Kalman Hettleman: The political rhetoric and educational reality of ‘local control’

Once upon a time, the legendary U.S. Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill proclaimed “all politics is local.” Nowhere was this truer than in K-12 classrooms. Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote in a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1974: “No single tradition in public education is more deeply rooted than local control over the operation of schools.”