School Governance Needs a New Plan
Posted on: Monday, 17 September 2007, 06:00 CDT
By Dan Hurley
Despite marginally improved test scores and an ambitious construction program to replace or refurbish every classroom in the system, disorganization and chaos, not progress, seem to characterize the Cincinnati Public Schools. Enrollment continues to decline, the Board of Education stumbled into placing a 9.95 mill levy on the ballot after its new treasurer suddenly "discovered" a $78 million dollar deficit, and Superintendent Rosa Blackwell announced her retirement against the backdrop of a bickering Board, triggering a search for the fourth Superintendent in six years.
Anyone interested in the future health of the region recognizes that the strength of the Cincinnati Public Schools is critical. Center cities may attract empty nesters and young people who do not have school age children, but middle class families with children will flee the city if a school system appears weak. During the 20th century an unusually strong parochial school system provided an alternative for thousands of parents who wanted to stay in the city, but that system is also rapidly contracting.
Last week, McKinsey & Co., a nationally known management consulting firm, delivered a 62-page report detailing steps to reorganize the CPS central office operations. The crux of that report involves rebalancing the relationship of the Board of Education, which it contends attempts to micromanage the system, and the Superintendent, who tends to restrict the flow of information to the Board.
The current CPS governance structure with a small, seven-person board elected at large on a non-partisan ballot, was the product of a 1914 reform effort engineered by Dr. John Withrow that foreshadowed the reform of City Council a decade later. For over half a century that model provided the system with amazing stability. On the Board level, the Citizens School Committee vetted and nominated almost all candidates. Between 1926 and 1970, only six people served as President of the Board. On the administrative side, Superintendent Randall Condon served 16 years (1913-1929) and Dr. Claude Courter 22 years (1937-59). Even Dr. Edward D. Roberts, who had the misfortune of being named Superintendent during the Great Depression, "a miserable time to be in charge of anything," lasted eight years. With the assistance of the U.S. Office of Education, Superintendent Courter developed an administrative system that served the system for 35 years and became nationally renowned as the "Cincinnati" or "Courter" plan.
But stability was relatively easy in the early and mid-20th century. For one thing, expectations were lower. In 1919 only 16.8 percent of the population of the United States graduated from high school. Not until after World War II did more than half of the population stay in school long enough to graduate. Factory work did not require significant formal education, and often provided any necessary vocational training.
Second, both society and the schools discounted African American children. In the aftermath of the 1913 flood, Jennie D. Porter realized that very few African American children living in the West End attended any school. To address this problem, Porter founded the Harriet Beecher Stowe School, which grew to 1,300 students by 1922. By the time of her death in 1936, she had overseen a racially segregated sub-system that provided educations for the city's black children and jobs for black teachers. As an accommodationist, Porter lobbied the Board of Education for resources, but did not challenge segregation itself, a stance the Board was happy to support.
Beginning in the mid-1950s, the stability of earlier decades was steadily undermined. The Civil Rights movement in combination with the rise of a strong teachers union transformed school politics. The singular voice of the Citizens School Committee fractured with the rise of the Neighborhood School Committee and candidates assumed vague "liberal" and "conservative" identities. On October 4, 1957, the beeps of Sputnik announced the dawn of an age that has transformed academic expectations for every person in society.
Despite a plethora of new issues and a radically new context, Cincinnati has stuck with the 1914 governance model. Using the principle that the best way to evaluate an organization's values is by examining its budget rather than its rhetoric, why is it that we pay handsomely to attract good people to run for city council, county commission, and dozens of state boards, but members of the school board remain true volunteers? By maintaining the fiction of non-partisan elections, we fail to get candidates who espouse clear programs, allowing everyone to claim they are for the children, efficiency, academic success and low taxes. In recent years, some big cities have shaken up their schools by placing them directly under the mayor, who appoints the board. But without an executive mayor, Cincinnati would have a difficult time attaining the accountability and potential efficiencies that have been achieved elsewhere.
There are no perfect forms of local government, and over long periods of time, any particular structure will gravitate to its weaknesses. At some point the evidence of failure piles up to the point that people lose faith in tweaking the system and decide that only radical reform holds out hope for meaningful change. What more evidence is needed to convince people that sweeping change similar in scope to 1914 is necessary?
Dan Hurley is assistant vice president for history and research at the Cincinnati Museum Center. He also serves as the staff historian for Channel 12 News and is executive producer of Local 12 Newsmakers. Reach him at dhurley@cincymuseum.org.
Originally published by Post columnist.
(c) 2007 Cincinnati Post. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.
Source: Cincinnati Post
User Comments (0)
RSS Feeds