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

By 2000, Cleveland's central administrators had recovered from the state takeover of 1995, dismantled decentralization, and silenced the political calls for democratic participation. The Cleveland story illustrates why school-based management has failed in district after district. In a 1996 study of 20 districts adopting school-based management, scholars Anita Summers and Amy Johnson found only one reporting that significant authority had actually been granted to local schools in curriculum, budget, personnel, and strategic planning.

School administrators may pay lip service to the platitudes of "community empowerment," but, like Cleveland CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett, they use code words such as "best practices" to underscore their faith in professional expertise and central planning. To be sure, they are driven by a great desire to make schools better for all children, but their benevolent intentions do little to soften the alienating effects of hierarchical bureaucracy on school-level personnel and local citizens. Moreover, narrowing the discourse on education with terms like "best practices" implies that it is possible to make education more like medicine or engineering. However, learning engages a fundamentally different set of processes than those used to treat diseases or to build buildings. As if they were dealing with inanimate objects, technocratic educators hope to determine "what works" so they can replicate it through central authority. This approach slights complicating questions like: "Works for whom?" "To what end?" and "Under what conditions?" Across the nation a consensus may be building around the legitimacy of standardization, pushing decentralizing reforms such as charter schools and vouchers to the side. Consider that standardized testing for all is the chief priority of President George W. Bush's education agenda. High-stakes testing does motivate people, but it seems unlikely to engage them in ways that promote learning for a democratic society.

Supporters of school-based management might dismiss the Cleveland story as merely another example of poor execution. The theory wasn't tested, they'll say, because it was never properly tried. They're likely to cry "politics" or "incompetence." True enough, public policy is political, and bureaucracies are often incompetent. But this only begs the question: Can education leaders and bureaucrats in big-city districts be expected to support changes that conflict so essentially with their professional vision and interests? Are they capable of changing their habits of mind merely because researchers say that they should? When will the advocates of school-based management learn that education bureaucracies will not devolve without a fundamental change in authority that extends beyond creating local school councils or adding a few more prerogatives for principals? Those who are committed to forming school communities must seriously consider supporting the charter school movement and creating the political and econo mic basis necessary to fight centralized control. In the words of Cleveland's reformers, what are we willing to do to create a "system of schools" to replace the "school system"?