Beyond convention, beyond critique: toward a third way of preparing  (Page 5/13)

External control

Angus (1996) argues, “schools have generally promoted the interests of capital and dominant social groups (p. 973). External control of schools by the powerful and wealthy traditionally has worked against equity and social justice (Spring, 1990). The control of schools in the United States by outside groups can be traced all of the way back to colonial times. The first source of control was religion, with the local school controlled by the community’s dominant church (Spring, 1990). Curti (1971) argued that significant religious control of public schools continued into the middle of the 19 ^th century.

With the coming of the second industrial revolution in the mid-19 ^th century, business and industry began to exert significant control over public schools. Industry’s aim in controlling education was to assure that future workers developed skills for the workplace. Schools began to emulate business and factories in organization, administration, and teaching (Spring, 1990). In the early 20 ^th century the field of educational leadership adopted Taylor’s scientific method. “The principals of hierarchical management, scientific study and control of the elements of the organization, selecting and training of individuals for places within the organization and cost efficiency became the focus for the professionalization of public school administration” (Spring, 1990, p. 234). Even in the late 20 ^th century Angus (1996) considered business to be “the dominant metaphor in educational administration” (p. 977), lamenting, “the language of management is external (not natural) to administrators” (p. 969).

The social sciences, first represented by sociologists and psychologists from outside of education and eventually by educational sociologists, psychologists, and anthropologists, had significant influence over education and educational leadership in the 20 ^th century. The social control movement of the early 20 ^th century, led by sociologists like Edward Ross (1912) and Ross Finney (1929), preceded mid-century psychological theories like William James’ (1950) stimulus-response learning and B.F. Skinner’s (1976) operant conditioning. While adapting theories from the social sciences to the leadership preparation curriculum, the administration professoriate also adopted social science methods for its own research and theory building. Social science’s greatest influence in educational leadership came during what McCarthy and Kuh (1990) called “the theory movement,” which was “grounded in the belief that educational administration is an applied social science, that research should be theory-based, and that administrative phenomena can be investigated” (p.9).

Currently, government is the entity that exhibits the greatest control over education and educational leadership in the United States. Government by definition always has some control over public education, but traditionally governance has in large part been delegated to local boards of education. The modern era of state control began in the 1960s as states received increased federal funding for education, much of it to be dispersed through state agencies to school districts, with other funding provided to build the administrative capacity of the state agencies (Spring, 1990). Another major increase in state power came in the 1980s after the publication of A Nation of Risk . The age of “legislated learning” had begun (Wise 1979, 1988), with the Texas accountability system leading the way (Heilig&Darling-Hammond, 2008). In the early 21 ^st century, federal control of education rivals state control, with NCLB mandating what is basically the Texas accountability system on a national level, and initiatives of the Obama administration extending federal control even further (Camins, 2011; Ramirez, 2010; Starnes, 2012).