Can't let go: just a few years back, school-based management was the rage in Cleveland. Except that the central office wasn't all that interested in relinquishing control - Forum

Education Next, Winter, 2001 by Patrick J. Ryan

The clear instructions did exist, but they were found in the union contract. The contract stipulated that the councils were to interview applicants, but that they could play only an advisory role; the ultimate decision rested with the principal. In the case of principals, the councils were supposed to choose from a list of acceptable candidates provided by the central office. In all of these matters the Union Contract Committee ensures that the rights of employees are protected. The vast majority of council members remained unaware that they had been formally granted these powers and responsibilities. Not that these misunderstandings mattered, Throughout the year the central office refused to honor the councils' authority anyway.

Reasserting Power

District administrators need to have faith in the legitimacy and effectiveness of lay decision-making in order to follow through with devolving power to the school level. This faith proved quite thin among the leaders of Cleveland's public schools. The general distrust of parents was revealed early in the reform debate when a district administrator asked rhetorically, "Do you really want welfare mothers running your schools?" Central-office administrators proceeded to immobilize the local councils more through simple inattention than direct action. Midway through the 1998--99 school year the district's new CEO, Barbara Byrd-Bennett, who was hired from the New York City school district, promoted the person who was supposed to facilitate the development of the councils to a newly created administrative post. No replacement was ever made. With no one responsible for turning the councils into more than just a notion, one principal asked, "If we have a question, whom do we call?" During the summer of 1999 the cent ral office refused to name the 40 schools that were to make up the "second wave" of decentralization. The elections of council members for the 1999--2000 school year could not be held. In the words of one local observer, school governance councils "became persona non grata almost overnight."

In July 1999, the district announced that the councils were to be placed under "ongoing evaluation." This became a euphemism for the return of central planning. The district budget for the 1999--2000 school year mandated a series of district-wide programs, but set aside no money for council facilitation or training. Equally telling was the backdrop for the public release of the district's budget, a pep rally showcasing the performances of talented students. Here community empowerment was reduced to school spirit, identity politics, and good feelings. A few months later Byrd-Bennett claimed that decentralization was taking too long to work; reform needed to be driven "from the top down." Media coverage and talk among interested parties shifted quickly to "standards," defined almost entirely in terms of state-mandated tests. The search for ways to engage parents, students, and teachers in governing their own schools was over. Ironically, the call for community empowerment had ginned up support for the failing d istrict bureaucracy rather than challenging it. The term community had been used to evoke a sentiment of attachment without preparing participants for the unsettling diversity and political confrontations that engaged democratic communities create.