Abstract
In the early 1900s, an important educational reform nationwide transformed rural education by transferring the control of local schools from community members to teachers and the state. School district consolidation, mandated by the legislatures to enlarge school district for the purpose of education quality, stirred floods of grievance among rural communities. For rural parents and school boards, the autonomy over property taxes, school management, teacher recruitment, as well as the curriculum design, were an integral part of participatory democracy. Rural one-room schoolhouses, where one teacher taught pupils of various ages, were the places where most Americans received formal education in the past. However, the professionalization of local schools in the consolidation reform at the turn of the twentieth century made local governance a “lost past”—the ramifications of which still shaped American public education to the present.
In contrast to state legislature’s strong intervention in education in the early twentieth century, an alternative market reform that highlighted parental choice and privatization thrived in the 1980s. Vouchers and charter schools became new education models that restrained the government’s control in education. Charter schools, exempted from the regulatory controls on curriculum and funding in public school districts, enjoyed great flexibilities in curriculum changes to cater to the needs of students. In addition, easier access to additional resources from foundations and community organizations made charters even more competitive in student recruitment. However, charter schools did not always produce better educational outcomes than public schools, and, in many situations, even further widened the educational gaps between the privileged and the underrepresented students.
In his renowned article “Bridging the Gap,” Jack Dougherty urged urban historians and education researchers to engage with each other in investigating the role of schools in the transformation of cities and suburbs. 1 After a decade of the publication of “Bridging the Gap,” Campbell Scribner’s historical inquiry about the school district consolidation history and Edward P. St. John and others’ educational research about urban school reforms offered an opportunity to fill this intellectual gap. While Scribner focused on rural-suburban conservative campaigns for local autonomy and parental control, John and his coauthors specifically examined the failures of market rationales in improving urban high schools. The two studies complement each other in painting a comprehensive picture of the shifting politics in school reform between the post-World War II period and the present, to illuminate how, despite the benevolent intentions, neither consolidation nor market reforms succeeded in alleviating class and racial inequalities. This review essay mainly synthesizes the constructive conversations triggered by the authors, connects these dialogues to the broader literature of education history, and discusses the limitations of the standard-market dichotomy underlined in the two studies of educational reforms.
Substantive literature about consolidation in educational history concentrates on metropolitan school districts. However, Scribner believed it was important to examine the neglected metropolitan fringe, where the consolidation reform originated, to scrutinize how “localism”—rather than being a coherent and static ideology, shifted over time and space. The parochial community-school linkage, embedded in one-room schoolhouses, has long associated localism with home rule, self-determination, autonomy, and democracy. Moreover, rural communities perceived local control over schools as necessary to preserve moral values, and racial and linguistic norms. In the 1950s, court-mandated consolidation thrived as a result of postwar enrollment booms in public schools, the rising importance of high school diplomas in college access, and the nation’s demand for an expanding white-collar workforce. Unlike the early rural communities’ advocacy for the traditions of local governance, postwar anticonsolidation campaigns in the metropolitan fringe were primarily fostered by suburban parents, who were concerned about the impact of redrawing school boundaries on their home values. Once a representation of egalitarianism and democracy, “local autonomy” was then appropriated by suburbanites for wealth accumulation and remaining racial privileges over African Americans, Hispanics, and other minority populations.
The rural-suburban “alliance” toward local governance was mostly pronounced in the movements against teacher unionization, particularly against teachers’ control over curriculum. The fundamental question about curriculum control was, according to Scribner, “a struggle between parents, educators, and other interest groups for institutional authority” (p. 140). As the compulsory attendance laws in the early 1990s restrained parents’ influence on classrooms, consolidation translated more power to teachers, superintendents, and state departments of education—evoking strong resistance among parents. The postwar antiteacher union sentiment was also a continuation of the longstanding disputes over school consolidation before World War II.
The bureaucratization and professionalization of education in postwar educational reforms were cofacilitated by multiple economic, political, and social factors. In Cities of Knowledge: Cold War Science and the Search for the Next Silicon Valley, Margaret O’Mara delved into the exponential growth of federal funding in public research universities during the Cold War, and illuminated that while American democratic tradition promoted a small government, the Cold War international political contexts required a big one. Federal policies, such as the G.I Bill and grants for research universities, indicated that the professionalization of education became an integral part of Cold War nation-building rationales. 2 Moreover, anticommunist sentiment further legitimized a series of racist and homophobic policies in the 1950s. Federal Housing Administration (FHA) policies, including redlining and race-based mortgage issuance, exacerbated residential and school segregation in metropolitan areas. Moreover, beginning in the 1950s, Midwestern cities in the Rust Belt lost hundreds of thousands of entry-level manufacturing jobs, stagnating urban economies in the immediate years after World War II. This change in city economy and employment structure coincided with the migration of millions of African Americans from the South to the urban North. 3 Thus, the combination of deindustrialization, white flight, racialized housing subsidies, and Cold War politics triggered a series of educational reforms that represented contending interests of different social groups. 4
One of the most significant contributions of Scribner’s book is his articulation of the historical continuity of the ways politics impact educational reforms. The postwar campaigns for local autonomy among rural-suburban communities was not something new, but a revitalization of historical conservativism. The evolution of anticonsolidation movements, with a shift of focus from “local control” to “parental choice” in the metropolitan fringe, offered a historical background for the contemporary market-oriented reforms in urban schools.
While the consolidation rationale reflected stronger state control over public education, the neoliberal logic of efficiency, choice, and innovation, facilitated a market alternative to educational reforms. Specifically looking at market reforms in urban education after the 1980s, John and his coauthors investigate the school choice model that was championed by conservative parents. Based on case studies of four charter schools in different cities and four public district schools in New York City, the authors argue that the market reforms failed to provide equal school choice for urban families but perpetuated inequalities. In particular, the use of standardized testing as a screening process for student recruitment functioned as a new sorting method in reproducing class and racial disparities in education. The policy mandates of raising test scores, such as No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Common Core State Standards (CCSS), disproportionately affected low-income families, since income gaps, the differences in academic preparation and social networks, made the underserved students significantly disadvantaged in testing. These policy mandates concerning standardized tests were often grounded on illogic and misleading statistics that left out the role of finance in the research. For instance, standardized testing in the field of literacy inhibited the capacity of teachers to address the learning needs of ethnic minority students—making the goal of teaching literacy paradoxical. Moreover, the “college-for-all” sentiment, fueled by the global competitions in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Medicine) fields, mystified the linkage between college education and high earnings premium. While most of the existing counseling services in high schools channeled all students to pursue college education, only superficial information about financial aids were provided. The lack of comprehensive knowledge about college finance, according to John and his coauthors, was the biggest obstacle to narrowing the enrollment gap between whites and minority students. Some other scholars point out the unintended consequences of the high tuition/high loan rationale in exploiting low-income students to benefit corporations. In her investigation of the politics in higher education, Suzanne Mettler found that financial aids, such as Pell Grants and Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), created a “windfall for for-profit schools” to increase tuition. The profits from the rising tuition were used to enhance the corporations’ political capacity through campaign contributions and lobbying—which in turn sustained the “lucrative educational industries” for the corporations (p. 15). 5
Left Behind offered an intriguing discussion about the coalition between research and political interests, particularly how policy rationales developed on problematic research findings yielded the opposite results. Quantitative research without discussions about social justice often send misleading messages about the market reform in improving education equity. In The Fight for Local Control, Scribner did not specifically talk about the research-policy alliance, but this connection has been analyzed in other works. In the investigation of the trends of academic scholarship on consolidation, Berry and West found that earlier research on consolidation often emphasized input measures and highlighted the achievements of larger schools—which had better resources in all aspects such as facilities, teachers, administrators, course offerings, and extracurricular activities. Since the 1980s, however, school outcomes, rather than inputs, became the focus of research. As a result, studies on the lackluster results of large schools on educational outcomes began to increase. 6
Despite the thought-provoking discussions about the confounding relationship between the state and local schools in educational reforms, both Scribner and John and his coauthors ignored the role of corporations in transforming public education. Scribner briefly mentioned that corporations contributed to the consolidation reform in the early 1900s through the production of research, which promoted enlarged school districts for its capcity to improve educational facilities and outcomes, and therefore, producing the workforce that could better serve the industrialized economy in the cities. Scribner could have elaborated on how this increasing power of corporate leaders changed the consolidation, professionalization, and curriculum changes in public schools. While Scribner did not provide such analysis, Dorothy Shipps articulated the impact of private business leaders on Chicago public schools in the late nineteenth century: corporate leaders lobbied toward the privatization of the educational resources generation and distribution, creating a “managerial” business agenda in public education. The corporatization of public education not only transformed schools into business but also directed schools to aim for producing industrial workers that served the capitalist economy. 7 Besides, corporate leaders also facilitated the naturalization of the idea of labor unions as “undemocratic,” promoting antiteacher union campaigns nationwide. Private corporate leaders have always been active agents in education reforms with intertwining interests with the federal and local governments. As the neoliberal economy proceeded in the 1980s, corporate officials obtained enormous power by providing services that were traditionally considered public—such as education. Not surprisingly, when discourses about global competitions in STEM fields became dominant, corporate leaders repositioned themselves as champions of small schools, vouchers, and marketization of schools.
While both books incorporated a top-down approach to investigate the structures—state, courts, and policies—individual voices were subsumed. For Scribner, teacher unionization played a significant role in accelerating the conservative backlash, but there was no individual teacher’s voice in the historical account. Also, little was mentioned about the social, economic, and racial characteristics of the rural teachers. Some important questions remain unanswered: who were the teachers that unionized in the beginning? What kind of agencies did teachers have in their strikes and counter-conservative movements? Similarly, John and his coauthors did not address which students were “left behind” nor provided personal stories about those students’ interactions with schools. The lack of individual voices from teachers, students, and parents risk homogenizing these subjects without the recognition of class, gender, and racial disparities within the groups. A more balanced research of the structure and individual agency would have been helpful in both books.
Moreover, The Fight for Local Control and Left Behind foregrounded a standard-market dichotomy in which state reforms such as consolidation, NCLB, and CCSS represent a “standard” approach, while vouchers and school choice scheme stand as a market alternative. However, are “standard” and “market” mutually exclusive? What does this assumption ignore? The naturalization of the association between state and standards, and between markets and individual choice, seem problematic, since the increasing plutocracy in the state government has forged a strong alliance between market and politics—making state not only more than a bureaucratic machine but also an ally with the business industries. After all, standardized testing in schools and market rationales of school choice and efficiency have received bipartisan support. The linkage between meritocracy and education equity was also acknowledged as commonsense among many liberal policymakers. Therefore, the “dichotomous” standard-market relationship deserves further contemplation and complication. Separating the two oversimplifies the intricate economic and political elements within educational reforms.
Another qustion triggered by these two books is how are “neoconservatives” and “neoliberals” defined differently in differnt historical moments? Are these two fundamentally contradictory or actually complementary? Scribner used the term neoconservatives when discussing suburbanites’ advocacy for parental rights and school choice. John and his coauthors employed “neoconservative” when analyzing political interests of the Reagan administration, particularly, the complaints about big government, high taxes, and public spending. However, numerous scholarly works perceived the Reagan government’s commitment to free markets, privatization, and minimal state regulation as the beginning of neoliberalism. 8 Since the 1980s, schools have been recognized as one of the most influential ideological apparatus in reproducing class relations, and many scholars attributed this educational inequality to the nature of “neoliberal” political economy. 9 Neoconservatives and neoliberals have significant overlapping requests in terms of marketizing public services. Left Behind’s description of neoliberals as merely the supporters of “educational standards” might be too narrow.
In sum, The Fight for Local Control and Left Behind offered compelling investigations into the politics of localism, the deceptive rural-suburban alliance in anticonsolidation campaigns, and the disillusioned market reform in education. Scribner contextualized the understudied metropolitan fringe and offered an important addition to the historical scholarship on educational reforms. Left Behind incorporated a telling social justice inquiry in examining the relationship between market reforms and education equity. The two books usefully engaged a multidisciplinary audience in urban education, history, and political sciences, and conveyed a sophisticated understanding of the confounding relationships between markets, state, and schools in the United States.