The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
The fallout of takeover laws
What does Colin Kaepernick have to do with public schools? By silently kneeling during the national anthem to protest racial injustice, Kaepernick displayed the kind of civic engagement that is the goal of public education. Kaepernick’s actions inspired other athletes, at the professional, college and high school levels, to join in the silent, respectful protest. His protest sparked many to think about the true meaning of patriotism, beyond mindlessly repeating the words of “The Star Spangled Banner.”
This season, the NFL decided to ban these silent protests, under penalty of stiff fines. It is sadly not surprising that when African-Americans start to exert some influence, whites in positions of power attempt to thwart them. As Michelle Alexander pointed out in her book, “The New Jim Crow,” throughout American history, white society has reacted to any progress African-Americans made toward equality with attempts to repress those gains.
Takeover, a new book by Rutgers professor Domingo Morel, demonstrates that this pattern of backlash against African-American political empowerment has guided major education reform policy as well.
State takeovers of school districts are a favorite tool for education reformers. States swoop into impoverished school districts, declare them failures, strip districts of decision-making authority and often appoint an outside “expert” to turnaround the district.
As detailed in an earlier column,state takeovers are also a proven failure. In Detroit, Tennessee, New Orleans, and elsewhere, takeovers cause a great deal of disruption for teachers, students and families, but almost never result in any real improvement in student achievement.
Morel traces the origin of state takeover laws, starting around the early 1990s. From the beginning, there was evidence that state takeover was not a winning education reform strategy. So why did states pass these laws?
In a nation where AfricanAmericans have been historically marginalized, local school boards were spaces where African-Americans could air their concerns. School boards were also a path to political power. Morel notes that in cities across the nation, African-Americans began their journey to the mayoralty at the school board level. School boards were training grounds where future candidates for higher office gained political experience. As Morel explains further, schools are a major local employer. Thus, controlling the school board meant controlling a vital local economic resource.
As African-Americans gained political power in local school boards and wider city office, they began to agitate successfully for more resources for their public schools. Plaintiffs began winning school funding cases, securing more funding for public schools that primarily served communities of color.
Morel finds a connection between these school funding victories and the passage of school takeover laws. He details that at the same time African Americans began to gain some political power, a conservative movement arose concerned with that rising political power and with the expenditure of tax dollars on predominately African-American communities. Hence these lawsaiming to strip local districts of access to a traditional route of political power, the school board, and a valuable economic resource, the school district.
Morel reveals a number of disturbing trends in state takeovers. As the number of African-American students increases in districts, the likelihood of state takeover increases. The same is true with increasing numbers of African Americans in a city council, and with increases in funding in cities with African-American mayors. As African Americans gain political and economic control of a school district, the likelihood that the state will take over that school district increases.
Moreover, majority African-American districts disproportionately experience more punitive forms of takeover. In the few instances that states takeovers occur in predominately white districts, such as in West Virginia and Kentucky, local elected school boards remained intact. However, in majority African-American districts, takeovers were more likely to involve abolishing the local elected school board. AfricanAmerican communities not only lose control over their children’s education, but also lose a vital path to political empowerment.
State leaders feel they need not answer to local communities. When Newark residents balked at the disruptive reforms imposed by the state-appointed superintendent, Governor Christie declared, “I don’t care about community criticism ... we run the schools, not them.” Yet it is precisely the disregard of local concerns that dooms state takeovers to failure.
As Morel notes, the evidence shows that successful education reform requires collaboration between schools, the community and political leaders. His book shows that undermining elected school boards in the name of “school improvement” is not only ineffective education policy, it is bad for democracy.