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From Charlotte's Landmark Book | |
| By Charlotte Iserbyt | |
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JOANNE MCAULEY'S NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR EDUCATIONAL EXCELLENCE, a national organization
of concerned parents and educators, was founded in the mid-1970s and, considering the
potential it had for holding the line on innovations taking place in American education, its
early demise represented a real setback for parents, children, and teachers. Ms. McAuley's
May/June 1977 issue of her newsletter, The School Bell, is proof that the National School Boards
Association was, at one time, a strong proponent of local control, not a "sell out the locals"
organization that in the 1990s would support site- and school-based management (taxation
without representation) and charter schools. Excerpts follow:
NSBA PRESIDENT TELLS BOARDS - STAND UP TO FEDERAL MEDDLING On March 27, George W. Smith, immediate past president of the National School Boards Association, warned school board members attending the NSBA convention in Houston that The Serious Seventies : c. 1977 146 "The Congress and the federal bureaucracy could become the country's master school board unless school board members stand up and be counted." He urged delegates to continue to forge a strong NSBA to convince Congress that local school board members are truly representative, most unselfish, and the best qualified persons to represent the local viewpoint in education. Smith said local constituencies cannot be forgotten even while the new trust is being built with Congress. "We must not forget our own constituency," he noted. He also advised board members to be aware of–and leery of–proposals for public involvement in public school operations that would shift decision-making authority to "vaguely defined groups of citizens at the school site level." The minister from San Diego cautioned that the power to make a decision must never be divorced from the responsibility for making that decision... He said school boards must be strong for another reason–to counter the movements of the courts and federal regulatory agencies into the operation of schools. "If we want other governmental units to stop eroding our ability to provide educational governance, we must exercise that ability more often and more effectively." Smith said, "Where we can, we should work together with all segments of the public toward the improvement of the schools. But," he concluded, "our responsibility is to all the people and we must view only the 'big picture.'" [Ed. Note: Smith's ability to foresee the implementation of site-based management, the downgrading of the importance of elected board members, and the transfer of power to public-private partnerships, etc., is to be lauded! While serving in the U.S. Department of Education this writer attempted to stop federally funded programs to train local school board members in conflict resolution and in how to implement effective school research.] The Hatch Amendment Regulations Lessons For The Education Profession Rep John Rarick's Statement In The Congressional Record If ever there was an entry in the Congressional Record, that was, and is, now, in 2021, VITAL, repeat VITAL TO READ, it is the late Louisiana Congressman John Rarick's speech in 1972 which was included in my recent article posted at deliberatedumbingdown.com website entitled 'Critical Race Theory'... Click Here (pdf) Professor John Goodlad Quote (cut off at end of tape) "The most controversial issues of the twenty-first century will pertain to the ends and means of modifying human behavior and who shall determine them. The first educational question will not be 'what knowledge is of the most worth"? but 'what kinds of human beings do we wish to produce?" The possibilities virtually defgy our imagination." NEA Journal, 1968, "Learning and Teaching in the Future", Prof. John Goodlad. The Goodlad Study contains four published books entitled Schooling for a Global Age, Communities and the Schools, Arts and the Schools, and Goodlad's A Place Called School. All are available at Amazon.
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