The policymaking role of school boards would be preserved as well as their responsibilities to hire superintendents and bargain with teacher unions. However, in this system, public school choice would be a key feature. Clearly, there are many places across the country with governance systems in place where students are failing in alarming numbers and the adults are searching for new ideas that will bring about improvements. The ECS report was the result of months of work by an 18-member panel that included state and local school board members, district superintendents, corporate leaders, teacher union representatives, and the governors of Oklahoma and Kentucky. Panel members embraced the report as an important tool for further discussions about how better governance of the nation's schools can improve student achievement.
Public schools are salvageable.
Critics, however, said the report failed to show the potential negative implications for the alternative governance model proposed. For instance, Maxwell pointed out that, under that model, each school principal would be responsible for bargaining teacher contracts, meaning there could be virtually hundreds of different teacher contracts in some large communities. High School football games and parades. But when Dennis Larsen, a l974 graduate, returned to teach music at his alma mater, the enormous drum was gone. Larsen finally found it stashed in an attic, with its heads torn and other parts badly damaged.