Kill all the School Boards? ... Maybe. Nationalize Education? ... Maybe Not.

I read this article a week or so ago when my Atlantic Monthly came and I almost wrote a critique of it then, but I also listened to this interview on NPR the other day and I needed to point out what I see as a serious flaw in his argument. Here is the article ... it is not bad and raises some interesting questions so it is worth the read.

First, Kill all the School Boards ... by Matt Miller.

But, here is a couple of quotes to give you the gist if you are not in for reading the whole thing:

When you look at what local control of education has wrought, the
conclusion is inescapable: we must carry Mann’s insights to their
logical end and nationalize our schools, to some degree.

and ...

[Local Control] has spawned several crippling problems:

1. No way to know how children are doing.
2. Stunted R&D.
3. Incompetent school boards and union dominance.
4. Financial inequity.

I am not going to argue with the connections he makes between local control and the problems he mentioned above, although I do think there are ways for local entities to engage in such research and R&D as technology becomes more available and if it becomes a central component of preparation programs. But, on points 3 and 4 ... yeah, you are going to have some of that with local control. But, based on those critiques (alone) this is his solution:

I asked Marc Tucker, the head of the New Commission on the
Skills of the American Workforce (a 2006 bipartisan panel that called
for an overhaul of the education system), how he convinces people that
local control is hobbling our schools. He said he asks a simple
question: If we have the second-most-expensive K–12 system of all those
measured by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development,
but consistently perform between the middle and the bottom of the pack,
shouldn’t we examine the systems of countries that spend less and get
better results? “I then point out that the system of local control that
we have is almost unique,” Tucker says. “One then has to defend a
practice that is uncharacteristic of the countries with the best
performance.

“It’s an industrial-benchmarking argument,” he adds.

Horace Mann wouldn’t have used this jargon, but his thinking was
much the same. In his time, the challenge was to embrace a bigger role
for the state; today, the challenge is to embrace a bigger role for the
federal government in standards, funding, and other arenas.

Okay? Um, wait a second ... how did we get from problems of local control to national standards? Especially when the author himself acknowledged that Horace Mann was interested in a bigger role for the state? Just because Finland has a centralized control system over education does not mean the U.S. should. New York is very different from New Mexico. Probably more different than Northern Finland is to Southern Finland. Sure, you can cite OECD countries for examples of national control working ... but the U.S. is a much larger country than many of these places. The U.S. has 28x the landmass of Finland (list of country landmass). You know who has a similar landmass to Finland? New Mexico (list of state landmass). Maybe New Mexico would be a good place to locate the major authority over schools in New Mexico? But, what makes it harder for New Mexico to serve that role is a decentralization of power both above and below them. They are getting mandates like NCLB from above and board decisions to ban books from below. It makes it sort of difficult for New Mexico, even if it wanted or had the capacity to, to function in a role similar to that of Finland.

Let's just not throw the baby out with the bathwater here. Are there problems with local control? Yes. Does that mean we need national standards? No. Each of problem 1-4 listed above (if they are problems) can be equally if not better solved at the state level. When you are dealing with a landmass as large as the U.S. and a diversity in population and community desires as diverse as there is in the U.S. (compare Oregon and Idaho, for instance, and those states are neighbors), a centralized set of national standards can not be responsive to local needs. Alternatively, there is some truth to the point that local control cannot be responsive to issues of equity and research. Perhaps there is a happy medium somewhere in between local control and national standards ... oh yeah, that's right, there is ... the states. Perhaps that is why Horace Mann proposed a bigger role for states in the first place.      

Comments

[Mekei]

Thanks for taking me back to my Foundations of Modern Education course in college. Horace Mann. Love it.

[Bobbi Nicholson]

Mr. Tucker made a presentation to the WV Lege just recently, during which he proposed the creation of a "Ministry of Education." His rationale was the same old inferior-schools-are-wrecking-US-economic-competitiveness that typically underlies centralization arguments. Look, I agree that there are local boards that are replete with either deranged or incompetent individuals, and I strongly agree that there remains far, far too much inequity in funding of K-12 schools. Whether the latter is a manifestation of foolish local decisions or a state's funding formula, however, is less clear.

What is also clear is that groups like Mr. Tucker's are not daunted in the least by inconvenient facts -- like the fact that the World Economic Forum just ranked the US first among 131 nations in economic competitiveness for 2007. Moreover, when the WEF applied its new formula to the 2006 data, when they ranked the US sixth, the new formula found the US first among the 131 in 2006 as well. Still public ed critics continue to insist, despite the absence of any proven causal connection, that "our students' performance [on international tests like PISA] today is the best indicator of our economic performance tomorrow" (Bracey,2008 February, Kappan 89(6)462-463). I'm just wondering how much more competitive we can be? What's better than first place?