The Atlantic's "The Unraveling of American Universities" (link below) caught my eye. When I read it, I was reminded of similar debates at the school level, some of which I discussed recently in "Take the Politics out of Education" (link below), and of two personal experiences. My earlier piece reviews implication of this in terms of program contents. Here, I will say something about school governance.
My two personal experiences both involve "conservative" Board chairs, one far-right and the other extreme-right. I use quotation marks because I am no longer sure of the word's meaning. Both were reactionary, both were short-term thinkers, and both were dogmatic and convinced they (alone) were right, especially the latter who would today be described as "Christian nationalist".
The first was involved in state Republican politics, although more on the "getting things done" side rather than the policy. Professionally, he was a PR consultant, an independent contractor type, with no staff and who hired people to do things for him only as and when needed on short-term contracts. His wife and daughter were both notably meek and mild. The latter preferred to play alone and avoided the schoolyard rough and tumble. He was a graduate of a middle-of-the-road state university.
The second was a senior sales executive who seemed to change companies every 18 to 24 months. He worked from home, had no sales team, was on his second marriage to what we used to call an airhead, bottle-blond and heavily made-up with pleasant children, but let's say not destined for college. Both parents had gone to Christian universities, his near the bottom ranking nationally, hers middle-ranked.
Each joined their respective non-public school's and quickly rose to be Board Chair. As soon as they had achieved these heights, each soon declared that "the Board runs the school", not the Head. Each demanded individual teacher salaries and asserted teachers should be paid differently based on some kind of evaluation. Neither saw the need for or value or collaboration, or even that collaboration is essential in education.
Board Chair #2 even declared that one teacher should be paid almost double because all his children had liked her. and that the janitor should be paid more than the teachers because he was a "good Christian", coincidentally attending the same evangelical church.
Chair #1 declared that the Financial Aid committee should be disbanded, and all Aid decisions be made by the Board. His justifications showed his belief that such decisions should be made according to his criteria rather then the neutral standards being used, and he saw no problems with Board members having visibility on other families' financial situations.
Chair #2 asserted that the Finance Committee, all professionals in the field and two of whom were not parents thus more likely to objective in matters such as setting fees, should be broken up and that the Board should review accounts, set budgets, look at reserves and so on. One Board member owned and ran a small business, the only one with any financial knowledge. The Chair's foundation here was that "the Board runs the school."
The style in both cases was top-down, rather than bottom-up, imperial rather than democratic, diktat rather than consultative, and problems or challenges were dealt with immediate, short-term, can-down-the-road decisions. In both cases, the dynamic, successful and highly regarded Heads left within a year - pushed rather than jumped. Pliable and ineffective appointments followed, as did faculty defections, parent dissatisfaction, drops in standards and sports successes and community recognitions, budget problems and more. Both Chairs lasted 12 - 18 months before their own departures, and both schools took more than five years to recover and each went through three Heads in that time.
When I shared these tales at a private school heads conference, the invited guest who was the national association president sighed and declared that such a thing is common with the same rhetoric and the same results. The problem is not the schools were "too liberal". The problem is that the people who make this claim do not know what they think they know. and are not capable of doing what criticize so readily.
As an end-note, and back to the college level, we do have "conservative" colleges which are known as Christian schools. Where are they compared to the liberal Harvard, the liberal Stanford and the liberal UC system? Even with their significant donor bases, rankings would suggest that the "conservative" model is not a good one.
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