Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T17:34:06.127Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Toward an Understanding of Public School Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Thomas H. Eliot
Thomas H. Eliot
Affiliation:
Washington University, St. Louis
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Mounting concern over the aims and achievements of American public schools emphasizes the need for continuing analysis of how the schools are run and who runs them. The general theory is simple enough: schools are objects of local control, the people of a local school district exercise that control through an elected school board, and the board appoints a superintendent to act as the chief executive of the district. There are variations from this pattern—in some places school boards are appointed rather than elected, in others the school system is formally a part of the city government, and in a few districts other officials, such as a business manager or building superintendent, share the top executive authority—but it is by far the most common arrangement among the nation's approximately 50,000 school districts.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 53 , Issue 4 , December 1959 , pp. 1032 - 1051
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1959

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Meyer, Adophe E., An Educational History of the American People (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1957), esp. pp. 39, 116Google Scholar, and ch. 9.

2 When President of Columbia University, Mr. Eisenhower, in a letter to Representative Ralph Gwinn, pictured general federal aid for education as “another vehicle by which the believers in paternalism, if not outright socialism, will gain still additional power for the central government.” Congressional Record, Vol. 95, Pt. 14, p. A3690, June 14, 1949Google Scholar.

3 E.g., “We should never wish to remove the teacher altogether from social control, for the school is, after all, a social institution serving the needs of the community. But we should hope in the years to come to erect new agencies of control which would oversee the work of the educational profession at a little greater distance than is now the case.” Morris, Van Cleve, “Grass Rootsism and the Public Schools,” School and Society, Vol. 85, No. 2114, June 22, 1957Google Scholar.

4 Conant, James B., The American High School Today (New York, 1959), p. 43Google Scholar.

5 Consider the recommendations of Theisen, W. W., The City Superintendent and the Board of Education (New York, 1917)Google Scholar which, on the assumption that they represent agreement among “authorities in the field of school administration … [and] have stood the test of time,” are endorsed and quoted in the competent manual for school board members prepared by Professor Reeder of Ohio State University: a school board member, to perform his “proper duties,” should “Represent needs of the schools before city authorities or the legislature … [and] before the public …. Serve as laymen (even after retiring from the board) to champion school needs and to further public support of the schools,” Reeder, Ward G., School Boards and Superintendents (New York, 1954), pp. 20–21Google Scholar. The chief organization of superintendents, addressing board members, did lay more stress on the board's supervisory and critical role, in School Boards in Action (Washington, D. C.: American Association of School Administrators, 1946)Google Scholar.

6 Lippmann, Walter, Essays in the Public Philosophy (Boston, 1955)Google Scholar.

7 Cf. Wilson, Woodrow, Congressional Government, 15th ed. (Boston, 1900), pp. xi–xiiGoogle Scholar.

8 The application of the professional concept to public school teaching faces one peculiar difficulty: “Teachers are recognized as a profession …. But unlike other professions, the entire control of education lies outside the profession.” “Ten Criticisms of Public Education,” Research Bulletin, Vol. XXXV, No. 4 (Washington, D. C.: National Education Association, December, 1957), p. 135Google Scholar. For relevant discussion of the necessary elements of any profession see Wesley, Edgar B., NEA: The First Hundred Years (New York, 1957) 349–350Google Scholar, and Rickover, Hyman G., Education and Freedom (New York, 1959) 61–81Google Scholar.

9 Embattled teachers have, of course, on occasion been politically effective at the local level, as in the Boston school committee election of 1957; at the state level, their impact on the legislature may be considerable, as in California, but tends to depend on the vigor of organizations which in most states are guided by other segments of the profession.

10 Wesley, op. cit.

11 “So great is the importance of the [superintendent's] office, and so elaborate its exactions, that special training for it is almost indispensable—a fact which, luckily, has long since been grasped by every first rate teachers college in the land.” Meyer, op. cit., p. 105.

12 “Probably the most important responsibility resting upon a modern board of education is that of keeping a competent superintendent in charge of the community's schools.” School Boards in Action, op. cit., p. 11.

13 “Because teaching, supervision, and administration have been specialized professions, the modern board of education cannot waste its time and jeopardize educational results by trying to do the work of technically trained educators.” Ibid.

14 See Hutchins, Robert M., “Are Our Teachers Afraid to Teach?,” A.A.U.P. Bulletin, Vol. 40 (Summer, 1954), pp. 202–208Google Scholar. For an example of vigorous lay incursions into the selection of textbooks (presumably a professional function) see Third Report: Un-American Activities in California (Sacramento: California State Printing Office, 1947), pp. 353–354Google Scholar.

15 Skaife, Robert A., “Know the Enemy,” Connecticut Teacher (December, 1951), pp. 68–71Google Scholar, reprinted in Scott, C. W. and Hill, C. M., Public Education Under Criticism (New York, 1954), pp. 233–239Google Scholar.

16 Wood, Robert C., Suburbia (Boston, 1958)Google Scholar.

17 “The profession should seek power and then try to use that power fully and wisely and in the interests of the great masses of the people.” Counts, George S., Dare the Schools Build a New Social Order? (New York, 1932), p. 29Google Scholar.

18 See, e.g., Ostrom, Vincent, “School Board Politics in Los Angeles,” unpublished thesis, University of California, Los Angeles, 1948Google Scholar.

19 A refreshingly frank statement by a superintendent of his political role can be found in Moseley, Nicholas, “Politics and School Administration,” in Hill, C. M., ed., Educational Progress and School Administration (New Haven, 1936) pp. 61–76Google Scholar.

20 See, e.g., Engelbert, Ernest A., “Educational Administration and Responsible Government,” School and Society, Vol. 75, No. 1035, Jan. 19, 1952Google Scholar. Independence of the municipal government is a professional article of faith. “The organizational control and tax levying structure for education should be separate from other units of local government.” Guides to the Improvement of State School Finance Programs (Washington, D. C.: National Education Association, April, 1958), p. 14Google Scholar. The justification for such independence is stated in terms of the complexity of educational issues (requiring the “undivided attention” of board members), the need for continuity of policy, and the undesirability of mixing educational issues with other public issues. Burke, Arvid J., Financing Public Schools in the United States, rev. ed. (New York, 1957)Google Scholar.

21 The writer well remembers an occasion when, as director of a state “little Hoover” commission, he asked why the state department of education should be organized differently from any other department. The inquiry, advanced innocently enough, threw the commissioner of education into a purple and highly articulate rage.

22 E.g., Vieg, John A., The Government of Education in Metropolitan Chicago (Chicago, 1939)Google Scholar; Morlan, Robert L., Intergovernmental Relations in Education (Minneapolis, 1950)Google Scholar; Henry, Nelson B. and Kerwin, Jerome G., Schools and City Government (Chicago, 1938)Google Scholar. See also Stover, Carl F., “Local Government and the Schools: The Debate over Independence,” Ph.D. thesis, Stanford University, 1955Google Scholar.

23 Some of the unpublished scholarly material seems to deserve a wider audience. Perhaps the ice has been broken by the publication of Neal Gross's misnamed but interesting study of superintendent-board relationships, Who Runs Our Schools? (New York, 1958)Google Scholar.

24 The best-publicized attacks on the curriculum, aside from those of “super-patriotic” groups, include the books of Bestor, Arthur E., especially The Restoration of Learning (New York, 1955)Google Scholar; Smith's, Mortimer artistically written And Madly Teach (Chicago, 1949)Google Scholar; Keats, John, Schools Without Scholars (Boston, 1958)Google Scholar; and the recent call to arms by Vice Admiral Rickover, Education and Freedom, op. cit. The educators' defense and counterattack have been confined almost wholly to articles in professional journals: a number of them can be found in Scott and Hill, op. cit.

25 “After all, as a scholar, the Illinois professor should realize that education (or Education) is a field of inquiry vast enough to consume a person's full time.” Brickman, William T., “Critical Analyses of American Education,” School and Society, Vol. 80, No. 2045 (Oct. 30, 1954), pp. 135–136Google Scholar.

26 The temptation to plunge into the fray is aggravated when a dean of a state school of education makes a provocative statement like this: “The most important objective of public education … is the development in each student of attitudes of courtesy, respect, and helpfulness toward others.” Trabue, M. R., “The Fundamental Purpose in Public Education,” School and Society, Vol. 66, No. 1718 (Nov. 29, 1947), p. 416Google Scholar.

27 School Boards in Action, op. cit., p. 178. For a less guarded professional viewpoint, consider the implications of an “opinion survey” of a sample of teachers from eighteen scattered states. Asked who they thought should make various kinds of decisions, they were in substantial agreement on the curriculum-making process, as follows: “Determiof teachers, and superintendent.” Sharma, Chiranji Lai, “Practices in Decision-Making as Related to Satisfaction in Teaching,” unpublished dissertation, University of Chicago (1955)Google Scholar, quoted in The Midwest Administration Center's Administrator's Notebook, Vol. III, No. 8 (University of Chicago, 1955)Google Scholar. See also Tuttle, E. M., School Board Leadership in America (Danville, Ill.,: Interstate Printers and Publishers, 1958), pp. 31, 40Google Scholar, wherein the first secretary of the National School Boards Association, Inc., says that the board's “policies on the educational program should set forth clearly the goals which the community is seeking” and that the board should “interpret, defend and support constructive educational programs when the need arises.” Mr. Tuttle does, however, also imply that some more direct board participation is desirable, including meeting with the superintendent and “professional educators and consultants” to consider “new ideas and concepts of instruction and curriculum planning” (p. 66). A teachers college professor expresses his assumption that in fact, the curriculum is largely shaped by what the professionals believe to be local lay opinion: he believes that this inchoate lay influence is highly unfortunate. Lieberman, Myron, “Let Educators Run Our Schools,” The Nation, March 7, 1959, pp. 206–209Google Scholar.

28 Conant, op. cit., p. 43.

29 Gross, op. cit., p. 10.

30 Ibid., p. 13.

31 Even in a small district, popular ignorance concerning the school system may be abysmal. See Haak, Leo A., “The General Public and the Public Schools,” in the Midwest Administration Center's Administrator's Notebook, Vol. IV, No. 8 (University of Chicago, May 1957)Google Scholar.

32 Conant, op. cit., p. 37.

33 New York Times, Feb., 1959. Evidently, the question depends in part on how much the district is willing to pay for bus service.

34 See Beem, Harlan, “School District Reorganization in Illinois,” State Government, July, 1951, pp. 178–181Google Scholar, and also Path of Progress for Metropolitan St. Louis (St. Louis: Metropolitan St. Louis Survey, 1957)Google Scholar.

35 E.g., in New Jersey a city constitutes a “chapter six” district, with an appointed board, unless in a popular referendum it votes to become a “chapter seven” district with an elected board and popular budget control.

36 Studies, unpublished, have been made in “Bay City,” Mass., by a group including J. Leiper Freeman, and are in process in St. Louis under the direction of Robert H. Salisbury and the writer. See also Ostrom, op. cit., and Milius, William B., “The Riverview Gardens Superintendent,” unpublished thesis, Washington University, St. Louis, 1956Google Scholar.

37 “The selection of the superintendent of schools is the most important single decision the board of education makes.” Choosing the Superintendent of Schools (Washington, D. C.: American Association of School Administrators, 1941)Google Scholar. Cf. Reeves, Charles E., School Boards: Their Status, Functions, and Activities (New York, 1954), p. 234Google Scholar. For illustrations of the superintendent's significance in the community, see Conrad, Richard, “The Administrative Role: a Sociological Study of Leadership in the Public School System,” unpublished dissertation, Stanford University, 1951Google Scholar; and Gleazer, Edmund G. Jr., “The Identification of Certain Alignments of Social Power Impinging on Decision-Making of School Committee and Superintendent in a New England Community,” unpublished dissertation, Harvard University, 1953Google Scholar.

38 In Riverview Gardens, Mo., in 1955 a discharged superintendent successfully campaigned for the election of his friends to the school board and was reinstated. See Milius, op. cit.

39 In preparation, under the direction of the writer, is a study of a referendum in 1957 in which the voters of Cambridge, Mass., nullified the school board's promotion of seventeen members of the instructional staff.

40 See, e.g., Monroe, Michigan: Report of an Investigation (Washington, D.C.: National Education Association, 1958)Google Scholar; cf. North College Hill, Ohio: Report of an Investigation (Washington, D. C.: National Education Association, 1947)Google Scholar.

41 Progress up to twelve years ago (which has continued since) is summarized in The Forty-Eight School Systems (Chicago: Council of State Governments, 1948)Google Scholar.

42 See, e.g., Lynd, op. cit.; Bestor, op. cit.; and Fuller, Henry J., “The Emperor's New Clothes, or Prius Dementat,” The Scientific Monthly, January, 1951, pp. 32–41Google Scholar.

43 An excellent comprehensive study of school finance is Burke, Arvid J., Financing Public Schools in the United States, rev. ed. (New York, 1957)Google Scholar.

44 For many years the National Education Association has led the fight for federal aid.

45 See, e.g., Jensen, T. J., “The Importance of Public Opinion,” in The Midwest Administration Center's Administrator's Notebook, Vol. 1, No. 7 (University of Chicago, February 1953)Google Scholar; Webb, H. V., Community Power Structure Related to School Administration (Laramie, Wyo., Curriculum and Research Center, University of Wyoming, 1956)Google Scholar; Bush, Chilton R. and Deutschmann, Paul J., “The Inter-Relationships of Attitudes Toward Schools and Voting Behavior in a School Board Election,” dittoed report to the Pacific Southwest Project of the Cooperative Program in Educational Administration (Stanford University, 1955)Google Scholar; cf. Foskett, John M., “The Differential Discussion of School Affairs,” Phi Delta Kappan, April, 1956, pp. 311–315Google Scholar.

46 “Estimate of School Statistics, 1958–1959 (Washington, D. C.: National Education Association, 1958), p. 15Google Scholar; in southern states the percentage runs much higher, up to 75 or more.

47 Life's poll in 1950 showed 65.4 per cent favorable to federal aid. The Gallup polls in 1956 and 1957 produced majorities of 67 per cent and 76 per cent respectively, for federal aid for school buildings; in 1957 Elmo Roper and Associates reported 73 per cent favoring federal aid, including 43 per cent who would extend it beyond aid for construction. See Public Opinion Polls in American Education (Washington, D. C.: National Education Association, May, 1958), p. 17–20Google Scholar.

48 Rickover, op. cit., and Hechinger, Fred M., The Big Red Schoolhouse (New York, 1959)Google Scholar.

49 Cf. Allen, Hollis P., The Federal Government and Education (New York, 1950)Google Scholar.

50 E.g., Ostrom, op. cit., Milius, op. cit., and Bush and Deutschmann, op. cit.; also Ostrom, Vincent and Agger, Robert E., “The Comparative Study of Politics in Local Communities,” an appendix to the Fifth Annual Report, Northwest Regional Project (Eugene, Ore.: University of Oregon, 1956)Google Scholar; Scoble, Harry M. Jr., “Yankeetown,” unpublished dissertation, Yale University, 1956Google Scholar; and current research into budget referenda in New Jersey by Alan Rosenthal.

51 E.g., Gross, op. cit.; Condit, H. L., “Some Activities and Opinions of Missouri Boards of Education,” unpublished dissertation, University of Missouri (1952)Google Scholar; Whalen, Richard E., “Effectiveness of Elected and Appointed School Board Members,” unpublished dissertation, University of Indiana (1953)Google Scholar; Barnhart, Richard E., “The Critical Requirements for School Board Membership,” unpublished dissertation, University of Indiana (1952)Google Scholar.

52 E.g., the brief accounts of controversies in Port Washington, N. Y., Pasadena, Calif., Denver, Colo., and Eugene, Ore., in the Saturday Review of Literature, Sept. 8, 1951; Hulburd, David, This Happened in Pasadena (New York, 1951)Google Scholar; Shaplen, Robert, “Scarsdale's Battle of the Books,” Commentary, December, 1950Google Scholar; Maloney, Joseph F., “The Lonesome Train” in Levittown (University, Ala.: published for the Inter-University Case Program by the University of Alabama Press, 1958)Google Scholar; and the numerous “reports of investigations” published by the National Education Association's National Commission for the Defense of Democracy Through Education.

53 The U. S. Office of Education is currently supporting a sizable research project focussing on bond issue referenda, under the direction of Wilbur Schramm and William R. Odell of Stanford University.

54 Conant, op. cit., p. 96.

55 Armstrong, T. F. Jr., “The Public Educational Programs of Selected Lay Organizations in Pennsylvania,” unpublished dissertation, Temple University (1947)Google Scholar; Sommer, C. A., “The Attitudes of Organized Farm Groups Toward Education in Michigan,” unpublished dissertation, University of Michigan (1953)Google Scholar; Male, George A., “The Michigan Education Association as a Pressure Group,” unpublished dissertation, University of Michigan (1950)Google Scholar; Gellerman, William, The American Legion as Educator (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1938)Google Scholar.

56 Fowlkes, J. G. and Watson, George E., State Finance and Local Planning (Chicago: Midwest Administration Center, University of Chicago, 1957)Google Scholar.

57 See “Revised Teaching Aims Urged,” New York Times, Feb. 8, 1959Google Scholar.

58 About half the nation's secondary schools were occupied with curricular revision in science and mathematics in the months following the launching. Research Bulletin, Vol. 36, No. 3 (Washington, D. C.: National Education Association, October, 1958), p. 67Google Scholar.

59 Citizens' committees had an exuberant growth in the 1950s. Studies of their operations in two states indicated that they served as sources of ideas and suggestions, were frequently considered by superintendents as a good public relations device, almost always regarded the superintendent with favor, and were usually dominated by him in the selection of committee projects. Lehmann, Charles F., “A Study of the Interpersonal Role Perceptions of School Administrators, Board of Education Members, and Members of Lay Citizen Committees in Michigan Public Schools,” unpublished dissertation, University of Michigan, 1956Google Scholar; and Schooling, Herbert W., “The Use of Lay Citizens Advisory Committees in Selected Missouri Public Schools,” unpublished dissertation, University of Missouri, 1954Google Scholar, both summarized by McPhee, Roderick F. in the Midwest Administration Center's Administrator's Notebook, Vol. 5, No. 7 (University of Chicago, May, 1957)Google Scholar.

60 The possibility of such a development is suggested by the Gallup poll's finding in April, 1958, that of 1100 school principals, 72 per cent advocated changes in the training of teachers.

61 In 1957–58 the average salary of a classroom teacher was $4520. In thirty-five states most teachers were paid less than $4500. “The imbalance between teacher-supply and demand continues. In the fall of 1957 the demand stood at an estimated 227,500 …. To meet this demand the colleges produced the preceding year slightly less than 100,000, 30 per cent of whom would probably not take teaching jobs.” Research Bulletin, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Washington, D. C.: National Education Association, February, 1958), pp. 5, 10Google Scholar.

62 A fairly sizable sampling in thirteen states indicated that in about two-thirds of the districts the superintendents had been recommended by colleges and universities. Baker, John E., “The Selection of Superintendents of Schools by Boards of Education,” unpublished dissertation, University of Chicago, 1952Google Scholar, quoted in the Midwest Administration Center's Administrator's Notebook, Vol. IV, No. 6 (University of Chicago, February 1956)Google Scholar. A retired professor of education told the present writer that he alone had recommended and placed at least a thousand superintendents.

63 A thoughtful argument for federal aid and leadership is presented by Hales, Dawson, Federal Control of Public Education (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1954)Google Scholar.

64 A poll in 1948 in Indiana, for example, reported 70 per cent of the professional educators questioned as favoring general federal aid to all states, in contrast to 43 per cent of the “community leaders” and 39 per cent of the “rank and file” laity. Conversely, any federal aid was opposed, as a matter of principle by 25 per cent and 32 per cent of the two lay groups, respectively, but by only 9 per cent of the educators. Fawley, Paul C., “The Measurement of Attitudes Toward the Basic Administrative Organization of Public Education in Indiana,” unpublished dissertation, University of Indiana, 1949Google Scholar.

65 See King, Edmund J., Other Schools and Ours (New York, 1958)Google Scholar.

66 Works related to this area include Spurling, Clark, Education and the Supreme Court (Urbana, Ill.: The University of Illinois Press, 1955)Google Scholar; and George, J. B., The Influence of Court Decisions in Shaping School Policies in Mississippi (Nashville, Tenn.: George Peabody College for Teachers, 1932)Google Scholar.

Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.