Who's in Charge? A Five-State Study of "Local Control"

• In Event: Implementation and Effects of Standards-Based Reform: A Five-Year, Five-State Study of the Multiple Levels and Dimensions of Ambitious Instructional Reforms

Abstract

As the role of the federal government in public education has grown in recent decades, there has been a simultaneous effort to reassert control at the local level (Marsh & Wohlstetter, 2013). Efforts for local control (LC) can occur either formally, as a direct component of policy design (e.g., the Local Control funding formula in California), or informally, as local actors choose to implement a policy with more or less fidelity. Additionally, under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), state- and federal-accountability policy has moved away from the consequential accountability of No Child Left Behind and towards an accountability of locally-driven continuous improvement.

In the wake of these shifts, there has been a burgeoning body of literature looking at the implementation of LC and identifying factors that influence the ability of local agencies to meet their educational goals (e.g., Affeldt, 2015; Bulkley & Henig, 2015). This study is grounded in the theoretical framework that the dynamic relationships among levels of the education system are affected by both formal policy changes and actors’ implementation of those policies.

We study LC using a comparative-case study approach to examine how state-, district-, and school-level actors conceptualize LC across five state-contexts (i.e., California, Massachusetts, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas). During 2018, we conducted 75 interviews with state-, regional-, district-, and school-level actors as part of a five-year study of standards-based reform implementation. After conducting the administrative interviews, we followed up with site visits in order to incorporate teachers’ and principals’ perspectives.

Preliminary findings suggest that there are differences in the theory of LC across states and the resources provided. For instance, while actors in all states described the state-level role under ESSA as focused on supporting local actors, the support structure was more intentional and coherent in some states. We also find that states use creative policy levers to elicit desired behavior (e.g., competitive funding grants for districts). Regarding models for English learner inclusion, one state representative explained, “We certainly can't mandate, as a state, any one particular model over another, but we have lots of levers we can pull to incentivize appropriate orientation of various models.”

Our paper has important implications for the practice of LC policies, as it sheds light on how state-level factors can affect practices and competencies in districts and schools. Leveraging a cross-state perspective, this paper also deepens the field’s conceptualization and implementation of LC—how actors at all levels define it and what levers they pull to influence it.
 
Affeldt, J. T. (2015). New Accountability in California through Local Control Funding Reforms: The Promise and the Gaps. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 23(23).

Bulkley, K. E., & Henig, J. R. (2015). Local Politics and Portfolio Management Models: National Reform Ideas and Local Control. Peabody Journal of Education, 90(1), 53–83.

Marsh, J. A., & Wohlstetter, P. (2013). Recent Trends in Intergovernmental Relations: The Resurgence of Local Actors in Education Policy. Educational Researcher, 42(5), 276–283.

Authors

• Shira Haderlein, Mathematica

• Laura M. Desimone, University of Delaware