Ed Huntress wrote:
"Wayne C. Gramlich" wrote in message
...
[snippage]

I brought up the case of New Zealand to disprove your following
statement:

One thing is su Nobody who beats us academically has
local control of teachers, curriculum, or anything else relating to
academics.

In New Zealand, they both beat the US academically and they have local
control of teachers, curriculum and everything. Thus, your statement
above is a bit too strong.

I have no way to judge their accuracy, but let me repeat what QPEC says
about it:

"Far from being the drivers of the system, the boards of trustees are now
largely irrelevant to it, and it is not at all clear what work they do,
except comply with a planning and reporting framework imposed from above..."

Even if they're overly negative about it, New Zealand has only a short
experience with (supposed) local control. And they are *one* example, versus
many with central control and superior performance. If they truly have local
control, they're the exception that proves the rule.

We're another exception, and we sure as hell don't prove anything, based on
performance.

The centralized vs. decentralized control is not the main issue.
What matters is results and accountability. When a principal can
not fire an incompetent teacher because of the teachers union, it
sure is hard to hold the principal accountable. When you have a school
board that just implements what the state mandates, is kind of hard
to hold the school board accountable. Accountability without
authority is the norm in the US, with the predictably dismal academic
results to show for it. It is kind of hard to improve the system
when the people in control, do not have their jobs on the line
when they fail.

That's quite a few unsupported assertions in one place. I think that many of
them are incorrect assumptions. Most notably, principals and teachers have
been losing their jobs in the New York metro area and schools have been shut
down because of poor performance on standardized tests.

In California, most of the academic improvement is occurs in
charter schools which are allowed to bypass the smothering
regulations from the state. There have been some dramatic
results in disadvantaged urban schools. In California, there
are now almost a quarter of a million students in charter schools,
many of which are significantly outperforming the neighborhood
schools next door. Maybe centralized control is not such a
good idea after all.

A RAND study of California's charter schools suggests there is nothing much
to note: "Regarding student achievement, results are mixed. Students in
charter schools generally have comparable or slightly lower test scores than
students in conventional public schools, but there is variation among the
types of charter schools. With respect to governance, only a small
proportion of chartering authorities are collecting accountability
information such as student grades, promotion rates, and dropout rates."

I find the statement above hard to believe. Could you give a better
reference than just the quote? California Charter schools get to
cut out of most of the state clap trap, but they have to take
the same standardized tests as everybody else. Their API (Academic
Performance Index) scores are reported along with all the other
schools. In addition, California now has a state-wide student id
system that tracks the movement of individual students through the
various schools. The inability to collect the information about
grades, promotion rates, and dropouts means they are not trying.
I honestly, do not know what the RAND study is talking about.

The first point suggests that it's worth a big shrug, at best. The second
point suggests that there isn't enough good data to tell much.

In any case, there is nothing there that would help answer the question of
how local or centralized control should be for optimum performance. The top
official in Finland's school system, which is the highest ranked public
school system in the world, attributes part of their success to firm,
central control of the curriculum and performance measurement. I suspect
he's right, although the homogeneity of Finland's society makes it far
easier to deal with the country's schools as a whole.

I've seen nothing to suggest that local control is as competent as central
control. But in terms of governance, I strongly suspect that the quality of
that governance matters more than the scope of its control. And local school
boards are rarely up to the job.

I do not disagree with most of what you say. Accountability seems
to be what drives success. The US school boards are a waste of
time. The centralized system that I'm familiar with (California)
is a pathetic joke. The New Zealand system may be an exception;
I certainly do not advocate that the US switch over to the New
Zealand system.

-Wayne