Common Cause for Superintendents and Chiefs.

Across our country local superintendents and state education chiefs voice similar concerns on school improvement and increased student performance. They have common cause in establishing standards and aligning the curriculum, professional development, technologies, textbooks, and tests.

These common interests should draw local leaders and state chiefs into mutual advocacy for education governance and practice at the state and federal levels. Unfortunately, that is too seldom the case. Superintendents interested in getting the state off their backs often advocate against the authority of state education agencies. Chiefs eager to push statewide reforms often advocate for uniform practice by local education agencies.

It is imperative to overcome the adversities and pull together on three issues:

* No. 1: Government structures to serve children. For 200 years, school governance has been purposefully set apart from governance of other functions, such as health, social services, transportation, and corrections. Separate local and state boards constituted primarily by citizens, with administrators practicing outside of general government, have provided a buffer between partisan general government and education governance so that children would be uniquely served.

In many states, there are bold moves to alter substantially the independence of educational governance, absorbing functions of boards and chiefs within other state agencies, or more directly under governors. The reasons are: belief that governors engaged in school reform ought to have more direct control over education policies and administration, and that coordination of comprehensive services for children requires a single state agency, absorbing education.

The reasons for separating educational governance are as sound today as two centuries ago. Education structures serve children who do not vote and lack political clout by themselves. Separate entities advocate for the public on behalf of children in competition for resources. Superintendents must recognize that if the state education agency's independence is eroded now, district independence goes next.

No. 2: Professional leadership. School administrators are subject to the same "anti-professional" societal attitude as other professionals. Any caring person can teach and run a school, critics assert. Good intentions to engage community leaders and parents in school governance often go awry as the spaces between policymaking and administration are breached. Board members increasingly penetrate school operation, a dysfunctional phenomenon at state and local levels.

Public and lay responsibility for education policy is essential, but school districts and state systems are complex, multimillion or multibillion dollar enterprises requiring professional decisions about pedagogical strategies, organization of staff and students, technologies and facilities, and high-stakes finances. Superintendents and chiefs must speak with one voice on the importance of well-trained and experienced education professionals who have authority and space to practice independent of general government at local and state levels.

* No. 3: State capacity for district and school support. America's obsession with decentralizing authority is accompanied by pressure to reduce state and local education agency staff. The objective of reducing regulations and simultaneously increasing assistance is not achieved by reducing state education agency staff.

Districts don't want state control, but they do want assistance with curriculum, technologies, and professional development. These services are more professionally intensive than state monitoring and compliance. Reductions of state agency personnel in the name of deregulation creates voids in precisely those services and personnel needed by schools for improvement.

Any temptation to encourage reductions in state staff with the hope these resources will be transferred to local districts is falsely held. Once cut, state services are gone forever. If superintendents want a shift in state control to support, they need to join chiefs in building state capacity for assistance.

The tendency for internal squabbles must be overcome by longer range vision of education governance and professional practice. Working together is the best way to assure all students succeed in a high-performance system.