Mayoral control of schools

According to scholar Deborah Land of Johns Hopkins University, the origins of a system in which lay individuals were given the authority to govern their local schools dates back more than 200 years.[8] From the inception of school boards, there was skepticism about the ability of distant politicians to see and meet the needs of local neighborhoods when it came to education. As a result, boards of education were morphed over time to ensure maximum local control of schools. It was believed that separating governance of schools from state and local elected officials was the best way to realize the Progressive Era vision of schools protected from politics.[9] The trend toward mayoral control represents a reversal of this trend, with arguments for and against discussed in a later section.

While mayoral control in some cities such as Jackson, Mississippi, has existed since the mid-20th century,[10] most shifts from elected to appointed school boards took place after 1990.[2] Starting in the 1990s, mayoral control was viewed by its supporters as a way to address the chronic underperformance and jumpstart reforms in medium to large urban districts. The first major urban district to move toward mayoral control of schools was Boston, where, in 1991, the Massachusetts governor and legislature approved a petition allowing the mayor to appoint a seven-member board, which then appointed a superintendent of schools.[10] The latest high-profile urban district to move under mayoral control was Washington, DC, where Mayor Adrian Fenty won the right to select the chancellor of schools in 2007.[11] The table below shows the school districts that are now under the governance of mayor-appointed boards and, in some cases, mayor-appointed heads of schools.

Other locations have varying degrees of mayoral control over schools: in Oakland, California, three of the 10 members of the Oakland Unified School District board members are appointed by the mayor, and the other seven are elected.[4] Mayoral control proposals have also been made in Albuquerque, New Mexico and Seattle.[10]

Notably, not all attempts at achieving mayoral control have been successful. Mayor of Los Angeles Antonio Villaraigosa sought to bring the Los Angeles Unified School District under his management, but before the plan could be brought into effect in 2007, a court ruled that it violated the California Constitution.[10] In Detroit in the late 1990s, a reform board appointed by the mayor and governor replaced the elected board of education in response to allegations of mismanagement. This reform was reversed in city referendum in 2005 which reinstated an elected school board.[18]

Proponents of mayoral control point to two major reasons for shifting from an elected to appointed governance structure: the benefits of a single point of accountability and the power of sustained, aligned leadership. On the point of accountability, supporters of mayoral control point to the extremely low turnout for often off-cycle school board elections as evidence of the lack of school board accountability and relevance.[19] Expounding on this point, Finn and Keegan point out that in districts under mayoral control, "there is now a single, publicly accountable official in charge, rather than nine wannabe mayors immobilizing the school system with their petty squabbles, power grabs, and turf protecting. If citizens are unhappy with the schools, they can now vote the mayor out of office. This does not eliminate democratic control over the schools; it rechannels—and strengthens—it". Former appointed CEO of the mayoral controlled Chicago Public Schools and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has made his support for mayoral control of schools clear, offering his help to mayors who push to gain sole leadership of the schools within their cities.[20] His support is also rooted in a belief that one point of accountability—the mayor—is far more effective than accountability spread across an elected board of education model.[21]

The second major rationale used to support mayoral control is the power of sustained, aligned leadership. The average tenure of urban superintendents is less than four years—an unfortunate consequence of the frequent turnover in board membership and the shifting winds of local interests.[22] In cities where the mayors provide job stability for superintendents and focus the energy of the public and private sectors of a city on designated education priorities, the theory goes that more will be accomplished in areas ranging from improving student achievement to ensuring sound fiscal management.[23] In Boston, for instance, it is reported that mayoral control "engendered continuity in leadership and a new focus on learning".[7]

Opponents of mayoral control typically cite two major issues with the shift. Most importantly, mayoral control represents an affront to democratic, public participation in school governance. Many worry that taking popular elections of school board members out of the school governance formula prevents local neighborhoods from having any say in how their interests are represented.[2] As Hess admits, "some voices are likely to be silenced or marginalized under an appointed board".[22] A related complaint focuses on the lack of transparency that accompanies appointed school boards. Comparing appointed school boards to the board malfeasance in private sector companies such as Enron points to the danger of having a single-minded board take control of any entity.[22]

Overall, the question of whether to elect or appoint boards of education requires a thoughtful consideration of the "appropriate balance" between responsiveness and responsibility.[22]

Perhaps the most important piece of evidence in the debate between the proponents and opponents of mayoral control is whether mayoral control has measurable impacts on student achievement. After collecting and analyzing the research on school board effectiveness produced over the past twenty-five years, scholar Deborah Land concluded that there is "not yet convincing evidence that appointment of school board members produces…greater academic achievement." [8] Similarly, while unwilling to dismiss the connection between strong mayoral involvement and student achievement outright, researchers at the Institute on Education Law and Policy at Rutgers University— Newark "were unable to establish conclusively that the change in governance had any causal relationship to improved performance, or that, using nationally normed test data, our [mayoral controlled] cities had greater improvements than anywhere else".[24] Additionally, an analysis of top-down market-based reform efforts in three mayoral controlled cities, Chicago, New York City and Washington DC, indicate the efforts "deliver few benefits, often harm the students they purport to help, and divert attention from a set of other, less visible policies with more promise to weaken the link between poverty and low educational attainment."[25]

Alternatively, a 2013 study by researchers at the Center for American Progress found that, of the eleven districts governed by some degree of mayoral leadership, five made substantial improvement in narrowing the student achievement gap, and four others showed progress on some measures. That same study found that mayoral control in New York City had improved the performance of African American and Latino students in fourth and eighth grade by between 1 and 3 percent annually.[26]

• "Study challenges mayoral control of schools". Boston.com. Bloomberg News. October 13, 2010.
• Miller, Matt (January 1, 2008). "First, Kill All the School Boards". The Atlantic.
• Strauss, Valerie (August 4, 2010). "Ravitch: Mayoral control means zero accountability". The Answer Sheet. The Washington Post.