Albany, hands off mayoral control
I served on the old Board of Education
There was a time, not so long ago, when most New Yorkers believed that our schools were just hopeless. We were overwhelmed, the thinking went, by intractable problems: rising dropout rates, shamefully low graduation rates, declining test scores, overcrowding, dangerous hallways and an impenetrable bureaucracy that couldn’t even track student, teacher or principal performance.
Chancellors of the nation’s largest school system came and went, averaging 16 months on the job, accomplishing little and often finding themselves at odds with the mayor, not only an embarrassing situation, but sometimes an intolerable one.
The chancellor and the system were overseen by a seven-member Board of Education, with the mayor having two appointees and each borough president having one. It would be difficult to construct a more political and dysfunctional governance body: seven representatives of six elected officials, and the mayor of the city, who is primarily responsible for the budget and elected by all the people, having almost no control.
(Meantime, community school boards elected by almost no one created their own minifiefdoms all across the city.)
I once served on that old central Board of Education. In those days, our city’s newspapers were more likely to cover the latest spat between the mayor and the chancellor or between the board president and a member from Brooklyn than important issues such as prekindergarten or student testing or graduation rates. It was petty and it was awful. Meanwhile, failing schools failed and failed again, and students dropped out en masse, with little hope of improvement.
One of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s most significant achievements was to negotiate with Gov. George Pataki and state legislative leaders to give the mayor control of the city’s school system. With that control came, of course, full responsibility for educational outcomes.
No longer would endless blame games plague our education politics. Just as is the case for other core responsibilities like ensuring public safety and cleaning up the streets, the person in charge of the schools was for the first time a member of the mayor’s team, implementing policies and programs that reflect the views of the city’s top elected official.
Bloomberg’s first chancellor held that position for more than eight years — an unprecedented level of stability at the top.
Did the system change overnight? Of course not. But there was renewed belief that schools could be improved, with healthy debate about school closings, use of standardized tests, creation of small schools and charter schools. And with debate came attention, passion, alternative approaches and change.
The debate and focus continue today. Mayor de Blasio was the first modern mayor to come into office with the authority to tackle the problems he sees in our schools, and he lost no time in doing so with a vast expansion of pre-K and after-school programs as two prime examples.
Much remains to be done. We can disagree about whether de Blasio and Chancellor Carmen Fariña have the right approach to school reform. It’s a democracy.
But we cannot go back to a politicized dysfunctional structure with no one responsible or accountable. We have seen all too clearly how badly it failed our city and students in the past. There is absolutely no reason to believe that it would be different today.
Failing to extend mayoral control cannot be justified or supported by experience or analysis. Similarly, there is no reason to just extend mayoral control for three or five years, or any other limited period. The state Senate majority leader has offensively proposed a one-year extension — with new direct Albany oversight over the city’s education budget.
Only true mayoral control will ensure that the city’s residents can hold someone accountable for the state of the schools that educate our children — and continue the progress of the past 13 years.