"Provincial Initiatives to Restructure
Canadian School Governance in the 1990s"
Thomas Fleming
University of Victoria
A recent Globe and Mail editorial observed: "The trouble with school boards as they exist . . . is that they are somewhat accountable in theory, but barely accountable in practice."(1) Voicing what has become common sentiment within government, and some public quarters, the editorial continued: "All residents may vote for the school board, but hardly any do; these large and barely visible institutions start to look like a little like taxation without representation."(2)
The editor's comments, which reflect a simmering public unease about school costs and the accountability of school governance institutions, have not gone unheeded by politicians. Since the early 1990s, provincial governments across Canada have been restructuring school governance systems within their respective jurisdictions. Commenting on this restructuring movement, the Canadian Teachers Federation has accurately observed: "The drastic reduction in the number of units of local government for education has been one of the most dramatic of all changes in Canada's pattern of government. And yet, it has occurred and is continuing with relatively little public concern or debate."(3)
Although these initiatives to reduce the numbers of local school boards and, in one province, to eliminate them entirely, are of relatively recent origin, they are certainly not new in their intentions. They simply represent the latest form of a larger century-old movement to reorganize public school governance at local levels and to make boards and their administrative systems more efficient.
But it is not the history of school consolidation in Canada that this paper wishes to address--that has been treated elsewhere.(4) Rather, the purpose of this paper is to examine the character of developments in the restructuring movement now underway in Canada.
The following discussion is divided into three parts. The first part reviews the broad historical context in education and government which has given rise to the restructuring movement. Part two examines the main forms, features, and traits of restructuring initiatives as they are now presenting themselves in provinces from the Atlantic to the Pacific. More specifically, it describes the particular provincial conditions that have produced these organizational changes, the agendas and objectives associated with them, the planning and implementation strategies governments have adopted, and outcomes achieved to date.
The third part of the discussion is more analytical than descriptive in character. It explores several of the central ideas underlying provincial restructuring efforts, the agendas and implications of restructuring largely unstated in official documents, or what might otherwise be described as restructuring's "sub-text." Attention here is directed toward examining why senior governments have selected school district consolidation, euphemistically known as "restructuring," as the principal instrument for such reform, given that government commands various other legislative and policy tools to bring about efficiency and change. In addition, it suggests why other strategies or approaches have not been chosen? What is it about school district consolidation that has made it so fashionable in the 1990s as a way of demonstrating government's commitment to efficiency and reform? Understanding such questions constitutes an important part of understanding the real character and meaning of current restructuring exercises.
The Context for Restructuring
Centralization and Decentralization in Historical Context
The defining moment in Canadian history--and, indeed, the defining moment in the history of Canadian school governance--was Confederation. Passage of the British North America Act in 1867 (renamed in 1982 the Constitution Act, 1867) established Canada as a nation, and set out the legal framework under which public institutions would develop. Section 93 of the BNA Act granted authority over education to the provinces in the following terms:
In and for each province the Legislature may exclusively make laws in relation to education, subject and according to the following provisions:
(1) Nothing in any such Law shall prejudically affect any Right or Privilege with respect to Denominational Schools which any Class of Persons have by Law in the Province at the Union.
The meaning of this legislation, and the historical context in which it was passed, has been described by various scholars and legal historians. Of these things, Enns has written:
Having received virtually complete authority in educational matters,
the provinces had the theoretical right either to establish or not to establish
educational systems. In practice, at the time that these rights were granted,
to the provinces, educational systems were already in existence and legislatures
could hardly have eliminated them. All provinces have thus enacted legislation
dealing with education. Once having activated this power, they have assumed
full legal responsibility for education. . . . For various reasons, they
chose to implement systems which were partly centralized and partly decentralized.
Centralized functions were placed in the administrative charge of departments
of education, while decentralized functions were delegated to locally elected
or appointed school boards.(5)
Along the same lines, Mackay has observed:
Practically speaking, there are three levels of government in Canada--federal, provincial, and local. In constitutional terms there are only two levels of government; local governments are simply agents of the provincial government. Power is delegated by the province to the local units, such as city councils, and can be taken away. Local government is analogous to the administrative branch of government.(6)
Similarly, Zuker has noted:
Aside from the limitations of our Constitution with respect to denominational, separate, or dissentient schools and minority language educational rights, the provinces have full authority to determine the educational structure within their boundaries. Provinces have the power to enact laws governing their educational system.(7)
Historians and others have described divisions of authority in school governance in various ways but have made the same general point, namely that: "School boards are creatures of statute. As such they have only those powers expressly granted them by statute."(8) In this respect, it is noteworthy that the legal basis for school governance in the United States is similar to that in Canada.(9)
In summary, then, by granting the provinces authority over education, the British North America Act, hereafter the Constitution Act, 1867, provided the legal basis for the centralization of school governance. Importantly, it also meant that Canada, unlike other Western nations, would remain without a federal education office to direct or coordinate the educational activities taking place in the 10 provinces and two territories that would come to comprise the country.
Centralization, the School and the State in the Nineteenth Century
Even before Confederation, events were taking place that would,
in time, help centralize control of schools in provincial departments of
education. The following discussion examines the nature of these events
and how they came to influence the shape and character of school governance
today.
The shift from local to provincial control of schooling in Canada was a long and complex historical process that took more than half a century to complete. And, it occurred at different times across the country. For example, it can be fairly said that the school system of Canada West (Ontario) was centralized at the provincial level by 1850, that British Columbia's school system was centralized in 1872, and that the school system in Alberta was centralized by 1892 or, at the latest, by 1901.
Centralization of school governance and control was a movement animated by many forces--some in and some outside education. Curtis views it as "a key element in nineteenth-century state-building:" Fleming considers it as an expression of liberal politics in the Victorian age; and radical revisionists such as Katz attribute its roots to "prejudice, narrowness, and intellectual limitation.".(10) As the following discussion shows, the centralization of educational power in provincial offices, in effect, was a response to problems of modernization and national identity that had troubled school and social reformers alike for much of the nineteenth century.(11)
The idea of centralizing school governance, as Child reports,
had its earliest origins in the common school movement and the spirit of
nationalism that gave rise to the first public schools:
The common school in the western world was the product of the nation state, and designed to serve the interests of the nation state. All common-school systems tended to be basically similar whether they originated in France, Germany, the United States, Australia, or Ontario. So that all citizens would be trained to serve the nation, it was necessary that schooling be free, universal, and compulsory. National identity required cultural conformity, which in turn required uniformity of teaching methods and curriculum. To ensure unity, schools had to be secular, or, at the very least, non-sectarian, and it was essential, furthermore, that the schools promote social stability. All this could be achieved only if the schools were centrally controlled.(12)
Opposition to central control at the provincial level, although
strong initially in some quarters, eventually receded as perceptions about
the value of common schooling grew. The purposes that such schools could
accommodate seemed boundless: they could prepare children for the world
of work, assimilate the poor and foreign born, civilize society
in general, inculcate in their clients a sense of provincial and national
identity, and prevent crime, delinquency, and idleness by keeping youngsters
off the streets. "The middle classes know," Lord Shaftsbury of
England's upper chamber remarked, "that the safety of their
lives and property depends upon their having round them a peaceful, happy,
and moral population."(13) In the Victorian
era when family, church, and community sometimes seemed unable to provide
social stability in the wake of industrialization and urbanization, it
became a principal purpose of the public school to ensure this state of
social equilibrium by directing children's social as well as intellectual
development.(14)
Because schooling was equated with progress, at least in the
mid-nineteenth-century liberal mind, the task of redeeming society, or
"salvaging the lowest classes," as Houston puts it, "could
not be left to chance."(15) Another historian,
Lazerson, observes: "Without regular attendance, there would be illiteracy
and no moral code, and thus continued social disorganization and criminality.
Attendance was necessary, moreover, to justify the increasingly elaborate
organizational and training mechanisms that had become central to public
education."(16) Accordingly, rules to
make school attendance compulsory were introduced in various laws and amendments
by provincial governments from the 1870s onward.(17)
Public confidence in the importance of state control, which
became a hallmark of the nineteenth century, was expressed in the kinds
of educational policies developed at the provincial level. With few exceptions,
state authorities prescribed a common, provincially-controlled curriculum,
and developed systems in which textbooks were selected and purchased centrally.
Provincial authorities, likewise, assumed responsibility for drawing school
district boundaries, limiting tax levies, determining criteria to open
and close schools, and making provincial grants conditional on the favourable
reports of provincial inspectors who patrolled both city and rural schools
on behalf of education departments. Under such policies, schooling, which
for centuries had been viewed as a parental right and responsibility, became
a matter of state interest in less than a generation. Opposition to such
control, and to the monopolization of education by the state, was viewed
by early school advocates as resistance to social and educational reform
and, indeed, to the very notion of national development itself.
Restructuring School Governance in the Twentieth Century
Since the beginning of the 20th century, provincial authorities
in Canada and state governments in the United States have embarked on two
broad movements to reshape the face of public school governance and administration
within their jurisdictions. The first of these, which began at the turn
of the century and continued to the end of the Great War, sought to amalgamate
urban schools and school districts as a means of creating new and more
efficient organizational structures to bring better order and management
to school populations that were doubling every decade as a result of urbanization,
industrialization, and immigration.
A second, and even more eventful, movement to restructure
school governance and administration began in the early years of the Great
Depression. This movement to consolidate schools and school districts resulted
in the closure of tens of thousands of school districts across North America
by mid-century. In the United States, alone, the number of school districts
has declined 87% in the 20th century, from 117,108 to 15, 367.(18)
The restructuring initiatives that marked the post-1930 period were directed
principally at redressing the plight of rural schools and, in particular,
at broadening tax bases in rural districts through school and district
amalgamations.(19) Only through such means,
the educational reformers of the day believed, could educational equality
for children, and fiscal equity for taxpayers, be achieved in small country
settlements.
Even jurisdictions across the continent that initially proved
resistant to these reforms gradually adopted consolidation as an instrument
for change by the end of the 1950s and 1960s. Consolidation in Ontario,
for example, meant that some 5,700 school districts were reduced to 3,200
in 1964 and, within five years, to 1,670 and, by 1969, to 192, a number
only slightly larger than the 169 that exist today. Over roughly the same
period of time, consolidation decreased the size of local school governance
in Quebec from 1,788 to 189 school boards, from 1,500 to 57 in Manitoba,
from 422 to 42 in New Brunswick, from 432 to five in Prince Edward Island,
from 270 to 20 in Newfoundland, and from 85 to 22 in Nova Scotia.(20)
Wholesale consolidation of school districts during the interwar era and
after marked the end of the second restructuring movement and ushered in
an era of stability in school governance that continued across North America
until the 1980s and 1990s.
Post-1980s International Developments
Although school district restructuring was swept aside as a central
issue of educational discussion in Canada during the 1970s, important developments
served to refocus attention elsewhere on governance questions. Of particular
importance in this regard was the California Supreme Court's ruling in
the Serrano v. Priest case which held that it was unconstitutional to base
the quality of a child's education on the "wealth of his parents and
neighbours."(21) Following this decision,
similar suits, challenging the property basis of public school finance,
were filed in many states. In the decade after Serrano, 28 states revised
their systems of school finance to reduce disparities among districts,
despite a 1973 U. S. Supreme Court ruling that the Texas system, based
on local property taxes, was not unconstitutional.(22)
Moreover, Serrano accelerated a movement toward greater state control of
education, a movement already taking form around numerous calls for school
reform and educational "excellence."(23)
Movements toward greater state control over school governance
were also manifested in other countries. In 1984, Great Britain's state
educational authority established "a new framework for school government"
for county, special, and voluntary schools in England and Wales, which
effectively re-centralized senior government's authority and, at the same
time, decentralized new powers to individual schools.(24)
This new governance framework greatly reduced the influence of municipal
educational authorities by allowing parents and teachers to elect school
governors in specific schools.(25)
In December, 1995, the British government announced plans to "free all 25,000 state schools" in the two countries from the grip of local authorities, making the governance of such schools similar to that of the 1,000 existing self-governing grant-maintained schools.(26) "We want to put power in the hands of the parents and the schools," one government source reported, "this will leave more money for teachers, books, and pupils."(27) Under the government's plan, 95% of the schools' operating budgets will devolve to the schools, a sum estimated at an additional 700 million pounds a year. Moreover, to insure that local authorities do not dominate the new "self-governing" schools, the number of local council representatives on governing bodies may be limited by legislation.(28)
Equally profound measures were also introduced in New Zealand during the past decade. Prompted by a national economic crisis in the late 1980s, New Zealand greatly curtailed its public sector spending and , as part of this retrenchment process, eliminated school boards in 1989, and replaced trustees with elected councils of parents, teachers, and representatives from business and industry."(29) Restructuring began in mid-1987 when the Picot Committee was established to review national education. In its report the following year, the committee recommended that educational reform be centred around three principles: "reorganization of the central state, including a shift from operations to policy as a central focus, devolution of operational activities to school level, and [the creation of] new systems of accountability."(30) A key reform element was the establishment of councils exclusively comprised of parents to govern schools. Legislation introduced in 1991 allowed non-parents and business representatives to be elected. Nevertheless, a majority of those who serve on school councils continue to be parents.(31)
Restructuring in the United States
Important, but less dramatic, efforts to restructure school governance
and administration were also evident in the United States during the 1980s.
In Iowa, for example, a movement to consolidate school districts gradually
emerged out of various "sharing" initiatives between contiguous
districts. These initiatives led to decreases in district numbers from
438 to 384 in the post-1985 period.(32) Sharing
has consisted principally of arrangements whereby one district provides
high school instruction for students in another and, in return, receives
junior high school or instruction at other levels for its own students.
Football and industrial arts programs have also been shared, making it
possible for small adjacent districts to offer programs otherwise unaffordable.
Over time, such sharing arrangements have led to joint appointments of
superintendents and, in some cases, to district amalgamation. These arrangements
have worked because, although many of Iowa's communities are rural, none
are "isolated and remote." No community in the state, as one
official described it, is located more than "one hour's drive from
a modern shopping mall."(33) Amalgamations
have prompted some small adjustments to school governance structures, including
increasing the size of "consolidated" education boards from five
to seven members. Along with Iowa, other states have embarked on similar
kinds of restructuring activities.
District-level restructuring has also had more profound effects. In the wake of shrinking state revenues, school governance and administration in urban school districts has been downsized considerably across the country since the mid-1980s. Chicago remains, perhaps, the most notable example of this restructuring. In 1988, full site-based governance and management was introduced into Chicago's public schools. Since then, each school has been governed by a local school council consisting of one appointed official (the school principal), two elected teachers, four elected parents, and four community representatives, two of whom represent business.(34) Councils have been accorded full responsibility for all decisions affecting school financial operations and staffing, including responsibilities for hiring, evaluating, and dismissing principals. This school governance model, however, has been marked by political divisions within councils, as well as the inexperience of council members.(35)
Such experimentation has been one response to the financial plight of urban schools. Notwithstanding the fact that urban districts in the United States contain approximately 40% of America's "at risk" children, state revenues for urban districts declined by more than 14% in the 1980s.(36) Paralleling this decline in resources has been a general restructuring or, more precisely, reduction in the ranks of central administration. On average, the ratio of teachers per central administrator in the "great cities" rose from 27:1 in 1989-90 to 35:1 in 1992-93, the most recent year for which data are available. In some cities, change in the ratio of teachers to supervisory and other administrative staff has been staggering. In Detroit, for example, the teacher to central office administrator ratio rose from 15:1 to 42:1, in Omaha from 17:1 to 39:1, and, in Chicago, from 39:1 to 91:1.(37) In Cincinnati, central office administrative positions have been slashed by 50% through a deliberate downsizing and employee "buyout" program.(38)
National and regional movements for educational reform, as well as district and school restructuring efforts, have also spurred state education departments to restructure the "form and function" of their own organizations. One 1994 survey reported that 42 states "have started or have recently completed the reorganization" of state education departments.(39) These reorganizations have been prompted by various factors, including "budget and state personnel reductions," governors' orders, and legislative action.(40) Many state department reorganizations have sought to redefine the way that government education bureaucracies work, most notably by shifting state activities away from traditional regulatory and monitorial roles toward roles that lend greater support and technical assistance to districts. In 18 states, reorganization has meant, among other things, that state personnel now provide "direct services to local school district efforts through . . . field service teams," serve on "local district school improvement teams," and work with "local district staff . . . in the development of standards and assessments."(41)
The Faces of Restructuring
As in the United States, widespread attention to broad questions of school reform in the 1980s has led Canadian provinces to revisit questions of educational governance in the 1990s. As the following brief summaries of provincial activities illustrate, the motives for restructuring, the contexts for change, and the approaches vary among provincial governments across the country.
Provincial Restructuring Initiatives
Newfoundland and Labrador
In Newfoundland and Labrador, for example, the recent initiative
to restructure school governance has its roots in both a 1992 royal commission
report, Our Children, Our Future, and in a 1994 information bulletin
from the royal commission implementation team, Adjusting the Course:
Restructuring the School System for Educational Excellence, which called
for reducing the province's 27 school boards to 10 and delegating greater
responsibility for school operations and leadership to the local level.(42)
The commission's proposal to dissolve denominational education committees
has met with stiff church resistance and obliged government to hold a referendum
in which 54% of voters endorsed the commission's--and the government's--proposed
restructuring. But Newfoundland's restructuring has sought more than to
correct small school and school district inefficiencies. It has also attempted
to address troublesome economic and social issues concerning declining
populations in small settlements, the lack of educational competitiveness
among the workforce, and long-standing educational inequalities throughout
the province.(43)
In explaining the restructuring agenda, the Newfoundland and Labrador government maintains that "structural change is not an end in itself [and that] the purpose of restructuring is to streamline and refocus the system so as to better concentrate on the goal of higher achievement for our students."(44) As the government defines it: "The purpose of restructuring is to streamline the system to make it easier to attain our basic goal. The most effective structure is a simple one, which minimizes the number of administrative bodies, and facilitates decision-making."(45) Accordingly, the government has recommended that "school boards should continue to exist, but that the number of boards should be reduced from the existing 27 to "eight to ten regional interdenominational boards, with boundaries aligned with the economic zones identified in the [provinces'] Strategic Economic Plan."(46) Furthermore that: "All boards should be comprised of ten members elected at large, and up to five others appointed by the denomination, where numbers warrant in a particular region."(47)
Such change, government suggests, also requires reorganizing the province's education department:
Specifically, there will have to be a shift in emphasis away from direct management of the system towards direction-setting and accountability. . . . [I]t can be expected that the department will refocus its attention, placing emphasis on standards-setting, curriculum development, and monitoring. The department will also retain responsibility for routine functions such as payroll and data base management, which are more efficiently performed by a central agency, and which are required for monitoring system performance. [Also] . . . under the proposed restructuring, the province will assume responsibility for establishing school construction guidelines and standards, as well as for establishing school viability.(48)
Prince Edward Island
In Prince Edward Island, passage of a new school act, as well
as government reforms in the health sector, set the context for questions
about the province's school governance system and led to the appointment
of a government-convened task force on education, which examined assorted
educational issues, including school governance. With the release of the
task force's 1993 report, Towards Excellence, the government moved
to implement its recommendations. Although Prince Edward Island's five
existing school boards were retained, much of their authority was reassigned
to a provincial education services commission and to local school councils.
School board membership was also reduced from 15 to nine members.(49)
In 1994, the minister scrapped the education services commission, complaining
that "it was becoming a costly level of bureaucracy that the education
department couldn't afford."(50) Further
consultation with school boards, teachers, parents and the public led government
to reduce the number of boards to two English school boards (each with
15 interim trustees), one for the province's east and west region, and
one French board with nine trustees.
Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia's restructuring initiative may be traced back to
1991 when the legislature's select committee on education traveled the
province to record Nova Scotians' concerns about education. Public consultations
were again held in 1993 while the province's education department was preparing
its strategic plan for educational change. In 1994, the education department
released a discussion paper, Restructuring Nova Scotia's Education System,
which outlined various proposals to address the educational issues identified
earlier.(51) In February 1995, the government's
white paper, Educational Horizons, was published and outlined the government's
intentions.(52) In it were proposals to
mandate school councils, restructure school boards, harmonize services
for Francophone and Acadian school boards, and otherwise develop a more
cost-effective and efficient system.(53) On
June 9, 1995, the education minister announced that 22 school boards would
be reduced to a minimum of seven.(54) Restructuring,
as the government defines it, is not designed as a cost-saving exercise
but, rather, as a way of directing administration and governance savings
into schools, thereby achieving greater educational value for school expenditures.
Restructuring, as such, is intended as part of a larger school reform effort.
New Brunswick
In New Brunswick, the provincial government's restructuring initiative
began in 1992, when the province's 42 boards were reorganized into 18,
of which 12 were Anglophone and six were Francophone. The government's
action was prompted by several factors, including a shrinking resource
base and a need for greater financial efficiency. Government also wanted
larger and more accountable boards that would focus on governance tasks
rather than deciding "where the school bus stops," to quote one
department official.(55) The fact that two-thirds
of all trustees in the province were elected by acclamation suggested a
high level of public apathy toward school governance as traditionally constituted,
as well as a need to involve parents more directly in school affairs. The
restructuring initiative was also part of a broader strategy of educational
reform originating in the work of a commission on educational excellence.
The commission's recommendations raised provincial consciousness about
education's economic value to the province and convinced government in
1992 to invest an additional $60 million in schooling.
New Brunswick's dramatic plan to replace elected school boards with parent councils was reported nationally in the Globe and Mail, on February 23, 1996. In announcing the province's decision to make this change, the province's education minister stated: "This is a significant move towards transferring authority to parents. . . . We feel that we've got to have parents involved at every level. Teachers and schools can only do so much, so this is designed to put more control in the hands of families."(56) To this, the minister added: "this system will be more democratic than the direct election of school-board trustees."(57) The province, he continued, has "categorically decided [they are] not doing charter schools . . . [because] they go against the principle of equal opportunity which has served New Brunswick well since 1967."(58) Part of the government's reform effort also involves reducing the size of the educational bureaucracy. According to the Globe and Mail: "On July 1, 123 regional school-district employees will be laid off, and a further 30 full-time employees in the provincial Department of Education will lose their jobs. New Brunswick's 18 school districts currently employ 469 people."(59)
Quebec
In Quebec, the province's 149 school boards, each with 17 to
25 unremunerated commissionaires, have so far remained untouched by the
effects of a massive restructuring program, although some form of public
sector retrenchment is currently anticipated and restructuring is, politically,
"on the table," to quote a government source.(60)
Over the past decade, the question of whether to replace religious or
confessional boards has surfaced in the province as a major educational
issue.(61) Two developments are of note.
First, in 1992, the education ministry "eliminated all but one (confessional)
regional board."(62) Second, a gradual
amalgamation of small boards has taken place in recent years and, if a
decision is made to replace confessional boards with linguistic boards,
further consolidation of the system will occur.
Various reasons exist for the government to be concerned with reducing educational costs. In 1992, Quebec spent 8.8 % of its gross domestic product (GDP) on education, compared to 7.5% in Ontario, and 7.6% in the Western provinces.(63) In comparative terms, "the share of the GDP allocated to education is higher in Quebec than in the rest of Canada as a whole (7.9%) and the United States (7.5%)."(64) So, too, is school board spending per student higher in relation to per capita GDP in Quebec (26.2%) than in other Canadian regions (23.8%) and the United States (21.7%).(65) Moreover, due to assorted factors, school board operating expenses increased by 8% in constant dollars between 1989 and 1992.(66)
I would like to thanj Tara Toutant at the University of Victoria for conducting the literature search for this paper and for preparing some of the research notes used in it. Special thanks are also owed to Barry Anderson of the British Columbia Ministry of Education and to Robin Brayne of the North Vancouver School District for sharing their knowledge of the literature on organizational size and effectiveness. Appreciation is also due to Tarry Grieve of the Kamloops School District and to Rod Wickstrom of the Delta School District for written materials and their observations on school administration and governance today.
1. Globe and Mail, "Goo-bye School Board," Monday, 28, February, p. A22.
3. Canadian Teacher's Federeation, "A Review of school District Consolidation in Canada," in Economic Service Bureau, (February, 1994), p.1.
4. For two recent historical treatments, see: Canadian Teachers Federation, "A Review of School District Consolidation in Canada," and T. Fleming and B. Hutton, "School Boards, District Consolidation, and Educational Governance in British Columbia, 1872-1995," (Unpublished paper: University of Victoria, February 1996).
6. A. Wayne Mackay, Education Law in Canada (Toronto: Emoond-Montgomery Publicatiiions, 1984), p. 11.
7. Marvin A. Zucker, The Legal Context of Education (Toronto: OISE Press, 1988), p. 5.
8. Gregory M. Dickson, and A. Wayne Mackay, Rights, Freedoms and the Educatiion System in Canada: Cases and Materials. (Toronto: Emond Montgomery Publications, 1989) p. 10.
9. Denis P. Doyle and Chester E. Finn, Jr., "American
Schools and the Future of Local Control," The Public Interest,
77, (Fall 1984), p. 78. Doyle and Finn have described the respective roles
of state and local authorities in the United States in the following terms:
"Yet, as with every other form of American 'local' government,
from sewer districts and transit authorities to the municipalities and
counties themselves, local school systems are creatures of the state. The
state constitution is the sole and legal embodiment of the state's
self-imposed obligation to provide education for its residents, and the
legislature possesses plenary authority to discharge this obligation
through whatever administrative mechanisms it likes--and to modify those
mechanisms whenever it sees fit.
In part, for administrative convenience, in part for fiscal reasons,
and in part because of a history of community-sponsored public and quasi-public
schools that at least on the eastern seaboard, antedate the state constitutions
themselves, 49 states have chosen to organize their public schools
primarily into local systems, often coterminous with the general-purpose
governments of cities, towns, and counties. Only Hawaii operates
a single statewide public school system."
10. Bruce Curtis, Building the Educational State: Canada West, 1836-1871 (London, Ontario: Althouse Press, 1988), 111; Thomas Fleming, "Canadian School Policy in Liberal and Post-Liberal Eras: Historical Perspectives on the Changing Social Context of Schooling, 1846-1990," in Journal of Education Policy, vol.6, no. 2, 1990, 183-199; and Michael Katz (ed.) School Reform: Past and Present (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1971), p. 2. Fleming, for example argues (p. 185): "For much of Canadian History, the great social and political awakening that was manifested most dramatically in Victorian Liberalism has provided the policy foundations for the support of public schooling in Canada. That the publicly-supported, common school should emerge triumphant as the principal form of schooling in mid-ninteenth century Canada is not surprising. Its emergence followed, or paralled, movements in Great Britain and the United States which promoted the provision of free school services--movements which had their philosophical and intellectual roots in the romance and revolution of the eighteenth century, but which owed more directly to the ninteenth-century creed of nationalism that liberalism invoked."
11. "Central control," as it is used in the discussion, generally refers to the authority of provinces to establish, or not establish, educational laws and regulations to govern schools.
12. Alan A. Child, "The Ryersonian Tradition in Western Canada, 1871-1906," in Neil McDonald and Alf Chaiton (eds.) Egerton Ryerson and His time, p. 98.
13. Fleming, "Canadian School Policy in Liberal and Post-Liberal Eras," pp. 185-186.
14. Neil McDonald, "Egerton Ryerson and the School as an Agent of Political Socialization," in McDonald and Chaiton (eds.) Egerton Ryerson and His Times, p. 98.
15. Susan Houston, "Social Reform and Education: The Issue of Contemporary Schooling," in McDonald and Chaiton (eds.) Egerton Ryerson and His Times, p. 255
16. Marvin Lazerson, "Canadian Educational Historiography: Some Observations," in McDonald and Chaiton, Egerton Ryerson and His Times, p. 5.
17. Regulations, also were introduced to control admission into the teaching profession, and government offficers otherwise set about to professionalize teachers through the establishment of normal schools, through government sponsorship of teachers' iinstitutes, and by creating civil service categories of certification to denote differences in teachers' qualifications. Further, teachers, who were ordinarily employed by local boards, were made subject to scrutiny of provincial school inspectors who reported annually on their demeanour and professional competence to the provincial government and to the trustees who hired them.
18. Walberg and Walberg, "Losing Control: Is Bigger Better," p. 2.
20. Canadian Teacher's Federation, "A Review of School District Consolidation," pp. 5-14.
21. Diane Ravitch, The Troubled Crusade: American Education, 1945-1980 (New York: Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, 1983), p. 313.
23. Denis P. Doyle and Chester E. Finn, Jr., "American Schools and the Future of Local Control," The Public Interest, No. 77, (Fall 1984), pp. 81-86.
24. Secretary of State for Education and Science and the Secretary of State for Wales, Parental Influence at School: A New Framework for School Government in England and Wales (London: Her Majesty's Stationary Office, 1984), pp. 2-3.
26. The Sunday Times, "Major Plans to Give Self-Rule to All Schools," December 24, 1995.
29. Debbie Edney, "Education Reform: The Search for the Perfect System," Education Today, Vol. 5, No. 3 (May/June 1993), p. 9.
30. Liz Gordon, "Controlling Education: Agency Theory and the Reformation of New Zealand Schools," Educational Policy, Vol. 9, No. 1, (1995), p. 59.
32. Telephone interview with Iowa State Department of Education official, February 20, 1996.
34. Bradley J. Rieger, "Where to Draw the Line," American School Board Journal, Vol. 181, No. 10, (October 1994), pp. 35-37.
36. Michael D. Casserly, "A View from the Cities: State Reform, Technical Assistance, and Professional Development," in Jane L. David, Transforming State Education Agencies to Support Education Reform (Washington, D. C.: National Governors' Association, 1994), pp. 31-32.
38. Robert C. Effron and John P. Concannon, "Rightsizing the Right Way," School Administrator, Vol. 3, No. 52, (March 1995), pp. 40-47.
39. John T. MacDonald, "An Analysis of Survey Data on the Transformation of State Departments of Education," In Jane L. David, Transforming State Education Agencies to Support Education Reform (Washington, D. C.: National Governors' Association, 1994), p. 39.
42. Newfoundland and Labrador Department of Education, Our Children, Our Future: The Report of the Royal Commission on the Delivery of Programs and Services in Primary, Elementary and Secondary Education (St. Johns, Nfld: Newfoundland and Labrador Department of Education, 1992).
43. Interview with Newfoundland and Labrador Department of Education official, February 12, 1996.
44. Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, Adjusting the Course: Restructuring the School System for Educational Excellence, (St. Johns: Newfoundland and Labrador, 1994), p. iii.
49. Canadian School Boards Association, Who's Running Our Schools? Education Governance in the 90's (Ottawa: Canadian School Boards Association, 1995), p. 10.
51. Nova Scotia Department of Education, Restructuring Nova Scotia's Education System (Halifax: Nova Scotia Department of Education, 1994).
52. Nova Scotia Department of Education, Educational Horizons: White Paper on Restructuring the Education System (Halifax: Nova Scotia Department of Education, 1995).
53. Canadian School Boards Association, Who's Running Our Schools? p. 16.
55. Telephone interview with New Brunswick Department of Education official, February 14, 1996.
56. Doug Saunders, "New Brunswick Eliminates School Boards," Globe and Mail, February 23, 1996, p. A1.
60. Telephone interview with Quebec Ministry of Education official, February 20, 1996.
61. Canadian School Boards Association, Who's Running Our Schools?" p. 28.
63. Province of Quebec Ministry of Education, Education Indicators (Quebec City: Ministry of Education, 1994), p. 1.
66. Ibid.