The myth of local control

Everyone says they support more local control of education.  Want evidence?  Here's Atlantic Monthly arguing that getting rid of school boards and returning control to the schoolhouse level.  Here's National Journal writing about how the chair of the U.S House Education and Labor Committee thinks local control is a fundamental of education reform.  Here's Republican presidential candidates Jon Huntsman and Michele Bachmann arguing for local control.  Here's Barack Obama doing the same.  And here's his federal Department of Education bragging about all its local control initiatives.

Locally, here's the Deseret News reporting on the issue last year at the legislature on a bill sponsored by Ken Sumsion, and here's Senator Steve Urquhart saying local control "is a good idea."

If so many people of so every political stripe support "local control," why don't we have it?  Why are there dozens of funding streams for education in Utah, each one coming with its own sets of rules for how schools have to spend the money.  Why, with back-to-back administrations in Washington arguing for "local control" has the control shifted more and more to the U.S. Department of Education?

Because very few people actually believe in local control.  Most people see "local control" as a way for their own control, and they really mean "local control if schools choose to do what I would want them to do," which is really code for "my control."

And the concept of local control goes hand-in-hand with something that's an anathema to many on the left--parental choice.  Without choice, local control is meaningless.

If politicians were actually willing to give schools more control, they would also have to give parents the right to choose a different school if that "control" led to policies or quality that parents didn't like.  If parents don't have that choice, then they rightfully insist that others take "control" from the local educators who screw things up.

And why don't we have parental choice?  After all, no less than the UEA-supported vice chair of the State Board of Education just published a piece in the DNews called "Educational choice for all students."  But, like most politicians, she really argues for "choice" only to the point that parents' choices agree with her own.

The ultimate local control is the willingness to give both educators and parents control in designing and attending schools. That's what we need, but it's also what interest groups with rice bowls to protect don't want.