David Richardson '08 and Camilla Hawthorne '09: Mayoral takeover of public schools
Issue date: 10/16/07 Section: Columns
In September 2006, Adrian Fenty won the Washington, D.C. mayoral contest in a landslide victory. Central to his election platform was a strategy for top-down educational reform, which would place considerable power over the school system directly into Fenty's hands. While Fenty's plan for governance reform may seem surprising, this pattern of mayoral takeover in troubled school districts is actually a growing phenomenon in the United States. Currently, about a dozen of the 75 largest school districts in the country are under some form of mayoral control.
School boards have traditionally been democratically elected, a system which traces its roots to the Progressive-era reforms of the late nineteenth century. The more recent trend of mayoral takeover marks a significant shift away from both the concept of democratically-elected school boards and decentralized school administration. The manifestation of mayoral takeover varies across school districts - in some cities school boards are appointed directly by the mayor. In Providence, for example, the mayor appoints the nine members of the school board with the city council's approval.
The main argument in favor of governance reform is that mayors will be held more accountable for the decisions they make with regards to school reform, since only 10 percent of people vote in school board elections, while voter turnout in mayoral elections is closer to 50 percent. In addition, there have been several studies which demonstrate that test scores in cities that have undergone a mayoral takeover are increasing at at least the same rate as those in cities with democratically elected school boards.
However, as noted in the Harvard Educational Review, mayoral takeover - particularly of school boards - can remove direct public involvement in educational issues. Most citizens do not base their decisions in mayoral elections solely upon the state of the city's schools. People tend to vote on a variety of issues, from the economy to health care to taxes. Thus this projected increase in accountability for the mayor to improve the city's school may actually have a null effect. So while school board elections may be increasingly influenced by organized interests such as businesses and teachers' unions, the editors of the Harvard Review note, the fact remains that democratically-elected city and neighborhood school boards are the only direct avenue for parents and other citizens to voice their opinions about education to the people who implement education policy. In New York, the situation has become so bad that journalists and public officials must file Freedom of Information demands to obtain even the most basic information about the Department of Education and its decisions.
In an effort to maintain some democratic principles in this mayoral takeover scenario, the District of Columbia City Council has added a backdoor option to Fenty's proposal. The new measure gives the council the authority to remove mayoral control over the schools if they do not perform as expected under Fenty's new plan. Additionally, Fenty has created a system where people from the local districts will be able to congregate and voice their concerns to the mayor and others.
Another problem with the top-down approach to education reform is that not all mayors will necessarily be enthusiastic about overseeing educational reform. Jane Hannaway, a research associate with the Urban Institute, expressed similar concerns in a testimony before the D.C. city council. Education is a complicated business, she noted, and it is difficult to foresee the extent to which mayors and city council members will be able to focus on educational reform when they are also responsible for a multitude of other urban issues.
A prime example of how mayors sometimes do not have the educational system's best interests in mind is how New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg appointed as chancellor Joel Klein, a man who has had no previous background in education, acording to the New York Times. Additionally, Klein appointed a controversial deputy who failed to include the public when choosing the city's curriculum. Because no one agreed with the deputy's choices, the state and federal education officials refused to pay for the programs. Thus because the mayor appointed an inexperienced chancellor, the city's curriculums failed at first to get funding.
Finally, critics of mayoral takeover fear that mayors will implement sweeping changes without paying attention to local, neighborhood-specific realities. For example, in New York, Bloomberg has closed a number of large schools in order to open smaller ones - part of a "small-schools initiative" - a move which has displaced many students, leaving them to cram into nearby schools where classrooms now hold as many as 46 students.
Fortunately, there is a spectrum of possibilities for school governance reform. While Bloomberg's strategy in New York has been labeled as particularly "autocratic" by newspapers such as the Economist, there are other, less extreme forms of mayoral takeover. For example, in Washington, Mayor Fenty has arranged a series of "town halls" which allow citizens to voice their opinions about his education reforms directly to Fenty and his administrative staff. Therefore, it may ultimately be possible to combine the positive aspects of mayoral takeover - streamlined systems of accountability, a trimming away of needless bureaucracy, and increased corporate sponsorship - with the benefits of democratic control and community involvement in education.
David Richardson '08 and Camilla Hawthorne '09 are aspiring actors.
School boards have traditionally been democratically elected, a system which traces its roots to the Progressive-era reforms of the late nineteenth century. The more recent trend of mayoral takeover marks a significant shift away from both the concept of democratically-elected school boards and decentralized school administration. The manifestation of mayoral takeover varies across school districts - in some cities school boards are appointed directly by the mayor. In Providence, for example, the mayor appoints the nine members of the school board with the city council's approval.
The main argument in favor of governance reform is that mayors will be held more accountable for the decisions they make with regards to school reform, since only 10 percent of people vote in school board elections, while voter turnout in mayoral elections is closer to 50 percent. In addition, there have been several studies which demonstrate that test scores in cities that have undergone a mayoral takeover are increasing at at least the same rate as those in cities with democratically elected school boards.
However, as noted in the Harvard Educational Review, mayoral takeover - particularly of school boards - can remove direct public involvement in educational issues. Most citizens do not base their decisions in mayoral elections solely upon the state of the city's schools. People tend to vote on a variety of issues, from the economy to health care to taxes. Thus this projected increase in accountability for the mayor to improve the city's school may actually have a null effect. So while school board elections may be increasingly influenced by organized interests such as businesses and teachers' unions, the editors of the Harvard Review note, the fact remains that democratically-elected city and neighborhood school boards are the only direct avenue for parents and other citizens to voice their opinions about education to the people who implement education policy. In New York, the situation has become so bad that journalists and public officials must file Freedom of Information demands to obtain even the most basic information about the Department of Education and its decisions.
In an effort to maintain some democratic principles in this mayoral takeover scenario, the District of Columbia City Council has added a backdoor option to Fenty's proposal. The new measure gives the council the authority to remove mayoral control over the schools if they do not perform as expected under Fenty's new plan. Additionally, Fenty has created a system where people from the local districts will be able to congregate and voice their concerns to the mayor and others.
Another problem with the top-down approach to education reform is that not all mayors will necessarily be enthusiastic about overseeing educational reform. Jane Hannaway, a research associate with the Urban Institute, expressed similar concerns in a testimony before the D.C. city council. Education is a complicated business, she noted, and it is difficult to foresee the extent to which mayors and city council members will be able to focus on educational reform when they are also responsible for a multitude of other urban issues.
A prime example of how mayors sometimes do not have the educational system's best interests in mind is how New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg appointed as chancellor Joel Klein, a man who has had no previous background in education, acording to the New York Times. Additionally, Klein appointed a controversial deputy who failed to include the public when choosing the city's curriculum. Because no one agreed with the deputy's choices, the state and federal education officials refused to pay for the programs. Thus because the mayor appointed an inexperienced chancellor, the city's curriculums failed at first to get funding.
Finally, critics of mayoral takeover fear that mayors will implement sweeping changes without paying attention to local, neighborhood-specific realities. For example, in New York, Bloomberg has closed a number of large schools in order to open smaller ones - part of a "small-schools initiative" - a move which has displaced many students, leaving them to cram into nearby schools where classrooms now hold as many as 46 students.
Fortunately, there is a spectrum of possibilities for school governance reform. While Bloomberg's strategy in New York has been labeled as particularly "autocratic" by newspapers such as the Economist, there are other, less extreme forms of mayoral takeover. For example, in Washington, Mayor Fenty has arranged a series of "town halls" which allow citizens to voice their opinions about his education reforms directly to Fenty and his administrative staff. Therefore, it may ultimately be possible to combine the positive aspects of mayoral takeover - streamlined systems of accountability, a trimming away of needless bureaucracy, and increased corporate sponsorship - with the benefits of democratic control and community involvement in education.
David Richardson '08 and Camilla Hawthorne '09 are aspiring actors.