The Choice in Education Governance Debates: Complacency or Reform?

Illustration In a recent article in Education Next (“Locally Elected School Boards Are Failing,” Summer 2022), I argued the Covid-19 pandemic has made salient a critical flaw in our public education system—that our dominant school governance model is largely designed to serve the interests of adults, rather than the students public schools actually serve. The absence of any relationship between student achievement and most local school board election outcomes does not appear to be driven by consensus among parents or voters about the (lack of) importance of test scores. Suppose that a municipal water system is constantly producing outbreaks of waterborne illness, such as cholera or dysentery, because local public officials believe the primary purpose of the system is to provide well-paying job opportunities for favored constituents, not delivering clean and safe drinking water to local residents. Suppose the board spent most of its time ensuring that doctors are satisfied with their pay, that insurance companies aren’t complaining about billing rates, and that various politically connected local contractors are getting their fair share of hospital construction contracts, while spending almost no time examining data on patient health outcomes and preventable medical errors.