Kenneth R. Howe and David E. Means of the University of Colorado at Boulder’s National Education Policy Center have recently published a brief entitled “Democracy Left Behind: How Recent Education Reforms Undermine Local School Governance and Democratic Education.” In this brief, Howe and Means describe the negative impact of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) on local school governance and therefore also NCLB’s negative impact on American democracy. They offer guidelines for future federal education policy that addresses the loss of local control brought on by recent reforms:
Local control has historically been a prominent principle in education policymaking and governance. Culminating with the passage of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), however, the politics of education have been nationalized to an unprecedented degree, and local control has all but disappeared as a principle framing education policymaking.
Based on the authors’ interpretation of this situation, they recommend four initiatives for the future:
- Move from a punitive model to a participatory model for engaging local communities in reform efforts. Rather than threatening to withhold funding from struggling schools, provide additional support and incentives for staff, parents, and other community members to get involved in deliberation about education problems and their solutions.
- Encourage the adoption by states and locales of curriculum standards that include a conscious and substantive focus on developing the deliberative skills and dispositions required of democratic citizenship.
- Curtail the privatization of public resources. Keep individuals and organizations that receive public funds accountable to the public through democratic procedures; support elected school boards, which are the bodies best positioned to exercise discretion in allocating education funding within firm guidelines based on democratic principles.
- Seek ways to integrate schools to ensure access to equal educational opportunities and the diverse context of learning that all students need for the inculcation of democratic character.
For more information, please see http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/democracy-left-behind
