There are over 14,000 school districts in the United States. They range from the Mohawk Valley school district in Arizona, where 254 students in kindergarten through the eighth grade are taught in one school, to the Los Angeles public school system, where close to 600,000 students in all grades are taught in more than 600 schools. Each of these districts, and the thousands in between, are governed and administered by a state-empowered school board. These boards make decisions about everything from after-school programs to teacher salaries, class sizes, and the teaching of creationism in the sixth grade. Among these are...

In the early 1800s, the citizens in many American towns established local systems of public education. Yet by the beginning of the twentieth century, K–12 education had become a responsibility of the states (Strang 1987, 354). The federal government’s role, conversely, has always been small. Even though education is discussed by presidential candidates and Congress periodically passes major legislation, no more than 10 percent of public school revenues has ever come from the federal government.¹ Moreover, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that education is not a fundamental right guaranteed in the federal Constitution.²

The action in public education,...

According to Everett Ladd, “Americans are deeply committed to the enterprise of education. We say so every time we are asked, no matter how we are asked—and we put our money where our mouths are” (Ladd 1995, 22). Ladd points to government expenditures that have increased steadily since the 1960s and to public opinion polls showing that most Americans think that we ought to be spending more, rather than less, on public education.

We begin this chapter by reviewing forty years of public opinion polls in order to highlight the defining aspects of Americans’ views about educational spending. In...

To what extent does policy responsiveness depend on ordinary citizens being closely involved in the formulation of tax and spending policies? Political institutions at all levels of the federal system have been designed with very different answers to this question. In his Federalist Paper 10, James Madison made a strong case against direct popular control, particularly in small polities. Larger republican governments are best, he argued, because representative bodies filter public views while a large and diverse public sphere hinders the development of majority factions.

But, as Morone (1998, 6) forcefully argues, a “democratic wish” also runs through American...

Most school board elections are low-key affairs often held apart from more exciting and competitive national and state elections. If there is no controversial issue on the immediate agenda, there will likely be little campaigning and little discussion of the issues. Participation is usually minimal, turnout low, and the content of the campaign trivial unless the public is particularly dissatisfied by a recent policy decision. Candidates often run unopposed and unaffiliated with political parties (McDermott 1999). One could easily conclude that school board elections are not very important.

Can that be? After all, our theory of school board responsiveness requires...

Throughout this book, we have treated public schools as political rather than market institutions. Our emphasis on responsiveness stems from a belief that school boards must be accountable and responsive to their citizens, and—unlike private schools—not focused narrowly on their consumers (Chubb and Moe 1990). But public officials are exposed to forces other than citizens’ public opinion—whether this opinion is voiced through referenda or the next school board election—and in this and the following chapter we direct attention to two interests particularly critical to education politics: teachers’ unions and senior citizens. Chapter 7 looks in detail...

As baby boomers age and life expectancy increases, the country’s politics will be increasingly influenced by the needs and preferences of older Americans. By 2030, people over sixty-five years of age will outnumber those under twenty, reversing the nation’s demographic profile (MacManus 1995). These trends are especially disturbing to education policy scholars such as Michael Kirst, who identify the growing elderly population as one of several “major societal negative forces” (Sirkin 1985) that could curtail spending on public schools. Journalistic accounts in the conventional press (e.g., Archibold 2001) and specialized venues such as the American School Board Journal (Wheeler 2000)...

Our tour across the landscape of local American public education has taken us through time and space. American local governments were the first to take responsibility for public education, and local control remains a strong force today despite the increasing role of the states and, in more recent years, the federal government. Indeed, localism explains quite a bit about how America’s public schools are organized, administered, and funded. But of equal importance is the accretion of institutional reforms such that contemporary school boards, school districts, and school-financing systems retain many characteristics they acquired in earlier times.

American federalism allows for...