ELAS 6310: Theoretical Foundations and Functions of Educational Administration Chapter 4

ELAS 6310: Theoretical Foundations and Functions of Educational

Administration

Chapter 4

Governance

Goals

• By the end of the chapter you should be able to:• understand the organization and control of American

education;• identify the never-ending layers of statutory and legal

authority that impinge on education leaders;• recount the multiple constituencies with which

education leaders are inevitably involved.

Stakeholders

• Public schools serve a multi-tiered clientele. Students and parents are obvious school stakeholders.

• School district administrative authorities; teacher unions; county offices of education or other intermediate authorities; state officials, including governors and legislators; state and federal administrative agencies; the entire judicial system, including the criminal justice system; and various municipal and other civic, state, and federal officials responsible for enforcing rules regarding health, safety, and building codes all are stakeholders

• Others may have little formal authority but are also stakeholders such as philanthropic foundations.

• Schools are the target of numerous expectations, influences, and interventions.

Trends Affecting the Education System

• 1946-1979 - Post WW II: These children are the offspring of post–World War II baby boomers.

• 1970-1990 - Decline: In the 1970s and for two decades thereafter, enrollments declined.

• 1990-2000 -The Baby Boom Echo: Offspring of post–World War baby boomers

• 2000-present –Immigration: Most newcomer students are Hispanic in origin, their families coming to the United States from Mexico and other Latin American locations. In addition, there are millions of Asian immigrants, Eastern Europeans and Middle Eastern immigrants

Implications for Schools

• Migration patterns have implications for schools beyond a need for added buildings.

• The United States has been experiencing a vastly expanded need for teachers who know foreign languages and who are qualified to instruct.

• Beginning in the latter decades of the 20th century, U.S. residents began another mass migration, moving to southern states in huge numbers.

• In part, this north-to-south migration is baby boomers retiring. In part, also, it is a reflection of the availability of lower-priced land and better employment opportunities in the South.

Private Schools

• Only 10 percent attend private or independent schools. This percentage has remained stable during the past century.

• During the post–Brown v. Board of Education nonpublic school enrollments increased 14 percent of the school age–eligible population in the south.

• By the 1970’ private school enrollments dropped back to 10% and public school districts began to be racially desegregated.

• The greatest percent of nonpublic school were Catholic schools.• Beginning in the 1980s Catholic schools have been closing. • In their stead, has been the growth in popularity of self-identified

“Christian schools.”

• The United States now employs over four million teachers.

• There are also millions of other school employees: administrators; specialists of various kinds and “classified” employees; and those who perform crucial tasks, such as custodians, cafeteria workers, bus drivers, and so on.

• At any one time, approximately 20 percent of the U.S. population is formally enrolled in or employed by an educational institution.

Scope and Diversity

• Organization Size:• New York 1.1 million students enrolled in 1,000 schools and

Los Angeles 700,000 in 650 schools• Most U.S. public school students are schooled in urban and

suburban districts.• Fifty percent of all public school students are enrolled in

approximately 750, of the nation’s largest school districts. • Middle class households leave the city for suburbia for

smaller, more personable, schools and smaller classes.• Low standardized test scores in big cities and rural areas

characterized by high levels of household poverty.• School spending varies from a nationwide low in Mississippi

of $6,199 per pupil to New Jersey’s $13,338.

• Among the historic Constitutional conditions important for understanding U.S. education was a fear of large formal government and a strong distaste for concentrating power in the hands of those connected with government.

• Prior to the American Revolution to question state authority was not simply to risk the monarch’s ire, but also to jeopardize one’s place in an afterlife.

• To do a monarch’s bidding was tantamount to obeying God’s will and gaining a comfortable place in the hereafter.

• American revolutionaries did not want to simple replace England’s King George III with another authority.

• They wanted complete independence from England. They feared a powerful government.

• Rebelling against what they asserted was taxation without representation and the unfair imposition of distant English authority.

• Constitutional framers adopted a different view of the state. Drawing upon Western-European 18th century ideas, they adopted a notion by which the God-given right to govern was embodied in commoners, not monarchs.

• The new theory of the state postulated that all humans were endowed with the right to govern.

Constitutional Underpinnings of Education’s Complexity and Diversity

• A new “Social Contract Theory of the State” : Constitutional framers adopted a view that all humans were endowed with the right to govern

• Fear of “Big” Government: Central government would possess only that authority explicitly granted to it.

• The Social Contract and the 10th Amendment: The social contract notion of limited federal government authority, and state and citizen empowerment, is expressed formally in the Tenth Amendment:

• Diluting the Prospect of Power: Three competing branches of government—legislative, executive, and judicial—were established to dilute federal power.

• Federal power was also restricted by empowering states through states, and localities.

Constitutional Underpinnings of Education’s Complexity and Diversity

• Omission of Education: • The Constitution makes no direct mention of education or

schooling. • The United States is among the few industrialized nations to• omit education in its foundation charter and to forgo a

national system of public schooling .• Australia, Canada, and Germany, like the United States,

delegate education authority to the state or provincial level. • Most other large nations, however, retain school control as a

national government endeavor.

• Why no Constitutional mention of schooling and no federal system of education?

• At the signing of the Declaration of Independence, many of whom were present for the framing of the Constitutional were among the most sophisticated and competent individuals in the world. They were collectively, well educated. However, Madison’s diary of the Constitutional Convention records only debate regarding education. It was a discussion, and an eventual denial, of the idea establishing a national university. Constitutional framers bused themselves with other issues.

Education Governance: State Plenary Authority

• The Tenth Amendment’s reservation of authority to states and the people and the absence of education leaves education policy to states.

• Such state responsibility accounts for the lack of a national system of education in the United States.

• There are fifty systems, even more if one considers the District of Columbia and the various federally overseen trust Territories and the Department of Defense schools, both domestic and overseas

Informal Centralization• Centralizing Forces include:• nationally marketed textbooks; nationally active professional

organizations for teachers, administrators, and local school board members; nationally similar teacher credentialing

• Licensing procedures and examinations; ubiquitous and relatively similar college entrance examinations and admissions requirements; national education media,

• Professional publications, and honor societies; and the ever-watchful competitive eye of one state versus another, each often reluctant to permit another to gain a competitive advantage in the

• Attraction of industry, national projects, or prestige.

• Structure of States for Governing Education

• State constitutions, as a condition of admission into the Union, accept education as a state responsibility.

• State constitutions routinely specify that the state is responsible for ensuring a “thorough and efficient” or “general or uniform” system of schools.

General Government and Education

• Increasing numbers of governors have taken education reform as a major element of their policy portfolio.

• It is typical for a governor, particularly in a large state, to have an aide who specializes in education policy and acts as a liaison to state education agencies and to education interest groups.

• Such informal officials are often highly influential on policy, and even a few are influential also on administrative matters.

General Government and Education cont.

• State Education Officials: Every state has chief state school officers and state boards of education. The manner in which members are selected varies; some are elected (New York)and some are appointed(California, Alaska).

• State Education Departments: Every state has a department of education.

• Its functions are broad—for example, overseeing distribution of finances to local districts, monitoring quality of local district performance, overseeing statewide achievement examinations, licensing teachers, accrediting teacher training institutions, ordering textbooks in some states, and providing advice on matters such as school facilities and buses.

• State education departments routinely are supported, up to• 50 percent or more of budgeted revenues, by federal funds.

General Government and Education cont.

• Intermediate Units: Thirty-five states, particularly states of larger population or geographic size, rely upon intermediate government units, midway between the state and local school districts.

• Some states have county offices of education, some with elected county superintendents. These agencies can generate revenues from property taxation.

• In Texas, there are statutorily authorized Regional Service Centers famous for the quality of their administrative advice and operational service to local districts as well as their ability to broker bulk purchases, evoke administrative efficiencies, and elevate the quality of their personnel development for teachers.

School Districts Organizations

• The United States is characterized by two dominant patterns of school district organization, a “New England” model and a “Mid-Atlantic” or “Southern” model.

• New England School District Model : It specified that the township would form a special governmental body to oversee operation of the school. The school board was not to comprise religious, military, or education professionals, it was to be composed of laypersons.

• Mid-Atlantic or Southern Model. Much of the South’s education is organized on county or parish lines or may have both county and municipally aligned school districts with a larger county system.

School District Numbers and Consolidation

• The United States has many local school districts, slightly in excess of 14,000 California, Illinois, Nebraska, New York, and Texas—account for one third of these districts.

• Approximately there are 1,050 different school districts in Texas.

• Once, a century ago, the United States had almost nine times as many local school districts. In 1920, there were 127,000 local districts.

• By the first quarter of the twentieth century, a coalition of business leaders and university officials began a political campaign to consolidate these rural agencies into large districts.

Fiscal Dependence and Independence

• When school districts are statutorily granted taxing authority,, they are said to possess “fiscal independence.”

• Districts that submit annual spending plans, or budgets, to other governmental bodies for approval and revenue generation are said to be “fiscally dependent.”

• Approximately 75 percent of U.S. school districts, through their elected school boards or through direct citizen vote, have authority to levy property taxes.

• Although a state-wide property tax is legal in Texas, the legislature allows each independent school district to levy and collect its own taxes.

School Districts Composition• School Boards: School boards draw formal authority from legislative

statutes. Their primary function is employing and evaluating a chief executive officer, a superintendent of schools. Generally, 80% of the time, these are elected positions. Where boards are appointed, it generally is by mayors.

• Superintendents: Occupants of this position serve as the chief executive for local school districts. The position has great authority, such as selecting and evaluating school principals and recommending an annual spending plan, a district budget.

• Individual School Organization: Elementary schools, are typically operated by a principal, an all-important school clerk, classroom teachers, and a custodial staff.

• Middle and senior high schools, being larger will be assigned one or more additional administrators to assist the principal.

• The school generally draws its authority from and operates within policy parameters specified by district, state, federal, and judicial officials.

Private and Independent Schools

• These may include private, even proprietary, profit-seeking schools. • They may be independent, having their own board of directors,

financial assets, and so on. • They may be religiously affiliated (e.g., Catholic, Methodist, Jewish, or

Christian).• Catholic systems, may be part of a hierarchy fashioned after a public

school bureaucracy. • Private and independent schools have flexibility in which applicants

they accept and retain.• Private school budgets are tightly tied to enrollment levels; too few

students, and the school may have to close• A headmaster or headmistress has more discretion over how to spend

money and whom to hire and fire

Federal Government Education Structures

• In spite of not being responsible for education the federal government has much influence over U.S. K–12 schooling.

• The U.S. Department of Education has regional offices located throughout the United States. However, most federal education programs are overseen through state education departments and operated by local school districts.

• Within the executive branch, there is a Department of Education. The secretary of this agency is appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the U.S. Senate.

• There are literally dozens of federal programs, and billions of federal dollars directed at generally public, education support.

Questions?

• 1. Who are the stakeholders in the American Public School System?

• 2. Why has the United States been experiencing a vast need for teachers who know foreign language and who are qualified to instruct?

• 3. Education policies are largely the responsibility of what entity?

•4. Where does Texas local funding primarily come from?

• 5. What are 2 difference between the public and nonpublic educational institutions?

Youtubes: Cut Paste and Watch

• MSNBC (05-21-10) Texas School Board Rewrites History Textbooks With A Conservative Bent

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG-aVBfd4C8

• In Search of Balance - The Role of the Federal Government in Public Education

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt0u-MHlIjM

• The role of federal government in education • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUHboqSTz14