Boards of Education

Lay governance of public education through local boards of education is a distinctly American invention. [Page 81]It has evolved from its roots in colonial New England and the common school movement of the mid-nineteenth century to become the most characteristic feature of contemporary school governance. Today there are roughly 15,000 local boards of education in the United States. (The board of education may be variously designated as the school board, the board of trustees, the school committee, the school commissioners, the school directors, the school trustees, or the school inspectors.)

The principle that education is a state function and a local responsibility was first enunciated in the Act of Massachusetts General Court in 1647 and ultimately spread throughout the nation. The act required all towns of a certain size to establish and maintain schools and placed the responsibility for compliance in the hands of local citizens. School matters were initially decided in town meetings, and later the management of schools was delegated to a temporary committee of local government. Eventually this practice led to the appointment of a permanent committee on school visitation, such as the one appointed in Boston in 1721. The appointment of the permanent committee, which was later designated as the “school committee,” marked the beginning of the process of separating school governing bodies from other local governmental entities. In 1789, a Massachusetts law authorized the creation of separate school committees; in 1826, the law was amended to make the establishment of a school committee obligatory. The school committee acquired full legal standing, separate from and independent of other local governmental authorities. The concept of a local school committee, composed of lay citizens, was to become the prototype of the contemporary school board.

The normative and legal foundation of the principle that education is a state function and a local responsibility was established prior to the adoption of the federal constitution. While the Constitution makes no mention of education, the Tenth Amendment reserves to the states and to the people those powers not expressly or implicitly conferred on the federal government.

Hence, education is a state function, and the power of the state in education is plenary. The state delegates administrative powers in education to local school boards as the legally controlling body at the local level. It is a quasimunicipal corporation, or subdivision of the state, created for the sole purpose of administering a public school district. The school board is thus both a creature of the state and a local institution, acting in the interests of the local school district—whose public it represents—while implementing the mandates of the state.

Notwithstanding the fragmented and decentralized nature of American educational government, local boards of education tend to feature certain fairly common characteristics in their organization, structure, and operation. A recent review of literature on the role and effectiveness of school boards indicated that school boards have typically evinced the following characteristics: local control in response to the specific needs and preferences of the locality, separation of educational from general governance, large districts with small boards, lay oversight with emphasis on policy making and reliance on a professional superintendent for administration and management, and atlarge rather than subdistrict elections or appointments.

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