Who Should Control Education Now? Revisiting Preferences for Local Control in Educational Decision Making

Abstract

ABSTRACT Despite a long history of local control of schools, educational issues have become increasingly contested at higher levels of government as battles are fought in state and federal venues and along partisan lines. In light of this change as well as recent battles over school responses to COVID-19 and schools’ roles in combating systemic racism, we explore how the shifting politics of education have affected public attitudes toward localism in education. We demonstrate that the public’s preference for local control is not as deeply held as conventional wisdom suggests. Local government is never the public’s most preferred option when asked about the optimal distribution of education funding or decision-making authority across all three levels of government. Our results also show that preferences for local control have remained relatively stable and exhibit only narrowly increasing partisan differences; however, the increase in the partisan divide is larger among parents. We note that Democrats have adjusted their preferences over the last few years, shifting modestly in favor of local decision-making when Republicans control the Presidency and Congress. Finally, we observe some evidence that prompting individuals to consider schools’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic causes them to gravitate toward local control of education.