perception between urban school board members and the urban public on a number of key issues" (p. 12). Although 67 percent of the urban board members rated schools in A and B categories, only 49 percent of the urban public did. Whereas three out of four board members rated the teachers as excellent and good, only 54 percent of the public agreed. The public seemed half as likely as the board members to agree that the schools were "doing a good job" in the following areas: preparing students for college, keeping violence and drugs out of schools, maintaining discipline among students, and teaching children who do not speak English. Subsequently, the National School Boards Foundation called upon urban leaders to sharpen the focus on student performance.

In light of these concerns, several reforms have been tried to improve accountability. One reform aims at promoting a sense of "ownership" among parents at the school site. While New York City and numerous urban districts experimented with some form of site-based governance in the 1960s, the most extensive decentralization occurred in Chicago when 1988 state legislation created local school councils in all the public schools in the city. Between 1989 and 1995, each of the 550 Chicago schools was primarily governed by an elected, parent-dominated local school council, whose authority included the selection of principal and the use of a substantial discretionary fund. However, community support for the local school council gradually declined. From 1989 to 1993, turnout among parents and community residents plunged by 68 percent, and fewer candidates signed up for local school council offices. As the reforms of the local school councils failed to turn around low performing schools, the legislature enacted another reform that enabled mayoral control over schools in 1995.

Race and School Boards

A second type of reform is associated with racial succession in school boards. Many analysts observe that the predominantly white power structure seems less ready to respond to the minority and low-income constituency in urban schools. According to this view, a shift in racial control over governmental institutions would improve school quality and promote student performance. However, this conventional expectation is not empirically supported by a study in 2000 by Jeffrey Henig and colleagues of school reform in four African-Americanled cities, namely Atlanta, Georgia; Baltimore, Maryland; Detroit, Michigan; and the District of Columbia. None of the cities were able to produce any measurable educational progress for minority students. The authors found that "racialized politics" has contributed to governance ineffectiveness in both direct and indirect ways. Particularly important is the intensity to which local stakeholders are affected by "fears, suspicions, expectations, loyalties, tactics, and habits related to race" (p. 7). Multiple facets of racialized politics are illuminated by the authors' careful analysis of interviews with hundreds of actors both outside and inside the formal governmental institutions, including generally influential people (e.g., city council members and business leaders), community advocates, and education specialists.

The four cities provide ample evidence on how racial concerns have constrained the collective behaviors of both black and white elites. For example, African-American community activists are reluctant to criticize African-American city officials because they want to preserve the reputation of black institutions in general. Likewise, white business elites tend to refrain from criticizing African-American-controlled school systems for fear that their actions are seen in racial terms. In other words, race "complicates" coalition building because it "continues to affect perceptions, calculations, loyalties, and concerns in ways that tug at the thread of collaboration and erode civic capacity to undertake meaningful and sustained reform" (p. 212). Interracial trust and confidence become so limited that civic capacity lacks a solid foundation.

Integrated Governance

The third strand of reform is "integrated governance," where there is an integration of political accountability and educational performance standards at the systemwide level. In numerous urban districts, the mayor takes control over schools with an appointed school board and superintendent (for example, Chicago began such a system in 1995). In this regard, mayoral leadership in education occurs in a policy context where years of decentralized reform alone have not produced systemwide improvement in student performance in big city schools. Reform advocates who pushed for site-based strategies may have overestimated the capacity of the school community to raise academic standards. Decentralized reforms are directed at reallocating power between the systemwide authority and the schools within the public school system. However, decentralized initiatives often fail to take into full consideration powerful quasi-formal actors, such as the teacher union and other organized interests. Decisions made at the school site are constrained by collective bargaining agreements. In addition, decentralization may widen the resource gap between schools that have access to external capital (such as parental organizational skills and grants from foundations) and those that receive limited support from nongovernmental sources. In response to these concerns, "integrated governance" enables the mayor to rely on systemwide standards to hold schools and students accountable for their performance. Failing schools and students are subject to sanctions while they are given additional support.

Measuring Performance

Efforts to improve school board accountability also present a challenge for developing a framework to measure performance of the school boards. Although student performance serves as a useful indicator of the overall performance of a school system, its aggregated character falls short of specifying the link between the functions of the school boards and school performance. In other words, there is a need to develop indicators of institutional effectiveness to assess the school boards. Toward this goal, Kenneth Wong and Mark Moulton attempted in 1998 to develop an institutional "report card" on various state and local actors, including the school board. Using survey responses from members of the broad policy community in Illinois, Wong and Moulton found that the school board and the central administration in Chicago have significantly improved their institutional rating following mayoral control.

In short, school boards are in transition. While many communities maintain the tradition of non-partisan, popularly elected school boards, urban districts that are perceived as low performing are likely to attempt alternative governance. In the early twenty-first century, a greater number of urban school boards are likely to be appointed by mayors and/or challenged by charter schools. Thus, school boards, regardless of their student enrollment and region, will be driven by public concerns over accountability.