Description
Book SynopsisThroughout the twentieth century, local control of school districts was one of the most contentious issues in American politics. As state and federal regulation attempted to standardize public schools, conservatives defended local prerogative as a bulwark of democratic values. Yet their commitment to those values was shifting and selective. In The Fight for Local Control, Campbell F. Scribner demonstrates how, in the decades after World War II, suburban communities appropriated legacies of rural education to assert their political autonomy and in the process radically changed educational law.
Scribner's account unfolds on the metropolitan fringe, where rapid suburbanization overlapped with the consolidation of thousands of small rural schools. Rural residents initially clashed with their new neighbors, but by the 1960s the groups had rallied to resist government oversight. What began as residual opposition to school consolidation would transform into campaigns against
Trade Review
An excellent book forces the reader into such thorny terrain, and Scribner's important and meticulously researched study clearly does that. In sum, his brilliantly argued book should seriously interest this journal’s readers, and its careful and accessible prose also makes it suitable for advanced undergraduates in both history and education policy programs.
-- Jon Shelton, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay * History of Education Quarterly *
Especially for a first book based on a dissertation, the reach of The Fight for Local Control—spanning multiple cities and towns across a half-century in realms from court cases to curriculum controversy to fiscal and union politics—is impressive and, at moments, astonishing.... Scholars of history, education, politics, and policy are lucky this important volume exists.
-- Natalia Mehlman Petrzela * American Historical Review *
As fundamental questions about publicly governed education are intensely debated in the United States today, Scribner makes a valuable contribution to historians' understanding of the freighted and protean concept of "local control."
* JOURNAL OF AMERICAN HISTORY *
Table of ContentsIntroduction. A Past Found
1. The Meaning of Local Control
2. The Long History of School District Consolidation
3. The Exurban Exchange
4. The Struggle for Status
5. The Fight for Funding
6. Tax Revolts
7. The Battle of Ideas
8. Redefining Parents' Rights
Conclusion. A Past Lost
