Democratizing Participation

Markus Schulz provides a nuanced and compelling study of the promise and limitations of deliberative democracy in urban school districts. It stands among the very best books on the governance of New York City’s public schools.

-- Gary Anderson, Professor Emeritus, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, New York University

Civic engagement and public participation have lately become something of a palliative du jour for all manner of political and social ills. But, contrary to much popular perception, this complex set of capacities is constructed and mediated by a host of cultural, political, economic, and social factors and forces that play significant roles in shaping its characteristics and relative efficacy. As such, this volume, Democratizing Participation: Shared Governance in the Public School System of New York City, by Markus S. Schulz, Fellow of the Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies in Germany, has rendered education professionals and researchers, policy analysts, and scholars interested in the requisites of democratic agency and governance an important service. The book examines New York’s experience with an ongoing effort to permit direct parental election of Public Schools Citywide and Community Education Councils to assist in leadership of its sprawling and heterogeneous school system. Schulz offers a subtle and unvarnished analysis of the initiative to date, including its extremely low voter participation rates, to identify possible alternative steps forward for citizen engagement in city school governance. Grounded in careful analysis of several factors shaping participation as well as New York City’s complex school administrative organization and richly underpinned by relevant scholarship on democracy and the role of education in its sustenance, this book eschews romantic paeans in favor of a measured, multivalent, and thoughtful appraisal of an important civic experiment. In consequence, it rewards its readers with nuanced insights into the array of factors mediating democratic participation and the manifold challenges implicit in securing its strengths for all this nation’s residents.

-- Max Stephenson Jr. Professor of Public and International Affairs and Director, Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance

Paradoxically, at various times, New York City’s public school system has been a national leader in both top-down and bottom-up accountability. This clear-headed and data-informed study closely examines the sometimes bewildering amalgam of centralization and decentralization its governance system presents today. It provides a wary, yet hopeful, set of insights for those who value both participatory democracy and professional expertise

-- Jeffrey R. Henig, Professor Emeritus of Political Science & Education, Teachers College, Columbia Univer