Education by Amateurs

You may not care whether Heather has two mommies, but in New York City this issue is nothing short of pressing. Heather is the title character in a book from the Rainbow Curriculum. New York City Public Schools' controversial new program, aimed at promoting tolerance of the gay and lesbian lifestyle among elementary-schoolers, became the hottest political potato of the year.

Many of New York City's 32 community school boards violently opposed the plan, which Chancellor Joseph A. Fernandez strongly supported. The school boards effectively mustered enough support to oust Fernandez, though his record as Chancellor had otherwise been a strong one.

But the most important issue raised by the Rainbow Curriculum has little to do with the curriculum itself-and that is the matter of how it was fought.

The Rainbow Curriculum was a grotesquely inept and ill-conceived program, or so many education experts have said. The school boards, however, did not object on the basis of educational theory, for few board members have even an iota of expertise in this area. Their beef with the program, and hence with Fernandez, stemmed from their visceral moral objections to homosexuality.

Whether or not their reservations are at all justified, the peculiar scruples of a rag-tag assortment of small-time politicians hardly serve as an effective guide for educational policy.

This pernicious interference in public school administration is hardly unique to New York City. Across America 15,000 elected community school boards wield substantial power over hiring staff, selecting textbooks, designing curricula and setting salaries. The purpose of such bodies is to ensure local control of education. In theory, at least, school boards guarantee that citizens have a voice in how their community schools are run.

School boards' practical effect is to stifle reform and stymie professional administrators with inept micromanagement. A 1986 report authored by the Institute for Educational Leadership found that school boards often impede innovative programs. The study also showed that voter turnout for school board elections is perennially low nationwide. In New York City, only 7.2 percent of registered voters turned out for the last set of school board elections. And for most of these people, the ballot was simply a list of relatively anonymous characters.

Since serving on a school board is a relatively thankless job, the study found that few community leaders or top business people run for the office. That leaves the field to undistinguished candidates who are willing to put up with the constant harassment of parents, taxpayers and unions. Often the only citizen willing to accept such thankless responsibilities does so because of a personal agenda.

Sometimes that agenda is disturbingly personal. In New York, school board members have been accused of doing everything from stealing school supplies to demanding sexual favors and money in exchange for jobs and promotion. School board mismanagement is so egregious in New York City that the state refused to release $600 million dollars earmarked for building new municipal schools unless the city created a separate agency charged with overseeing the construction. Ironically, many large cities originally delegated more power to local school boards in order to fight graft. In so many instances, they merely replaced corrupt professionals with corrupt amateurs.

Often school board members have narrow moralistic or theological agendas. In California, so-called "stealth candidates" from the religious right a tempted to snag positions on community school boards, meeting with considerable success. One of their aims: to change the science curriculum by either eliminating evolutionary theory or including creationism.

In New York City, Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition is fielding a slate of candidates for the May 4 School board election. A number of other religious groups, including the New York Catholic Archdiocese, are attempting to turn out voters for candidates who oppose condom distribution in schools and other programs that they deem morally incorrect. ACT-UP has rumbled about starting its own campaign in response.

Low voter turnout, combined with the relative obscurity of school board candidates, makes such tactics very effective. Unfortunately, the people elected in such races only make the schools ineffective. Anyone who can conceive a way of running the schools worse than would a school board composed of equal parts ACT-UP and Christian Coalition deserves a prize. These groups are out to prove a political point. What do they know about the nuts and bolts of education?

In many cases, perhaps the majority of cases, school board posts fall in the hands of people with no plans for graft and corruption, and no policy agenda to speak of. These elected officials are simply self-important loudmouths who lack the foggiest idea of how to run a school. Attend a meeting of a board full of these types-chances are you won't have to go far to find one-and you'll see new irony in the phrase "collective intelligence."

A 1992 study by the Twentieth Century Fund concluded that school boards have become an obstacle to reform. The study further recommends that in large cities especially, school board members should not be elected, but appointed by the mayor or city manager. Such executives are elected by legitimate majorities after open and well-publicized campaigns; school boards they appoint are in a way more accountable than those selected in bogus elections.

Running public school systems is an immensely complicated affair. It requires a working knowledge of educational theory, management, labor relations and fiscal policy. In short, it is the province of professionals. There are already well-funded, professional education bureaucracies at the federal, state and local levels. Unfortunately their policy innovations are held hostage to the novice nobodies of undemocratically elected school boards-which is not to say that a truly democratically elected board would do any better.

After all, the relative truth of creationist and evolutionary theory is not susceptible to a vote. Nor are the psychological mechanisms of childhood learning. To consign the academic fate of America's children to anything less than astute professionals is to invite mediocrity. The American educational system has problems far more pressing than the moral significance of the Rainbow Curriculum. Let's leave the management of out schools to people with the experience, training and wisdom to confront them.