School Board centralization and declining school performance

From Links to Consider, 9/1 by Arnold Kling.  The subheading is Ray Kurzweil on the future; Peter Gray really dislikes Common Core; Alice Evans and Oliver Kim on East Asian exceptionalism; Aaron Renn on elite university connections. 

Commenting on Gray's essay, Gray ascribes public school decline to Common Core and Kling says no.  Kling observes:

I think that the deterioration of public schools has many causes, and it began before Common Core. Among the causes are the better opportunities for gifted women to go into fields other than teaching, the consolidation of school districts (making them much more bureaucratic and insulated from parents), the increased power of teachers’ unions, and the Woke takeover of schools of education.

Kling's explanation for the perceived causes of public school deterioration is well established, broadly discussed and most likely substantially contributive.  Other than this one:

The consolidation of school districts (making them much more bureaucratic and insulated from parents)

Maybe it is also a well worn proposed cause but I don't think I have seen it proposed and I spent the better part of a decade closely involved in a business immediately adjacent to education (children reading).  Regardless of whether it is well circulated, it is an intriguing idea.

It explains something I have considered in the past and have had little explanation for.  My observation has been that School Principles seem to have been much more well regarded and held in higher social status in the past than today.  Reading local histories, along with Church leaders, School Leaders seem to have been more intimately involved in town and county leadership than is my impression today.

I may be misreading the history.  And maybe my impression of the present is also false.  I live inside a large city (and always have done so) and maybe school leaders in the suburbs and smaller towns still have that old status.  But that's not my impression.

Much assumption has been that School Principles have suffered a degradation in social status over the past fifty years.  Why?  

My explanation to date has been that perhaps the degradation in social status was related to 1) declining fertility - fewer children overall, smaller families (and therefore less exposure to schools for a reduced amount of time), 2) fewer people having children at all, and 3) possibly the feminization education (more persuasion and tending of emotions and less executive function).  I am somewhat dubious of all three.  Possible candidates; even plausible, but . . .

School board centralization - to the extent it has really happened - makes quite a bit of sense.  If power is centralized the School Principle has less decision-making power, and therefore respect.  Further, with bureaucratic centralization, the School Principle also has less ability to respond to parents' expectations,  therefore further degrading respect.  Centralization seems an entirely plausible explanation if school boards have indeed centralized power and decision-making.  Empirically I have not seen any studies on the issue at all but my sense is that that centralization has indeed occurred.  

Kling's suggestion about school board centralization goes some way towards explaining the fall in School Principle status.

But what about the larger issue of overall school performance?

There are two further explanations for degradation which Kling does not mention but which I suspect are material causes.  

1)  The increasing foreign born, English as a second language (ESL) population

2)  The declining core of married biological parents.

Both of these trends substantially increase the demand on schools for non-educational services and capabilities, absorbing resources and forcing schools into functions that they cannot be as good at, i.e. substitute parenting.  

Both trends are indisputably true.  In 1950 the foreign born population in the US was 6.9%.  In 2020, it was nearly double at 13.7% of the population.  To the extent that foreign born, non-English speaking students demand more services (language instruction, assimilation instruction, increased security, etc.), it is a drain on school resources and a demand on teacher skills for which they are usually ill-prepared.  Both would drive down school performance and therefore reputation and social prestige of the School Principle.

I am confident that this is at least part of the explanation.  America's PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) scores have always been middling in the developed world pack which is astonishing given the financial resources we pour into the sector compared to every other country.  

But if you break out the test scores by race (as a proxy for culture of origin and a very crude proxy for country of origin) then you find a Simpson's Paradox.  The US national average is in the middle of the pack among developed nations.  But every racial group in the US is at the top of the performance for its international corresponding groups.  White Americans score materially higher than every European nation.  Hispanic Americans score higher than every Latin American nation.  Asian Americans score higher than every Asian nation.  Black Americans score higher than every majority black nation.  

Clearly American teachers are doing something right.  The middling performance arises from the changing demographics of America, not necessarily the declining performance of teachers.  

Similarly, even if there were no change in demographics, the changes in American social norms has added further burdens and responsibilities on American schools which did not exist earlier and which divert resources from education to social policies.  As an example, in 1950, 5% of children were born out of wedlock.  In 2020, 39.8% were born out of wedlock.  It is a well established finding that children in stable, married families have dramatically better socio-economic outcomes across the board, including education.  

Schools used to serve a population of children who had greater stability and more focus on education accomplishments than they do now.  With the weakening of the family structure, schools have had to become more an institution of social policy than purely of education.  Yet a further erosion of status.

This is clearly seen within states.  Schools serving populations which are stable and married (and low foreign-born ESL) have materially higher test outcomes, and lower costs and better facilities.  They are not middling of the PISA pack.  We have something of a bi-modal distribution.  Our above average schools are way above average and our below average schools are way below average. 

Is the deterioration of public schools real?  Yes, conditionally.  Public schools in urban centers have probably become measurably worse on most socio-econometric measures in terms of both inputs and outcomes.  But public schools in non-urban centers have probably become measurably better on most socio-econometric measures in terms of both inputs and outcomes.  

Melding the two causal lists, my assessment as to causes of decline in public school performance would look something like:

Increasing percentage of the student body without a stable two biological married family structure

Increasing foreign born ESL student population

Consolidation of school districts (making them much more bureaucratic and insulated from parents)

Woke takeover of schools of education

Increased power of teachers’ unions

Better opportunities for gifted women to go into fields other than teaching

The drain of talented young women away from schools owing to better opportunities elsewhere was likely a real phenomenon but that change was pretty much effected in the 1960s-80s.  Hard to see that it is an explanation of any trends in the past twenty or thirty years.