More than any other nation, the U.S. has made local control the key fact of its school system. The result is what James B. Conant calls a "Noah's Ark" of edu cation — a happy confusion of 35,300 in dependent school systems, in which stand ards vary so widely that an A grade in one school may be worth a D in another.
At their worst, the schools are mired in graft, patronage and political pressure. At best, the system is magnificently tuned to local needs, producing some of the best schools in the world.
What makes the question of local control a current subject of U.S. debate is a growing gap between the have and have-not schools, widened by the financial dis parity between school systems and com pounded by a national shortage of skilled manpower. To some critics, the situation cries out for a "national curriculum" to equalize schools. Loud among them is Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, who calls local control "the greatest obstacle to school reform." Says Rickover in a tendentiously titled new book, Swiss Schools and Ours: Why Theirs Are Better (Atlantic-Little, Brown; $3.95): "I know of no country that has brought off successfully a really thorough reform of the school system without making use of some na tional standard that sets scholastic objectives." Rickover's idea is anathema to those who feel that national standards would lead straight to crippling "federal con trol" and kill the freedom of U.S. schools to compete and experiment as they please.
The fear of federal control over the schools is one reason — aside from the parochial-school controversy — that the President's general aid-to-education bill has met with heavy resistance. Asks one prominent dean of education: "Do you want the national exam on the Mexican War to be written by a U.S. Senator from Texas?" Faith v. Facts. Yet the defenders of local option often ignore the fact that U.S. schools are now controlled or influenced by many forces far beyond the local level. "However strongly we may believe that public education in America is still entirely a local matter," says Pres ident John H. Fischer of Columbia Uni versity's Teachers College, "the facts will not support our faith. Nor is there any likelihood that a nation whose regional differences diminish every year can meet its educational problems by ignoring com mon national needs." Statewide needs already take precedence over local option — from the dissolution of inefficient school districts to the statewide exams of the New York Board of Regents.
The forces that influence school boards include regional accrediting agencies, teach ers colleges, textbook publishers and the National Education Association. Specific regulations accompany present federal aid, such as those long set for vocational edu cation under the Smith-Hughes Act. The great foundations pour millions into educational TV and radical school designs, prodding schools to improve. Even that stout defender of local control, James B.
Conant (TIME cover, Sept. 14, 1959), has in part "nationalized" education with his prescriptions for ailing high schools.