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Governing Americas Schools:

The Shifting Playing Field JOSEPH MURPHY Vanderbilt University and The Peabody Center for Education Policy

This essay argues that the landscape of educational control is being reshaped in the post-industrial era. It reviews the current governance problems in education and

details the range of possible governance models for post-industrial schooling. The analysis begins by describing the problems that governance must address and iden- tifying the professional-statist domination of school governance and the reliance on bureaucratic mechanisms to exercise control as the two most serious contemporary governance problems. The discussion then moves to a description of the various possiblilities for school governance in the future. Five types of control processes are considered: state control, citizen control, professional control, community control, and market control. The paper concludes by outlining the design principles that form the basis for rethinking school governance in a post-industrial world: localism, direct

democracy, lay control, choice, and democratic professionalism.

I. INTRODUCTION

Since governance is the steering mechanism of the system, the failureof governance affects all other subsystems in major and negative ways. Absent reform of the governance function, reforms of other subsys-tems will have only diminished or no impact on the systems perfor-mance. ~Consortium on Productivity in the Schools, 1995, p. 49 !

Reform efforts will have only limited impact until the role of gover-nance is addressed. ~Twentieth Century Fund, 1992, p. 1 !

There is a critical need for research into the relationships betweenalternative patterns of educational governance and their ability effec-tively to mobilize human energy and intellect, realizing personal andsocial educational aspirations. ~Swanson, 1989, p. 270 !

Because governance can be interpreted in different waysand to prevent undue spillover into other dimensions of the educational landscapeit isimportant to begin with some definitional treatment of the concept at hand. Governance is about controlwho drives the educational bus, if you will. At its core, governance is thus at least about two issues: ~1! the way

Teachers College Record Volume 102, Number 1, February 2000, pp. 5784Copyright by Teachers College, Columbia University 0161-4681


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control is ~or is not ! partitioned among the various stakeholders in theeducational enterprise and ~2! the set of rules and practices developed by controlling actors that shape the schooling endeavor.

Why should we be concerned with the governance issue? One response, well developed by the Consortium on Renewing Education ~1998!, positsthe claim that only simultaneous attacks on the entire educational system will lead to improvements. Certainly, because governance is one majorcomponent of the system, we would be ill-advised to neglect a thoughtfulreview of the topic: We are now questioning the efficacy and attempting toreform the basic structure of schooling in this country. Governance cannot be excepted from searching analysis ~Danzberger, 1992, p. 113 !.

A second answer focuses on the neglect of school governance in thereform equation. According to some analysts, there has been a profoundsilence on the issue of educational governance over the last two decades.Sarason ~1995!, for instance, argues that with rare exceptions. . . criticsaccepted the existing governance structure as a given ~p. 1!. The Commit-tee for Economic Development report ~1994! draws a similar conclusion:

Few major reform initiatives of the past ten years have attempted todefine the roles and responsibilities of different levels of governanceor to improve the abilities of the individuals and institutions respon-sible for making critical educational decisions. ~p. 2!

Others underscore the saliency of the question by attending to problems with the existing governance system as well as the stultifying consequencesof educational governance ~Sarason, 1995, p. 115 !. While this line of analy-sis is developed fully in the body of the paper, an advance organizer wouldlook something like this: for a variety of reasons the educational gover-nance system is not working well, it is contributing to the poor perfor-mance of the educational systemit is inimical to innovation and meaningful

change ~p. 115 ! and intractable to improvement ~p. 134!. In short, wehave governance gridlock that prevents meaningful reform ~Committeefor Economic Development, 1994, p. 29 !.

Still another reply to the relevancy question has been chiseled from thematerial on the effects of educational governance on schooling. Reviewershere hold that the way authority is structured and exercised shapes theintellectual and moral character of the school, thereby profoundly influ-encing student development ~Snauwaert, 1993, p. 2 !.

The real work of learning happens in the classroom, in the interactionbetween teacher and student. This interaction is affected by innumer-able large and small decisions made by principals, school boards,superintendents, state legislatures, education department officials, andthe federal government. These decisions and their implementation

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can either aid or hinder quality education in the classroom. This isthe heart of education governance. ~Committee for Economic Devel-opment, 1994, p. 2 !

Finally, it is important to attend to educational governance issues becauseit is here, analysts aver, that important understandings of and foundationsfor a democratic society both take root and play out.

Starting with the analysis above on the importance of the governanceissueand with a clear understanding that governance both helps defineand is shaped by other pieces of the educational equationthis paperattempts to map out the shifting governance playing field in education.Since that is the goal, it follows certain paths but ignores others. Forexample, it attends much more to issues of governance at the macro-levelof analysisShould control be in the hands of the professional class or bedeposited with citizens? Does a statist approach or a market system providea more appropriate control structure?than it does with micro-level con-trol questionsShould professional control be the province of administra-tors or teachers?

We begin with an analysis of governance problems in education. We start with a description of the problem set we believe governance reforms must address. In the later part of this section, we highlight governance problemsspecifically. Here again, we unpack certain issues while neglecting othersentirely. To a certain extent, the spotlight is directed by constraints of space. More appropriately, it is directed by our understanding of perhapsthe two most serious governance problems afoot todayprofessional-statist domination of school governance and reliance by actors in these areas onbureaucratic mechanisms to actualize their control.

The second section of the paper opens with a description of possibilitiesfor school governance for tomorrows schools. Or more concretely, the rawmaterial from which designs for new systems of governance can be sculptedis presented. Five clusters of control mechanisms are examined: the state,citizens, the profession, the community, and the economy. Specifically, thethird section outlines the design principles that form the foundationalpillars for rethinking governance. These pillars will, we believe, anchorspecific reform ideas in the areas of governance as we move into thetwenty-first century.

II. ROOTS OF THE GOVERNANCE PROBLEM IN EDUCATION

Governance is now perceived as one of the greatest barriers, if not theprimary obstacle to systemic reform of education. ~Danzberger, 1992,p. 32!

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Mounting concern over the aims and achievements of American pub-lic schools emphasizes the need for continuing analysis of how theschools are run and who runs them. ~Rosenthal, 1969, p. 3 !

The struggle to recast school governance can be traced to two broad areas:discontent with educational outcomes and critical reviews of the core gov-ernance system of schooling. Discontent with outcomes draws strength fromthree problems: ~1! the perceived inability of public schooling to deliver aquality product, ~2! the seeming failure of education to heal itself, and ~3!a growing disconnect between the public and public education. Critiques of extant governance systems center on two topics: ~1! frustration with thegovernment-professional monopoly and ~2! critical analyses of the basic

governance infrastructurebureaucracy.The consequence of the above noted forces is a significant reinforce-ment of the common and widely reiterated observation of a decliningconfidence in public education . . . @and # the mounting criticisms of theestablished form and content of publicly-funded educational systems ~May-berry, 1991, p. 1 !, along with increasing demands for reformsreforms that represent an overhaul of current governing arrangements. Whitty ~1984!reinforces this latter point, noting that it is important to recognize that . . .public education fails to serve the majority of its clients and hence makes

them potential supporters of reactionary proposals ~p. 54!.

CONCERNS ABOUT EDUCATIONAL PRODUCTIVITY

The fact that despite all that has been tried in the postWorld War IIera to improve our schools, the quality of education, however defined,remains what it has been or is getting worse. ~Sarason, 1995, p. 15 !

Outcome Concerns

The average twenty-five-year-old graduate in the United States has theeighth-grade academic skills and the virtually nonexistent vocationalskills with which he or she emerged from high school. ~Marshall &Tucker, 1992, p. 69 !

Current performance. Richards, Shore, and Sawicky ~1996! hit the markdirectly when they report that today the public discourse about Americaneducation tends to be preoccupied with failure ~p. 15!. The most recent decade contains a raft of hopeless narratives on public education ~Fine,1993, p. 33!. What analysts see as frustration over the continuing inadequa-cies of primary and secondary education in the United States is a multi-faceted phenomenon. Or, stated in an alternate form, the perception that



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the level and quality of education in the United States is less than many desire is buttressed by data on a wide variety of outcomes. Specifically,critics argue that data assembled in each of the following performancedimensions provide a not-very-reassuring snapshot of the current perfor-mance of the American educational system: ~1! academic achievement inbasic subject areascompared to student performance in other countries;~2! functional literacy; ~3! preparation for employment; ~4! the holdingpower of schools ~drop-out rates !; ~5! knowledge of specific subject areassuch as geography and economics; ~6! mastery of higher-order skills; and~7! initiative, responsibility, and citizenship ~Committee for Economic Devel-opment, 1994; Marshall & Tucker, 1992; Murnane & Levy, 1996 !.1 Perhapseven more important than the data is the fact that the experience of most Americans tells them that the nations school system is in trouble and that the problems are getting worse ~Mathews, 1996, p. 1 !.

Needed performance. Two issues in particular ribbon forward-looking analy-ses of educational outcomes: ~1! the inability of the educational enterpriseto enhance levels of productivity to meet the needs of the changing work-force and ~2! the failure of schools to successfully educate all of the nationschildren, especially the poor. While analysts acknowledge that student achieve-

ment has remained fairly stable over the last quarter century, they fault theeducation enterprise for its inability to keep pace with the increasing expec-tations from a changing economy ~Committee for Economic Development,1994; Consortium on Productivity in the Schools, 1995 !: the requirementsthe world was placing on school graduates were dramatically higher, but performance had stayed the same ~Marshall & Tucker, 1992, p. 79 !.

One side of the problem these critics discuss is the belief that systemsthat hold steady in todays world are actually in decline. While others seestability, they see increasing obsolescence of the education provided by

most U.S. schools ~Murnane and Levy, 1996, p. 6 !, and they question why schools have remained what they were and are despite the lack of desirableoutcomes ~Sarason, 1995, p. 110 !.

The other side of the productivity issue raised by these reviewers is theclaim that because of the changing nature of the economy outlined earlier,the level of outcomes needed by students must be significantly increased.

Todays schools look much like Ford in 1926. The products they producestudent achievement levelsare not worse than they were20 years ago; in most respects they are sightly better. But in those 20 years, the job market has changed radically. Just as the Model T that was good enough in 1921 was not good enough in 1926, the educa-tion that was adequate for high-wage employers in 1970 is no longeradequate today. ~Murnane & Levy, 1996, p. 77 !



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They find that the schools are not meeting this new standard for produc-tivity. They argue that the majority of students fail to leave school with theskills they need ~Marshall & Tucker, 1992, p. 67 !, that American schoolsare not providing students with the learning that they will need to functioneffectively in the 21st Century ~Consortium on Productivity in the Schools,1995, p. 3!.

Of special concern to productivity critics is the belief that nearly all thefuture gains will need to come in the area of educational quality. TheCommittee on Economic Development ~1994! depicts the argument as follows:

In the past, much of the contribution of elementary education toeconomic growth has come from increases in the quantity of edu-

cation. Although there is still room for improvement ~about 15 per-cent of twenty-four- to twenty-five-year-olds do not have a high schooldiploma !, much of the future contribution will have to come fromincreasing the quality of students graduating from our high schools.~p. 8!

Another concern is that the outcome standards themselves are being recast:

The skills that students need are not just more of what the schoolshave always taught, such as basic skills in mathematics, but also skills

that the schools have rarely taughtthe ability to work with complexknowledge and to make decisions under conditions of conflictinginadequate evidence. ~Consortium on Productivity in the Schools,1995, p. 9!

Complicating all of this is the knowledge that high levels of performancemust be attained by nearly all of societys children.

Our task is to shift the whole curve of American educational perfor-mance radically upward, and at the same time to close substantially

the gap between the bottom and the top of the curve. For the first time in American history, we have to have an education system that really educates everyone, our poor and our minorities as well as ourmost fortunate. ~Marshall & Tucker, 1992, p. 82 !

Students who leave school having failed to meet the new performancestandards will face increasingly dismal prospects in the twenty-first-century workplace.

Inability to Successfully Reform For well over a decade, policy makers, business leaders, and many educators have been calling for a major overhaul of our nationsstagnating system of public education. Yet, in terms of improved stu-



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dent achievement, we have precious little to show for all the rhetoric,goal setting, and haphazard experimentation. ~Committee for Eco-nomic Development, 1994, p. x !

What appears to be especially damaging to public education is the per-ceived inability of the schooling industry to reform itself. Questions raisedby analysts who take the long-term view on this issue are particularly demor-alizing. For example, according to Beers and Ellig ~1994!:

@Over the last 40 years, # public school leaders have overseen the imple-mentation of many of the most persistently called-for proposals forschool reform. The ever-present call for more funding has been met by tripling real per-pupil expenditures from their 1960 levels. Thedemand for greater teacher professionalism has motivated a 50 per-cent increase in average teacher salaries since 1960, adjusted for inf la-tion. Class sizes have fallen by a third since the mid-1960s, and most states have continued to raise graduation requirements. ~p. 19!

What has resulted from these efforts, critics argue, has not been an increasein educational quality but rather a proliferation of professional and bureau-cratic standards ~Hill, Pierce, & Guthrie, 1997; Whitty, 1984 !, the creationof subsides for bureaucracy ~Beers & Ellig, 1994!, a deepening antagonismbetween professional educators and the public ~Marshall & Tucker, 1992,p. 79!, and the strengthening of a centralized educational system in whichall risks of failure are shifted onto parents, taxpayers, and children ~Payne,1995, p. 3!. Beers and Ellig ~1994! make this point in dramatic fashion whenthey claim that in a very real sense we have tried to run the public schoolsthe same way the Soviets tried to run factories, and now were paying theprice ~p. 20!.2 The effect, critics maintain, is that reform has reinforcedthe very dynamics that are promoting self-destruction in public education.The natural consequence, they hold, must be the emergence of new formsof educational institutions and new models of school governance.

Also troubling, if not surprising given the analysis just presented, is thefeeling that the very substantial efforts to strengthen education over the last 15 years in particular have not produced much in terms of improvement across the seven outcome dimensions listed above. As Richards and hiscolleagues ~1996! document, public interest in alternative governance arrange-ments for schools reflects a profound disappointment that the plethora of school reform initiatives launched over the last 15 years has failed to turnthe tide, that despite considerable energy, initial bursts of optimism, andabundant promises, a good many efforts to reform schools, though not all,are failing in the 1990s ~Mathews, 1996, p. 16 !. There is an expandingagreement on the need to overhaul school-governance systems as well as an



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emerging belief that conditions in the area of school governance are sobleak that any change could hardly make matters worse.

Growing Disconnect With the Public

The public is dissatisfied with our schools, and educators are per-ceived as resistant to change and concerned only with money andcontrol, and lacking a leadership capable of changing educationalpractices, organizational characteristics and the relationships with the larger community . ~Sarason, 1995, p. 17 !

Despite a long tradition of support for public education, Americanstoday seem to be halfway out the school house door. ~Mathews, 1996,p. 2!

Critics aver that at the same time we are discovering that traditional attackson our problems not only fail to attack the roots of the nations educationalproblems but may be actually crippling public education, we are witnessinga fundamental disconnect between the public and the public schools. A recent Public Agenda report, for example, asserts that in the battle overthe future of public education, the public is essentially up for grabs ~cited

in Bradley, 1995, p. 1 !. As one indicator of this gulf, Public Agenda research-ers report that the public in general and parents in particular see vouchersas an unsurpassed vehicle for helping students who are failing in school~Bradley, 1995 !.

An especially thoughtful and detailed description of societys deepeningloss of confidence in public education has been provided by Mathews~1996!. Based on his work, Mathews argues that the public and the publicschools @are # in fact moving apart, that the historical compact betweenthem @is# in danger of dissolving ~p. i!. Mathews documents the decline in

public confidence in public schools in a number of ways. He cites datafrom the National Opinion Research Center that reveals a 40 percent drop~from 37 to 15 percent ! from 1973 to 1993 in those expressing confidencein educational institutions. He also cites data showing an increase of 125percent ~from 8 to 18 percent ! during this same time frame in citizensexpressing low confidence in public institutions ~p. 9!. Using a more direct measure, he marshals information that reveals that citizens prefer privateschools over public ones: A virtual chorus said that they would take theirchildren out of public schools if they had that option ~p. 22!. Kaufman

~1996! adds to this later analysis:Parents rank private schools higher in 11 of 13 categories, includingpreparing students for college, safety and discipline. Public schoolsrank higher only in serving students with special needs and teachingchildren how to deal with people of diverse backgrounds. ~p. 72!



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implement social goals ~Hula, 1990a, p. xiii ! in particular. They believethat a philosophy borne of suspicion for big government may underlie this@governance # revolution in America ~Fitzgerald, 1988, p. 20 !.

Still other reviewers discern a deeper . . . and much more dangerous~Savas, 1982, p. 1! cynicism toward ~Hula, 1990b !, distaste for ~Donahue,1989!, or distrust of government and government officials among citizens~De Hoog, 1984 !. They describe a culture of resistance, bitterness, andadversariness ~Bauman, 1996, p. 626 !. They paint a picture of politicalbankruptcy, a vaguely defined state of popular alienation and disaffectionfrom government which stops short of revolution ~Hood, 1994, p. 91 !.These analysts portray a growing discontent with activist government ~Hirsch, 1991 ! and the rise and spread of an antigovernment philosophy inthe 1970s and 1980s, a time during which the government plumbed newdepths of disfavor ~Donahue, 1989, p. 3 !. They describe a fundamentalconcern that government simply doesnt work. Planning is seen as inade-quate, bureaucracy as inefficient and outcomes highly problematic ~Hula,1990a, p. xiii !. They go on to argue that the consent of the governed isbeing withdrawn to a significant degree. In its softest incarnation, thiscynicism leads citizens to argue that government is no longer a reasonablesolution to all problems ~Florestano, 1991 ! and to question the usefulnessof much government-initiated activity. At worst, it has nurtured the belief that government is fated to fail at whatever it undertakes ~Starr, 1991 !. Inmany cases, it has nurtured the development of a variety of antigovernment political and social movements. There is little question that this widespreaddiscontent has spilled over into public education ~Katz, 1992!. As Bauman~1996! notes, One could argue that people hold a negative view of thepublic schools precisely because they are public institutions ~p. 628!.

Given the cyclical nature of policy development and other value expres-sions in American society, it should surprise no one to learn that some of this rising tide of dissatisfaction with public sector initiatives can be char-acterized as a response to the nearly unbroken growth of government overthe last three quarters of the twentieth centurya counter-reaction to theProgressive philosophy that has dominated the policy agenda for so long. According to Hood ~1994!, for example, the growth of the public sectorcontained the seeds of its own destruction. The public sector model is, inmany ways, simply aging and wearing out. Once a major economic modelgains ascendancy, dissatisfaction builds up over time. Unwanted side-effects of the policy @become # more clearly perceived. . . . At the same time,the shortcomings of the alternative orientation @the market, direct democ-racy, and voluntary association in this caseare # forgotten, because they have not been recently experienced. Pressure then starts to build for thepolicy orientation to go over on the other track ~p. 15!.

Another piece of the puzzle focuses on the widespread perception that the state is overinvolved in the life of the citizenry. Critics note that more



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and more citizens are chafing under the weight and scope of government activity ~Himmelstein, 1983; Meltzer & Scott, 1978 !. They characterize agovernment that has gone too far ~Hirsch, 1991 !public ownership that ismore extensive than can be justified in terms of the appropriate role of public enterprises in mixed economies ~Hemming & Mansoor, 1988, p. 3 !.They argue that the state has become involved in the production of goodsand services that do not meet the market failure tests ~Pack, 1991 ! and that government agencies have pushed themselves into areas well beyond gov-ernance. They @have# become involved in the business of business ~Presi-dents Commission on Privatization, 1988, p. 3 !. The results are predictable:The state, it is claimed, occupies an increasingly large space on the gover-nance landscape, welfare loss due to collective consumption increases ~Oates,1972!, and citizens experience an increasing need for more nongovernmen-tal space ~Florestano, 1991 !. Calls for a recalibration of the governanceequation are increasingly heard.

Expanding numbers of citizens begin to experience some public sectorinstitutions as controlling rather than enabling, as limiting options ratherthan expanding them, as wasting rather than making the best use of resources~Martin, 1993, p. 8 !. Of particular concern here is the issue of values. Onone front, increasing numbers of individuals and groups have come tobelieve that state intrusiveness includes efforts to establish value prefer-ences ~Cibulka, 1996; Heinz, 1983; Himmelstein, 1983 !values that they believe often undermine their ways of life. Others argue that, at least insome cases, through interest group and bureaucratic capture, some publicsector institutions have actually destroyed the values that they were estab-lished to develop and promote ~Hood, 1994 !.

Discontent can also be traced to recent critical analyses of the model of public sector activity developed to support expanded state control. Thecritique here is of three types. First, when examined as they are put intopractice, the assumptions anchoring public sector activity over the last 30 years look much less appealing than they do when viewed in the abstract ~i.e., conceptually !. Indeed, many of the assumptions and predictions on which the earlier growth of government was based have proved either to befalse or at least to be subject to much greater doubt ~Presidents Commis-sion on Privatization, 1988, pp. 249250 !. Thus, the attack on extensivestate control rests on the way in which its limitations have become visible~Pirie, 1988 !. Foundational propositions such as the nonpolitical nature of public sector economic activities have come under attack as it has beendetermined that decisions affecting the economy @are often # made onpolitical grounds instead of economic grounds ~Savas, 1987, p. 8!. On theother hand, much of the critique of the market economy upon whichpublic sector growth has been justified, especially market failure, has been weakened with the advent of sociotechnical changes associated with a shift from an industrial to a postindustrial society ~Hood, 1994 !.



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Second, structural weaknesses inherent in the nature of public-sectorsupply itself . . . which undermine the whole basis on which it is estab-lished ~Pirie, 1988, p. 20 ! have become more visiblevisible to the point that some advocates claim that state ownership and management are inher-ently flawed. Concomitantly, both the efficiency and effectiveness of gov-ernmental activities have begun to be questioned seriously.

Third, it is suggested that the reforms that created the large publicsector are themselves sorely in need of reform, as mistakes, excess, waste,and scandals appear @ed # and the inevitable institutional arteriosclerosis set in ~Savas, 1982, p. 2!. Reform is increasingly seen in terms of alternatives torather than the repair of the existing public sector. Changes in governancestructures are often privileged in these reform strategies.

Attacks on the Bureaucratic Infrastructure of Schooling

Too much bureaucracy . . . is at the heart of educational mediocrity.~Snauwaert, 1993, p. 92 !

The bureaucratic structure is failing in a manner so critical that adap-tations will not forestall its collapse. ~Clark & Meloy, 1989, p. 293 !

In recent years, critics have argued that the reforms of the Progressive Eraproduced bureaucratic arteriosclerosis, insulation from parents and patrons,and the low productivity of a declining industry protected as a quasi monop-oly ~Tyack, 1993, p. 3 !. There is growing sentiment that the existing gov-ernance and management systems are unsustainable ~Rungeling & Glover,1991!. Behind this basic critique lie several beliefs: that states are attempt-ing to micro-manage schools and that central office staff are too numerousand too far removed from local schools to understand the needs of teach-ers, children, and familiesthat bureaucracies may be working well forthose that run them but that they are not serving children well. It isincreasingly being concluded that the existing bureaucratic system of schoolgovernance and administration is incapable of addressing the technicaland structural shortcomings of the public educational system ~Lawton,1991, p. 4!.

More finely grained criticism of the bureaucratic infrastructure of school-ing comes from a variety of quarters. There are those who contend that schools are so paralyzed by the bureaucratic arteriosclerosis noted aboveby Tyack ~1993, p. 3! that professional judgment ~Hill & Bonan, 1991,p. 65!, innovation and creativity ~Lindelow, 1981, p. 98 !, morale ~David,1989, p. 45!, creative capacity ~Snauwaert, 1993, p. 5 !, and responsibility have all been paralyzed. Other reformers maintain that school bureaucra-cies, as currently constituted could @never # manage to provide high-quality education ~Elmore, 1993, p. 37 ! and, even worse, that bureaucratic gover-nance and management cause serious disruptions in the educational pro-



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cess and are paralyzing American education . . . @and # getting in the way of childrens learning ~Sizer, 1984, p. 206 !. These scholars view bureaucracy as a governance-management system that deflects attention from the coretasks of learning and teaching ~Elmore, 1990 !:

Since the student is the prime producer of learning and since he isnot part of the bureaucracy, and not subject to bureaucratic account-ability, bureaucracy and its whole value structure must be seen asirrelevant at best, and obstructive at worst, to true learning relation-ships. ~Seeley, 1980, p. 8 !

Some analysts also believe that bureaucracy is counterproductive to the

needs and interests of educators within the schoolthat it is impractical,and it does not fit the psychological and personal needs of the workforce~Clark & Meloy, 1989, p. 293 !, that it weakens the authority of teachers, andthat it is incompatible with the professional organization ~Sackney & Dibski,1992!. Still other critics suggest that bureaucratic management is inconsis-tent with the sacred values and purposes of educationthey question fun-damental ideological issues pertaining to bureaucracys meaning in ademocratic society ~Campbell, Fleming, Newell, & Bennion, 1987, p. 73 !and find that @i#t is inconsistent to endorse democracy in society but to be

skeptical of shared governance in our schools ~Glickman, 1990, p. 74 !.Other reform proponents hold that the existing organizational-governancestructure of schools is neither sufficiently flexible nor sufficiently robust tomeet the needs of students in a post-industrial society ~Sizer, 1984 !. Finally,some analysts contend that the rigidities of bureaucracy, by making schoolsnearly impenetrable by citizens, impede the ability of parents and citizensto govern and reform schooling ~Sarason, 1995 !.

Not unexpectedly, given this tremendous attack on the basic organiza-tional and governance infrastructure of schooling, stakeholders at all levels

are arguing that @a#mbitious, if not radical, reforms are required to rectify this situation ~Elmore, 1993, p. 34 !, that the excessively centralized, bureau-cratic control of . . . schools must end ~Carnegie Forum, cited in Hanson,1991, pp. 23 !. In its place, some reformers are arguing for redesigningstate control of education. Other analysts look to replace government con-trol with market mechanisms. Still others see hope in systems that are moreprofessionally controlled. Others appeal to more robust models of demo-cratic governance.

III. GOVERNANCE FOR TOMORROWS SCHOOLS:THE POSSIBILITIES

The question for the state is whom it shall empower to decide what isbest. ~Coons & Sugarman, 1978, p. 45 !



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We need, in short, a dialogue that produces thoughtful, well-founded,and defensible rationales for continuing, modifying, or structurally changing current education governance and its functions. Without such a dialogue, we shall find ourselves going down a road without knowing where we are going, or if we arrive at the desired destination.~Danzberger, 1992, p. 27 !

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, social and economic forces were at play that were to result in dramatic changes in American society. The nation witnessed the shift from an agrarian to an industrial society, with the accom-panying growth of industrial capitalism and the liberal democratic state.Our understanding of education and schooling was profoundly shaped by these forces. Scientific views of learning anchored in the newly emergingdiscipline of psychology, especially behavioral psychology, and in modern views of organizations taking root from the rapidly developing field of management, especially scientific management, became the twin pillarsupon which schooling in the twentieth century was constructed. At theheart of the modern system of education were new perspectives on andrules of control. What had heretofore been a relatively democratic gover-nance process became displaced by centralized, elite, professional control~Katz, 1992; Tyack, 1974!.

Between 1890 and 1920, every major school system in the industrialnorth underwent administrative reform. This reform movement wasdesigned to produce maximum efficiency and social order. To achievethese ends, the movement sought to centralize decision-making powerin the hands of powerful superintendents and small, citywide schoolboards comprised predominantly of successful business and profes-sional men. A bureaucratic structure was created that limited popularrepresentation, insulating policymakers from the demands of working

and lower-middle-class interests. Although premised upon gettingpolitics out of the schools, administrative reform actually exchangedone political structure for another. An essentially democratic system was exchanged for an autocratic one. ~Snauwaert, 1993, p. 13 !

A central premise of this paper is that as we enter the twenty-first cen-tury, we are in the midst of another major shift, although this time we findourselves moving away from industrial capitalism and the liberal demo-cratic state. The shift is marked by powerful new economic and socialdynamics. And, as was the case in the past, these forces are exerting con-siderable influence on our understanding of education and our concep-tions of schooling.

The question at hand is: What does all of this mean for the control of education in a postindustrial world? Will the educational bus continue tobe driven by government agents and professional educators? Or will their



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grasp on the wheel of control be loosened? Is it possible that these long-dominant actors may be thrown off the bus altogether? Perhaps we will bechauffeured by a collective of relevant stakeholders. In this section of thepaper, we outline some possible answers to these questions. We outline fivedistinct governance options for education in a postindustrial world ~Table 1 !.

STATE CONTROL

Underlying the administrative progressives conception of democracy is the view that relatively few people possess the intellectual ability orthe education to pass judgment on public policy; expert control and

bureaucratic administration are necessary in a complex world that demands scientifically informed judgments. In such a world, only governments of experts can manage public affairs. ~Snauwaert, 1993,p. 21!

Regulation is even more costly to society than the initial resourcemisallocations. ~Pack, 1991, p. 282 !

Fueled by ambivalence, if not hostility, toward democracy and the emerg-ing pull of scientific management with its allure of rationality and effi-ciency, state control had become the core component of educationalgovernance by the early 1900s. In conjunction with professional adminis-trators, governments began to construct the bureaucratic infrastructure on which the modern educational system in the United States was built.

At the heart of this emerging system of state control was, and continuesto be, three central ideas: representative democracy, political and adminis-trative elites, and bureaucratic machinery. Representative democracy is what its name implies, a system of governance in which some of the people,chosen by all, govern in all public matters all of the time ~Barber, 1984,p. xix!. It is a system in which sovereignty is transferred from citizens to aselect few. A rational system of controlbureaucracyis constructed toensure that the enterprise functions effectively. Regulation becomes thetransmission of the new administrative system. Often labeled elite democ-racy, government control is, as Schumpeter ~cited in Snauwaert, 1993 !argues, @t #he rule of the politician ~p. 21!and, we might add, of admin-istrative agents at key intersections of the bureaucratic infrastructure ~Bu-chanan, 1977; Niskanen, 1971; Tullock, 1965 !.

As discussed earlier, the bureaucratic backbone of state control has comeunder considerable scrutiny over the last few decades. Similar, if less visible,attacks have been leveled against political and administrative elites andrepresentative democracy ~see, for example, the public choice literature !.Not surprisingly, assaults on all three pillars of state control attend in detailto the fact that these core elements negate the legitimate exercise of con-



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Table 1. Types of Educational Control

Methods of Control DegreeType Source Historical Ground? ElitismState Regulation ~king ! Administrative Control

Representative DemocracCitizen Democracy ~participation ! ~citizen !Profession Expert Knowledge ~military ! Union Control

Administrative ElitesCommunity Values ~church ! Private Schooling Market Market ~economy !


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trol by citizensin both the economic and political sense of participationand constrain the interests of professionals.

At the same time, many of the attractions that propelled government toa central role in the school governance drama remain. Rationality andefficiency have hardly lost their allure. It should come as little surprise thento discover that many of the reform strategies afoot today rely upon statecontrol as the appropriate engine for school improvement. The entiresystemic reform movement, for example, is an effort to strengthen educa-tion through state control mechanisms. Much of the struggle to profession-alize schooling ~e.g., standards, licensure, accreditation ! is rooted in thetraditional state-professional control complexalthough in a relationshiptilted more toward the interests of the profession than has been the case inthe past. New reform ideas that spotlight state control include: mayoralcontrol of schools; many of accountability measures, including reconstitu-tion and bankruptcy actions; and standards raising and assessment move-ments writ large. On the other hand, as Snauwaert ~1993! notes: Bureaucracy and elite control are not inevitable. They have been chosen. Other possi-bilities exist ~p. 103!. We turn to some of these alternatives below, although we will see that they take us in quite different directions.

CITIZEN CONTROL Whatever the difficulties of obtaining the impossible, and howeverinadequate the performance of governmental units, . . . democratictheory is an appropriate standard by which to judge educational gov-ernance. ~Zeigler, Jennings, & Peak, 1974, p. 243 !

Democracy is essentially coercive. The winners get to use public author-ity to impose their policies on the losers. ~Chubb & Moe, 1990, p. 28 !

Some who have questioned current governance arrangements are callingfor heightened and more direct citizen control of education. Central to thisline of work are critical analyses of government activity and reviews on thegrowing disaffection for government felt by citizens, both areas that wereexplored in earlier sections of this paper. Behind both is the belief that representative democracy is failing and that control, or at least more con-trol, should be vested in the citizenry.

Arguments for citizen control of education are also ribboned with attackson professional claims to a privileged position in the control algorithm.The rationale here is twofold: substantial portions of the services provided by schools are hardly so precise or value free as to make themunderstandable only to experts ~Zeigler et al., 1974, p. 248 ! and, morecritically, experts have not demonstrated they know extraordinarily moreabout education than laymen ~p. 248!. The strong professional grip on the wheel of the bus called educational governance should be loosened, advo-



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cates of enhanced democracy suggest. More direct control by citizens andfamilies is needed, they aver. A desire to return to an earlier and bettertimewhen the teaching profession was weak and the larger society asrepresented by the state was relatively inactive ~Swanson, 1989, p. 280 !finds its way into much of the discussion in this area.

Finally, whether based on Sarasons ~1995! political principle, Cronins~1989! conception of direct democracy, Barbers ~1984! thoughts about strong democracy, or Snauwaerts ~1993! views about developmental con-ceptions of democracy, there is a mushrooming sense that citizen control issimply the right way to think about governance. This is both a critique of representative governance ~i.e., state control !

Strong democracy tries to revitalize citizenship without neglecting theproblems of efficient government by defining democracy as a form of government in which all of the people govern themselves in at least some public matters at least some of the time. To legislate and toimplement laws at least some of the time is to keep alive the meaningand function of citizenship in all of us all of the time; whereas todelegate the governing power, even if only to representatives whoremain bound to us by the vote, is to give away not power but civicactivity, not accountability but civic responsibility, not our secondary rights against government but our primary right to govern. ~Barber,1984, pp. xivxv !

and a belief in the power of participatory democracy

The strong form of democracy is the only form that is genuinely andcompletely democratic. It may also be the only one capable of pre-serving and advancing the political form of human freedom in amodern world that grows ever more hostile to traditional liberal democ-

racy. ~Barber, 1984, p. 148 !The formulation of proposals for the restructuring of school gover-nance in truly democratic directions is a necessary step in the ongoingstruggle for a democratic and just way of life. ~Snauwaert, 1993,pp. 104105 !

Given the breakdown of representative democracy and absent the growth of vital citizen control, critics see the emergence of either ~1! the grubby handof the market ~Martin, 1993 !and with it an eroding @of # the sense of community in contemporary society and @an # intensifying of the individu-alistic ethic of our time ~Kolderie, 1991, p. 257 !or ~2! dangerous new variants of neodemocracythe politics of special interest @and # the politicsof neopopulist fascism ~Barber, 1984, p. xiii !.



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As Sarason ~1995! and others note, reengineering educational gover-nance on the basis of citizen control places real constraints on govern-ment and professionals. For example, while most analysts conveniently ignore the fact, Snauwaert ~1993! is correct when he asserts that a school-based governance system and state-formulated accountability measures areinherently contradictory ~p. 98!. And what holds for state accountability systems holds for professional and state initiatives in the areas of stan-dards, curriculum, criteria for employment, and so forth. In short, citizencontrol throws a noticeable kink in the existing state-professional gover-nance machinery.

PROFESSIONAL CONTROL

It is exactly this question of competence which produces the dilemmaof the expert in school governance. Dahl argues persuasively about the value of what he calls the criterion of competence. Some deci-sions should not be made democratically. ~Zeigler et al., 1974, p. 248 !

Reforms which propose to empower teachers or replace hierarchi-cal structures with peer group control or accord professional auton-

omy to teachers are ludicrous intellectually but devastating in theirpolitical and policy consequences. Such proposals are tantamount toprescribing the germs to cure the disease. ~Lieberman, 1988, p. 9 !

Professional control is predicated upon the belief that the governance busshould be directed and driven by those with expertise in education, athoroughly defensible position according to Eliot ~1969, p. 7!. As variousanalysts have noted, professional control spotlights the technical dimen-sions of schooling and, as seen in Table 1, posits expert knowledge as themajor source of influence. Zeigler and his colleagues ~1974! remind us that the notion of expertise, the relegation of as many questions as possible tothe level of a technical problem, is a very pervasive political philosophy~pp. 247248 ! in society in general and in education in particular.

Over the last century, there has been a bounty of scholarship exposingthe inequitable distribution of control in schooling, with professional edu-cators ~along with state actors ! firmly ensconced at the wheel. As Sarason~1995! has concluded, while educators have always acknowledged the legit-imate rights of parents in some generalized form, that has never meant toeducators that:

@Parents # interest should be formally accompanied by the power toinfluence how schools and classrooms are structured and run, thechoice of curriculum, selection of teachers and other personnel, and



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so forth. Those matters were off-limits; they were the concern andresponsibility of the professional educators. ~p. 20!

Eliot ~1969! captures the essence of the idea in its most unalluring form when he concludes that for many educators, schools are the special prov-ince of the professionals, the voters being a necessary evil who must bereckoned with because they provide the money ~pp. 45 !.

We reported earlier that state control of education is not inevitable.Neither is professional expertise sacrosanct. Indeed, a number of criticshave concluded that expertise cannot be legitimately used as the overrid-ing criteria for deciding broad policy issues that affect ones children~Snauwaert, 1993, p. 95 !nor, we might add, more basic decisions about the core technology of schools.

COMMUNITY CONTROL

As noted in Table 1, community control is grounded in perspectives fromreligion. It is based on neither regulation nor expert knowledge but onshared values. In Barbers ~1984! terms, involvement, commitment, obli-gation, and servicecommon deliberation, common decision, and com-mon workare its hallmarks ~p. 133!. The principle of community~Snauwaert, 1993, p. 70 ! is dominant. While schools remain nested in thelarger structure of society and the legitimacy of external interests is acknowl-edged, the basic understanding of public education is radically alteredunder community control.

Goods and services can be provided by any of three mechanismsgovernment, markets, or voluntary associations. The analysis to this point has featured the first mechanism. Community control on the other hand isanchored in voluntary association. Since voluntary association is the least emphasized of the three delivery mechanisms, our knowledge of this typeof control is not particularly well-developed. What seems to be critical to voluntary mechanisms are a tight consensus on dominant values and mis-sion and the willingness of communities to exercise political clout toextract political concessions and to declare, by steps and degrees, indepen-dence from traditional forms of government ~Fitzgerald, 1988, p. 51 !.

In the noneducational world, neighborhood development organizations~NDOs ! are the best example of community control. Fitzgerald ~1988!,Gormley ~1991!, and Savas ~1987! all have chronicled initiatives in whichfunctions provided by government, such as caring for public lands andmanaging public housing projects, have been taken over by NDOs. Ineducation, associations of home-schooled families represent a particularly good example of voluntary associations. Also, while most reviewers see



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charter schools positioned on a market fulcrum, our own analysis leads usto conclude that control in many of these institutions has more to do withcommunity than with the market.

MARKET CONTROL

That regulation which the market imposes in economic activity issuperior to any regulation that rulers can devise and operate by law.~Pirie, 1988, p. 10 !

Idealization of the markets invisible hand has served to conceal the

grubbier ones directing it.~Martin, 1993, p. 6

!

All of the control strategies described herein, even efforts to redefine statecontrol, draw strength from stinging reviews of existing governance struc-tures. In particular, they rely on devastating attacks on the bureaucraticmodel of control. Where they part company is in the solution strategies that they craft to address existing problems. One of the most controversial linesof governance redesign builds its reform platform on the foundation of consumer control. Solutions are rooted not in the political sphere but inthe economic domain. Free-market dynamics are highlighted. As with someof the other control strategies, proponents stress direct participationbut not by individuals acting as citizens or members of communities, but asconsumers. While alternately lambasted by critics and praised by support-ers, it is clear that advocates of market control mechanisms have made it onto the governance bus. Comprehensive efforts to rebuild the controlinfrastructure of twenty-first-century schools will need to address this fact.

In an earlier section, we spent considerable space exploring criticism of existing governance arrangements, especially broadsides on the public deliv-ery of goods and services. While it is unnecessary to retell that story here, we should reemphasize that appeals to market control owe much to criticalreviews of nonmarket sources of influence. The luster of markets is alsobrightened by claims of benefits accruing from this form of control. Whilethese claims are heavily contested, comprehensive analysis supports theposition that markets are likely to increase efficiency while enhancing quality. 3

One set of initiatives around economic control focuses on introducingmarket-like forces into a system. School choice within the public sectorfits nicely here. Real market control requires shifting either funding orprovision of servicesor bothfrom the public to the private domain. Themost popular market-control strategies are those such as contracting out and vouchers that maintain public financing but take delivery out of thehands of public employees.



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IV. IDEOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF AN EMERGINGGOVERNANCE STRUCTURE

Many astute observers of education governance as it is currently prac-ticed believe that radical change in public education governance isimperative. ~Danzberger, 1992, p. 89 !

New bundles of ideas are emerging to challenge governance perspectivesthat have dominated education for the last 75 years. One of the key ele-ments involves a recalibration of the locus of control based on what Ross~1988! describes as a review and reconsideration of the division of existingresponsibilities and functions ~p. 2! among levels of government. Origi-nally called democratic localism ~p. 305! by Katz ~1971!, it has morerecently come to be known simply as localization or, more commonly,decentralization. However it is labeled, it represents a backlash against thethorough triumph of a centralized and bureaucratic form of educationalorganization ~p. 305! and governance and an antidote for the feeling that America has lost its way in education because America has disenfranchisedindividual local schools ~Guthrie, 1997, p. 34 !.

A second ideological foundation can best be thought of as a recasting of democracy, a replacement of representative governance with more populist conceptions, especially what Cronin ~1989! describes as direct democracy. While we use the term more broadly than does Cronin, our conceptionshares with his a grounding in: ~1! the falling fortunes of representativedemocracy, ~2! a growing distrust of legislative bodies . . . @and # a growingsuspicion that privileged interests exert far greater influence on the typicalpolitician than does the common voter ~p. 4!, and ~3! recognition of theclaims of its advocates that greater direct voice will produce important benefits for societythat it could enrich citizenship and replace distrust of government with respect and healthy participation ~p. 48!.

A third foundation encompasses a rebalancing of the governance equa-tion in favor of lay citizens while diminishing the power of the state and ~insome ways! educational professionals. This line of ideas emphasizes paren-tal empowerment by recognizing the historic rights of parents in the edu-cation of their children ~Gottfried, 1993, p. 109 !. It is, at times, buttressedby a strong strand of anti-professionalism that subordinates both efficiency and organizational rationality to an emphasis on responsiveness, close pub-lic @citizen # control, and local involvement ~Katz, 1971, p. 306!.

The ideology of choice is a fourth pillar that will likely support therebuilt edifice of school governance ~Bauman, 1996 !. Sharing a good dealof space with the concepts of localism, direct democracy, and lay control,choice is designed to deregulate the demand side of the education mar-ket ~Beers & Ellig, 1994, p. 35! and to enable parents to become more



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effectively involved in the way the school is run ~Hakim, Seidenstat, &Bowman, 1994, p. 13 !. It means that schools would be forced to attend tostudent needs and parent preferences rather than to the requirements of acentralized bureaucracy ~Hill, 1994, p. 76 !.

Finally, it seems likely that something that might best be thought of asdemocratic professionalism will form a central part of the infrastructure of school governance in the post-industrial world. What this means is thegradual decline of control by elite professionalsby professional managersand more recently by teacher unionsthat characterized governance in theindustrial era of schooling. While schools in the industrial era have beenheavily controlled by professionals, they have not provided a role for theaverage teacher in governance. Indeed, under elite democracy and mana-gerial centralization that defined school governance for the past century,teachers were explicitly denied influence. As Snauwaert ~1993! notes:

In accordance with the managerial and social philosophy of scientificmanagement and elite democracy, decision-making power was central-ized in the hands of an expert planner, the superintendent. Educa-tional policy would be determined by the superintendent and hisassistants, and the teachers would become mechanized implementors with no decision-making power. ~p. 26!

This view of front line workers is inconsistent with both human capitalismand emerging portraits of post-industrial schooling. Not surprisingly, there-fore, the call for an enhanced voice for teachers is a central element inmuch of the current reform debate. It is also likely to become a key pillarin school governance for tomorrows schools.

V. CONCLUSION

Determining a satisfactory pattern of authority allocation is a continu-ing problem, changing along with priorities placed on fundamentalsocial values. ~Swanson, 1989, p. 277 !

In regard to school governance the seeds of revolutionary actions arebeginning to sprout. ~Sarason, 1995, p. 122 !

The central thesis of this work on school governance is that the landscapeof educational control is being reshaped. For nearly 100 years, governancehas been the province primarily of government agents and professionaleducators, often working together. In this paper, we argued that, similar tomajor shifts underway in the core technology of the educational industry and in the organizational arrangements that shape schooling, the institu-tional dimension of schooling is also undergoing important alterations. In



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particular, we showed that the bedrock that has supported the pillars of state-professional control is softening and has exposed some of the cracksthat are appearing in the columns themselves. We argued that with lessen-ing interest in the democratic welfare state, notions of government andprofessional controland appeals to regulation and expert knowledgehave less saliency than they enjoyed in the past. Buttressed by critiques of extant systems of control and appeals to putative benefits of alternativesystems, especially market-grounded and citizen-anchored models, we claimedthat a new governance algorithm may be emergingone that privileges anarray of control mechanisms and pushes an alternative bundle of ideasabout governance onto center stage.

Our purpose was not to classify or evaluate the array of reform initiativesbeginning to appear on the recontoured landscape of educational gover-nance. Rather, our objective was to help shape understanding of the forcesat play in the reshaping process. In the end, our aim was to provide infor-mation to help ground discussions about changing vistas in this area and toprovide some clues about important influences that will be at play as gov-ernance takes shape in the schools of the twenty-first century.

Notes

1 It is important to acknowledge that claims of unsatisfactory levels of current perfor-mance are contested. Important work over the decade of the 1990s from Berliner and Biddle~1995!, Bracey ~1992, 1993!, and Rothstein ~1998!, for example, holds that the alarms about dismal school performance are mostly unfounded ~Rothstein, 1998, p. 113 !. Specifically theseauthors marshall considerable evidence to suggest that: ~1! schools are performing muchbetter than critics maintainthat the average American school is a lot more successful~Berliner & Biddle, 1995, p. 344 ! than critics would have us believe and that in aggregate thepublic schools of America look pretty good ~p. 127!; ~2! performance of American schools hasnot decreased over timein fact they suggest that the evidence seems to be that they are

doing better~Rothstein, 1998, p. 111

!; and

~3

!achievement of students in the United Statescompares favorably with that of youngsters in other industrialized nationsindeed when we

analyze the evidence responsibly and think carefully about its implications, we discover that the American schools stack up very well ~Berliner & Biddle, 1995, p. 63 !.

For these scholars and many others who attack the perceived failure of schools, the dismalpicture of American schools is based more on ideology than facts ~Bracey, 1992, p. 18 !: Thestoryline of failure is a Big Lie ~Berliner & Biddle, 1995, p. 9 ! that has been led by identifiable critics whose political goals could be furthered by scapegoating educators ~p. 4!.Thus a number of analysts maintain that, at least in some quarters, performance data arebeing deliberately distorted to influence the reconfiguration of the governance equation ineducation.

2 As with most discussions of this type, there is more than one side to the story. Indeed,as we note in subsequent sections, some of the more damaging critique about school reformefforts is illuminated by a market spotlight. Using a market calculus to assess the success of government provision can lead to distortions, however. In particular, such efforts generally failto acknowledge the fact that public enterprises are assigned multiple objectives ~Hemming



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& Mansoor, 1988, p. 4 !, especially redistributional and other expensive social goals ~Martin,1993!.

3 The literature on the benefits of market control is highly contested. For a comprehen-

sive review, see Murphy ~1996!.

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JOSEPH MURPHY is a Professor at Peabody College of Vanderbilt Univer-sity. He is also the Chair of the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Con-sortium. Recent books include The Privatization of Schooling: Problems and Possibilities ~1996!, The Handbook of Research of Educational Administration ~1999,edited with Karen Seashore Louis !, and School-Based Management as School

Reform: Taking Stock ~1995, with Lynn G. Beck !.


Documents

School Governance Murphy