Teacher Empowerment

Legal Framework: State of the State Policy on School Board Membership

This is an overview of the pertinent statutes dealing with a host of issues regarding school board members and the potential for public classroom teachers to serve on school boards as well as specific issues that relate to school board members as found in state statutes. It is important to note that the research does not address any pertinent administrative rule or regulation that might have bearing on such issues as this was outside the scope to the project. Further, in many states some statutes are highly specific and reflect the types of things so noted in the document. However, it is possible that some statutes apply to all publicly elected or appointed officials, of which school board members might be included by interpretation, and thus would not be included herein.

This addresses the legal issues surrounding school board members and specifically the issue of teacher empowerment, i.e., whether public school teachers can serve on local school boards. As a broad generalization, the answer can be encompassed within a short overview. School teachers may not generally be employed in the same district in which they serve as a school board member. School teachers may serve as a school board member in a district in which they hold residency but are employed in a different school district. Retired or former teachers may serve as a school board member in the district in which they served. On the other hand, nepotism i.e., a teacher’s spouse is generally accepted but in certain states this might be disallowed. Regardless, such a question was not on point for the scope of the study, as I understood it.

It appears to me that the issue of teacher empowerment should focus on the public policies of choice. That is, if choice continues to gain favor with public policy makers the future of the association as well as that of public education is doubtful. In such a scenario, the composition of local school boards could be largely irrelevant to the instant question. The issue before the NEA seems to me to be one of a continuing attack on public education via some combination of methodologies of choice. My experience dictates that both sides of the political spectrum are embracing such concepts at a fairly rapid pace. Generally speaking, when the topic of vouchers or tax credits are advocated by public policy makers the general public as well as the vast majority of the intelligentsia in American don’t seem to have any problem with the concepts. I would suggest that the NEA must address the systemic issue and engage in the long-range plan of turning public opinion on this topic. In order to do so, the NEA must address a broad constituency beyond its members and its political and financial circles.

Specifically, it would be my view that this argument can be made to conservative policy makers, those who traditionally have been the advocates of the various choice plans and the opponent of teacher associations. It is important that this message be consistent and reach the intended audience of state as well as national policy makers. In the instant case, conservatives have long railed against a variety of issues involving public education from bilingualism to sex education. I would suggest that by allowing choice, the conservative policy makers are by default allowing every minority group, every subculture, and every political persuasion to operate their own educational system that will now be supported by public tax moneys. Further, by allowing the various versions of choice, policy makers will lose control of what is taught to the next generation of our society. By a careful articulation of this agenda as discussed herein, only the conservatives can assure themselves of the continuation of such issues as that of English being taught to all, an appreciation of the American culture, and a set of similar cultural, educational, and social experiences for the next generation. In fact, it can be argued that the choice movement should be the antithesis of conservative political ideology.

It must be stressed that taking moneys away from an already fragile public educational system can only continue the negative push-pull cycle facing many public school districts. Regardless of any negative impact, the concept of choice and its variations continue to grow.

The national debate concerning the conditions of public education coupled with the sheer enormity of the costs of public education as well as the changing demographics continue to drive the public debate as to the contributions of public education to the general welfare and economic productivity of our society. Education finance scholars have long demonstrated the direct and positive correlation between the educated populace and the overall economic conditions of the United States.

It is imperative that the NEA continue to demonstrate the overall positive gains that the public educational system has contributed by way of human capital to the national economic health which in large part determines the economic and social welfare of the nation. These economic benefits accrue to the individual and society as a whole. However, it must be clearly understood that there is a critical distinction within this discussion. The NEA must point out that public education was never designed to be funded based on the benefits received by the individual. In fact, public education was designed, and is clearly designed today; to be based on the benefits received by society as a whole. That is, society must first finance public education based on the benefits to society and, as a result, individuals will benefit. This distinction is largely lost on those who do not understand the concept of public education finance and the symbiotic relationship that public education has with the national economy. Further, it must be clearly understood that public moneys expended for public education are an investment in society as a whole and as a result to individuals.

Leading economists including John Kenneth Galbraith, Milton Friedman, and Theodore Schultz have long observed a positive relationship between education and economic growth. The reality is that public elementary and secondary education takes on national importance. Research reveals that the concepts of ownership of land, accumulation of capital assets, and costs of unskilled labor forming the basis of economic thought have largely given way to research that reflects that human capital is the true cost of creating an investment. The concept of human capital reflects public education as an investment.

Over extended periods of time, public elementary and secondary education has proven to be closely interwoven with the national economic health. The philosophical justification for a capitalist society is the accumulation of private wealth through economic competition in a free marketplace. Applied to education, school in a free marketplace accrues only to those best able to purchase the benefits. Or, stated differently, those best able to consume education are those who already possess education. Research has repeatedly shown that those who possess greater amounts of education generally make better decisions in a wide variety of areas of consumption.

The concept of education as human capital has best occurred in the United States, where education has been widely distributed so that more persons can accumulate a greater store of private wealth (i.e., education), in that they are able to sell their skills in an open marketplace at a competitive price. This concept reflects that education results in economic benefits both to society as a whole as well as to individuals.

Because recipients of public education are individuals, it is undeniably true that there are individual benefits. The benefit concept is rather straightforward by asking who benefits by an expenditure or receipt of a good or service. In public education, it is clear that individuals receive the goods i.e., knowledge and services. The benefit principle clearly applies to the commodity of education. Education is clearly applicable beyond the individual. It is, however, important to grasp the concept that the individual is not the primary reason that society engages in this economic exchange. In fact, individual benefit is a spillover effect.

In the broader sense, individuals benefit because they have personal access to greater social mobility, better pay, higher socioeconomic status, and more cultural opportunities.

The principle does not apply perfectly to public education as this arena produces multiple effects that reach beyond society. Many goods and services are more efficiently produced in the public sector with wide benefit at a small cost to taxpayers. In fact, the basis for most governmental services is the public economic efficiency so that small sacrifices by many constitute a collective benefit to society as a whole. It is important that public policy makers understand that while individuals need not benefit equally, or indeed benefit at all in a direct sense, because the value to society outweighs individual loss since each person does benefit at least indirectly. Such externalities provide wide economic and utilitarian benefits to society.

Critics of public education have long argued for the privatizing of education to improve educational performance. However, despite the individual benefits that occur, it is clear that education is not a simple enterprise. To declare that the student is the sole beneficiary of public education is to ignore economic realties. It is clear that, in general, society cannot privately produce educational services because of economic inefficiency. It also must be stressed that to allow the privatization of elementary and secondary education is to allow, and even encourage, the Balkanization of America.

Public elementary and secondary education in America must also be analyzed on the ability principle. It requires little explanation to understand that, if a major goal of education were upward socioeconomic mobility, those least able to pay for the benefits of education are in many instances the same persons in the great need of services.

Economic realities dictate that certain goods and services can be better provided by collective investment rather than by private or individualized initiative. Examples include, roads, hospitals, police, fire protection, and even education. While independent security guards, food service, pupil transportation, and other ancillary services can be provided very efficiently, economy realties indicate that greater efficiency follows public investment, and that a far larger segment of society can consequently access these important services. Efficiency is therefor a primary basis for public education. The benefits, however are equally important including the following: democracy, reduced crime, less need to offer public assistance programs, and the encouragement of socioeconomic mobility.

Charter Schools

The latest concept to emerge in the choice arena is that of charter schools. The concept varies among the nearly thirty states that have adopted some form of charter school legislation. Under the concept of charter schools various methodologies are employed in which private or public schools can either be created or changed to this status in order to exist without the vast majority of bureaucratic controls presently imposed on public education. However, absent from the public policy debate is the concept of freeing the public schools from this same bureaucracy in order to make all schools competitive.

Depending upon the enabling legislation, it is possible to have public moneys utilized for private education by allowing various groups to run their own schools. Serious policy issues involving the nation’s economy and self interests must be addressed if all are allowed to teach their children in schools where each subculture is allowed to instill its own values.

The attractiveness of the charter concept is due in part to the emphasis on the need for individual schools to be fiscally autonomous and free from state and local regulations. It is argued in nearly every legislature that charter schools will attract and retain students while meeting specified outcomes. Public education officials have long argued that many regulations should be eliminated. The threshold question is where resources and energy should be directed toward making all schools operate in this manner, i.e., eliminating unnecessary regulations, or just those that receive a charter from the state.

Any analysis of charter schools within the arena of education policy reveals, at best, a mixed picture with many unanswered issues. It is often argued that charter school expenditures patterns are less than those of public schools. Even if this expenditure pattern were true, it does not imply those individual states and local school districts are saving public moneys. On the contrary, preliminary research indicates that in many states, overall expenditure have increased due to charter schools. It appears that the primary reason that states are expending more, due to the creation of charter schools, is that approximately 5 percent of the students in home programs and private school transfer to charter schools.

As an overall public policy issue it should be noted that the vast majority of state aid formulas are enrollment driven. Thus, if a school district were to lose 5 percent of its enrollment due to charter school enrollments, and therefore a relative loss of the district’s overall funding, the school district is not necessarily able to decrease its overall expenditure pattern as well as the resultant local tax levy by the same percentage. School districts do not possess vast degrees of financial freedom. This loss of freedom is illustrated in the fact that if all outstanding bond issues remain, the overall costs of facility maintenance remain the same and the transportation’s system costs the same. However, more importantly, class sizes may not be reduced. Elementary and secondary education is a highly labor intensive industry. A reduction of students in some random pattern across the school district does not allow an overall reduction of staff. A significant reduction of staff can only occur when an economy of scale sets in at some future point. In fact, it is conceivable that school districts, and thus taxpayers, will experience an increase on a per-pupil expenditure basis. Thus, in some instances, it can be predicted that with an enrollment decline and the resultant state aid decline, the overhead of the district would remain the same, and it is conceivable that the local levy would if fact actually increase in certain situations in order to meet the greater per-pupil expenditure patterns that result.

Vouchers

Another issue of choice is that of vouchers. The concept of vouchers is one that has been debated in the public sector for at least a generation. Generally, voucher proponents have advocated that individual parents should be able to exercise the voucher in any school of their choosing without restrictions. At the threshold, issues emerge that are problematic for society. For voucher proponents the only attractive concept is one of little or no restriction. Without restrictions, fundamental public policy questions emerge. If vouchers were given to all parents then the wealthy would simply subsidize their child’s education in private schooling. On the other hand, the poor have very little, if any choice as to the services in the inner city. Further, when parents choose religious education, supported by tax moneys, massive issues are raised as to the separation of church and state. Without restraint, one could envision a system in which the public schools remain for only the very poorest in the inner city. Thus, the politics of choice could create essentially a two-tiered system of private schools for those who have the moneys to truly exercise choice, and the poorest of our society relegated to the public schools largely congregated in the inner cities or rural areas noted by poverty and hopelessness.

It must be further noted that if private education were subsidized, or totally supported by vouchers, the costs of private school tuition would increase in that the voucher would, in fact, serve as a subsidy. To assume that a voucher would create a level playing field is unrealistic in that those with discretionary income will continue to pursue private education above and beyond the price of the voucher. Thus, the tuition disparities would essentially move in tandem in the economic marketplace. Truly successful private schools would simply raise tuition, as the demand would stay relatively constant. Less successful private schools, created to meet the minimal demands of the poor, would have rates approximately equal in the voucher in that the market could not demand any more of this clientele.

Tax Credits

Tax credits are another variation of choice. Tax credits are generally similar to vouchers in that the parents would be able to send their child to any school, subject to enabling legislation, with a tax credit offered by the state to compensate with some form of a tax rebate to offset, in some fashion, the cost of educating the child.

The issue of tax credits is, as are most major tax issues, a complex one. It is a common understanding within the fundamentals of education finance that if one wishes to have a simple tax plan the fairness of any tax plan is diminished. In order to achieve fairness, the complexity of the tax plan, unfortunately, begins to significantly increase.

The tax credit concept, as briefly discussed, is essentially one in which all parents who send their child to a private school would be able to receive some form of a tax credit, i.e., a tax credit, a tax write off against or from taxes paid.

The usage of tax credits presents certain issues that are interwoven within a given state tax code. Generally, in states that have an income tax, legislatures pattern the tax, via a modestly progressive structure, after the federal income tax system. Notwithstanding the attributes of an income tax, the fact of the matter is that the very poor in our society pay very little tax, if any, by virtue of the fact that they have no income. Thus, one could argue that those with income, who pay income tax, would benefit while the very poor would not. Thus, one could observe that any income tax credit concept would be a subsidy for relatively wealthy individuals.

Overall Societal Needs

The role of public education in our society is, in reality, rather straightforward. The role of public education is to create an opportunity chain for individuals in the next generation. This opportunity chain extends to economic, social, and political opportunities.

In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville noted that our society, in its formative stages, attempted to be a country in which individuals could achieve a viable economically and socially productive position and receive their residual financial rewards based solely on their individual merits and work ethic. This concept of individual merit based on one’s ability, achievement, and industriousness permeates the concept of political and social equality throughout the works of the early political thinkers of our society.

These thinkers were consistent regarding the role of government, i.e., enhancing individual opportunity. Public education is the only vehicle for engaging in this agenda.

Many significant political, educational, and economic issues remain unclear to public policy makers considering the most acceptable manner of equitably and adequately organizing and funding public elementary and secondary education. Basic and fundamental questions have yet to be agreed upon within this political, economic, and educational arena.

As the nation moves into the 21^st Century, education becomes more important to creating and sustaining economic progress. In fact, the future of the nation becomes dependent on its ability to produce a continually improved educational product.

As the nation prepares to enter the new millennium, few would argue that the nation’s educational system is well positioned. Few would argue that the productivity of the American educational system has not slipped during the last of the Twentieth Century. Most would agree that a part of that slippage is attributable to larger societal problems that are now beginning to confront education on a large scale. Societal problems have created enormous tensions among the focus of economics, equality, productivity, liberty, and a capitalist society. While it cannot be said that a perfect society is one in which no such tension exist, the security of the future depends on finding an acceptable policy if current negative trends are to be reversed.

Technical, cultural, and political solutions are currently in short supply. Economic survival must be addressed and solutions created that address economics in the context of the changing demographics of society.

Political solutions will prove to be difficult as policy makers have constantly demonstrated the inability to develop a vision and understanding of the common good that public elementary and secondary education has clearly demonstrated for the future of our society. Thomas Jefferson opined that democracy would fail if the republic had a weak educational foundation. The contemporary issues of choice, as discussed herein, present a mixed picture as to the effects on this societal foundation. Thus, it seems to me that the NEA would be well advised to focus much effort on battling this agenda by turning to conservatives as well as traditional liberals in this discussion.