George Santayana once defined fanaticism as the process of redoubling your efforts after you have forgotten your aims. The definition applies fairly well to the supporters of school decentralization and community control here in New York. Their efforts, while not quite redoubled, continue strong; their aims are all but lost in the murk of community apathy, political bickering, administrative fumbling and fiscal ineptitude. The movement toward local control, while not producing the complete disaster which some had predicted has clearly failed to achieve its goals.
Its first goal was citizen participation in school affairs. The movement, interpreting a widely felt need for such involvement as an overwhelming demand for control, insisted that the need could be met only be breaking up the school system into many districts, with each local district electing its own board of education. Some of its more ardent supporters predicted that, unless the demand was satisfied, there would be violence. But when the school board elections were held in New York last year, less than 15% of the eligible voters bothered to cast ballots; in some districts as few as 5% voted. Significantly enough, this small turnout occurred at a time when memories of the 1968 school confrontation were still fresh in the citizens' minds. Future elections, in a less heated atmosphere, may well attract even fewer voters. Obviously, the advocates of community control had grossly exaggerated the size of the demand for participatory democracy.
The movement's second goal was educational innovation. How has this goal fared since decentralization? Thus far, the time spent by community school boards on educational, as against political, administrative and fiscal matters, has been almost nil. What the boards have been pre-occupied with most of the time are such questions as how much money each school district should get and what were the powers of local boards vis-a-vis those of the central board. Many community board meetings have been marked by confrontations between rival local political forces vying for patronage.
Discussion of educational innovation, when it does occur, has usually been in the form of pressure to dismantle innovative programs which cost more for each child than the regular programs -- the argument being that a fixed amount of money should be spent on each child throughout the district.
The Losers: Parents and Minority Groups
The third goal was greater power for parents and minority groups. Yet both did poorly in the elections. In rural and suburban communities (where voter turnout for school balloting is also small, except where some hot issue like additional taxation is to be resolved) the voters know the candidates through social contacts and news items in the local press. But dividing New York City into 31 school districts did not make each of the districts a community. Nor did the press devote much space to the hundreds of candidates. Community control fanatics maintain that voters boycotted the school elections to protest the inadequacy of the powers given to the community boards. But the plain fact is that most voters stayed away because they had no way of knowing who the candidates were or what they stood for. Most of those who did come out voted as members of organized groups: church, union, political club or anti-poverty agency. When the votes were counted, parents and minority groups found themselves with less power in the schools than ever before.
When Mayor Lindsay announced that school decentralization was one of the major successes of his administration, he surely could not have been referring to the achievement of the program's stated goals. What he probably had in mind, we suspect, were the political advantages which the city administration gained through the program, since now, under decentralization, the responsibi ity for such distasteful acts as increasing class size, abandoning good programs and laying off teachers and other school personnel will rest with local boards rather than the city.
During the early discussions of local school control, I asked one official, a strong supporter of community control, "Do you really think that dividing the city into 30 or 60 or 100 districts with elected boards will help Johnny read any better?" The answer was, "No. Of course not. But they won't blame us. If Johnny doesn't read, they can always throw out the local people they elected and put in another bunch." Community control is proving to be an excellent channel for buckpassing and scapegoating. It has shifted the responsibility for deterioration of schools from the city and state to well-intentioned but fiscally powerless local groups.