Money, Mandates, and Local Control in American Public Education

5. Taxes and Tocqueville : Local Control and Public Opinion in School Finance Reform

—chapter five— Taxes and Tocqueville Local Control and Public Opinion in School Finance Reform Q Q Q both the aggregate statistical analysis from all fifty states and the case studies of Vermont and Michigan show that for the 20–90 range of possible state shares of total school funding, local autonomy is not compromised in any measurable way. Why, then, has the Piper Link been such an issue in so many school finance reform movements? The answer may lie in the dynamics of public opinion. Reform movements almost always generate tremendous opposition, which Douglas S. Reed (2001) attributes to the public’s support for local control. He analyzes public opinion data from five states where courts have been active in school finance debates and finds that nothing erodes popular support for school finance reform more than people’s fear that they may lose control over their school districts. Support for local control has a larger and more consistent effect than even those factors that public opinion scholars find influence attitudes about social welfare policies in general, such as ideology, partisanship , class, and age. An explanation for opposition to finance reform based on local control makes a certain amount of sense. While the Piper Link seems not to function in the 20–90 range, “He who pays the piper calls the tune” sounds like it should be true, and it is understandable that people would 90 assume that a state government taking more control of revenue will increase its leverage to force local schools and school districts to do its bidding . This result might trouble a broad segment of the public, which generally claims to support local control. Table 5.1 shows that across multiple polls, a majority of the public thinks local school boards and teachers should have more influence over American public education than state and federal governments have. While localism has a distinctly strong place in American public education, it is also popular more generally. Polls show that people believe that local government is more trustworthy , gets the most out of the money it receives, and performs the best across numerous policy areas, including education (Conlan 1993; Government Finance Review 1999; Cole, Kincaid, and Parkin 2002).1 As plausible as this logic sounds, the true nature of public attitudes regarding local control is somewhat more complicated. Public opinion scholars are suspicious of claims that intergovernmental relations play a strong role in the formation of policy evaluations. People’s attitudes on intergovernmental relations are neither strongly held nor sharply crystallized , and people often abandon their commitment to decentralization when centralized levels can better achieve desired policy outcomes (Thompson and Elling 1999; S. K. Schneider and Jacoby 2003). Certain factors fundamental to people’s identity, such as race and ethnicity, ideology , and income, consistently have the greatest effects on evaluations of most policies. The general trend holds for attitudes about public education policies, where “respondents’ views about which level of government should take the lead depend upon the aspect of ‘public education’ about which they are asked” (Cantril and Cantril 1999, 39). The public supports many state and federal regulations that make local leaders’ lives difficult. In polls conducted annually from 2002 to 2007, between 55 and Taxes and Tocqueville • 91 table 5.1. Reported Levels of Support for Which Level of Government Should Have the Greatest Influence over Public Schools Support for Each Level Poll and Year Federal State Local ABC 1990 20 29 50 NBC 1997 13 25 58 PDK/Gallup 2003 15 22 61 PDK/Gallup 2006 14 26 58 PDK/Gallup 2007 20 31 49 66 percent of respondents indicated that they believed that standardized testing should be continued at its current level or increased (Phi Delta Kappan and the Gallup Organization 2007).2 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) greatly expanded the federal role in education and is reviled by Vermont’s educational elites for its intrusion on local autonomy.3 The public, however, generally approves of both NCLB’s provisions and proposals to increase federal involvement even further. In a 2002 poll, 57 percent of the public believed that the greater federal role NCLB assumes is a good thing, and 68 percent favored requiring all states to use a national standardized test for the program’s accountability provisions (Phi Delta Kappan and the Gallup Organization 2002). Why should attitudes on federalism trump such factors when people evaluate the particular issue of school finance...