I am re-posting this from Valerie Strauss' blog, the Answer Sheet. This should cause folks in Austin and other places that are gentrifying—to consider the agendas behind gentrification:

Black inner-city residents are suspicious of school reform (particularly when it is attached to neighborhood revitalization) which they view as an imposition from external white elites who are exclusively committed to using schools to recalculate urban land values at the expense of black children, parents and communities.

Here is a link to the book titled, The Color of School Reform" (1999) mentioned in this piece.

-Angela

Ed school dean: Urban school reform is really about land development (not kids)

By Valerie Strauss May 28, 2013

Dean Leslie Fenwick (howard.edu)

(Correction: Fixing publication date for book, and removing quote attributed to book)

Here is a provocative piece from Leslie T. Fenwick, dean of the Howard University School of Education and a professor of education policy, about what is really behind urban school reform. It’s not about fixing schools, she argues, but, rather, about urban land development. Fenwick has devoted her career to improving educational opportunity and outcomes for African American and other under-served students.
By Leslie T. Fenwick

The truth can be used to tell a lie. The truth is that black parents’ frustration with the quality of public schools is at an all time righteous high. Though black and white parents’ commitment to their child’s schooling is comparable, more black parents report dissatisfaction with the school their child attends. Approximately 90 percent of black and white parents report attending parent teacher association meetings and nearly 80 percent of black and white parents report attending teacher conferences. Despite these similarities, fewer black parents (47 percent) than white parents (64 percent) report being very satisfied with the school their child attends. This dissatisfaction among black parents is so whether these parents are college-educated, high income, or poor.

The lie is that schemes like Teach For America, charter schools backed by venture capitalists, education management organizations (EMOs), and Broad Foundation-prepared superintendents address black parents concerns about the quality of public schools for their children. These schemes are not designed to cure what ails under-performing schools. They are designed to shift tax dollars away from schools serving black and poor students; displace authentic black educational leadership; and erode national commitment to the ideal of public education.

Consider these facts: With a median household income of nearly $75,000, Prince George’s County is the wealthiest majority black county in the United States. Nearly 55 percent of the county’s businesses are black-owned and almost 70 percent of residents own homes, according to the U.S. Census.  One of Prince George’s County’s easternmost borders is a mere six minutes from Washington, D.C., which houses the largest population of college-educated blacks in the nation. In the United States, a general rule of thumb is that communities with higher family incomes and parental levels of education have better public schools. So, why is it that black parents living in the upscale Woodmore or Fairwood estates of Prince George’s County or the tony Garden District homes up 16^th Street in Washington D.C. struggle to find quality public schools for their children just like black parents in Syphax Gardens, the southwest D.C. public housing community?

The answer is this: Whether they are solidly middle- or upper-income or poor, neither group of blacks controls the critical economic levers shaping school reform. And, this is because urban school reform is not about schools or reform. It is about land development.

In most urban centers like Washington D.C. and Prince George’s County, black political leadership does not have independent access to the capital that drives land development. These resources are still controlled by white male economic elites. Additionally, black elected local officials by necessity must interact with state and national officials. The overwhelming majority of these officials are white males who often enact policies and create funding streams benefiting their interests and not the local black community’s interests.

The authors of “The Color of School Reform” affirm this assertion in their study of school reform in Baltimore, Detroit and Atlanta. They found:

Many key figures promoting broad efficiency-oriented reform initiatives [for urban schools] were whites who either lived in the suburbs or sent their children to private schools (Henig et al, 2001).

Local control of public schools (through elected school boards) is supposed to empower parents and community residents. This rarely happens in school districts serving black and poor students. Too often people intent on exploiting schools for their own personal gain short circuit the work of deep and lasting school and community uplift. Mayoral control, Teach for America, education management organizations and venture capital-funded charter schools have not garnered much grassroots support or enthusiasm among lower- and middle-income black parents whose children attend urban schools because these parents often view these schemes as uninformed by their community and disconnected from the best interest of their children.

In the most recent cases of Washington D.C. and Chicago, black parents and other community members point to school closings as verification of their distrust of school “reform” efforts. Indeed, mayoral control has been linked to an emerging pattern of closing and disinvesting in schools that serve black poor students and reopening them as charters operated by education management organizations and backed by venture capitalists. While mayoral control proposes to expand educational opportunities for black and poor students, more-often-than-not new schools are placed in upper-income, gentrifying white areas of town, while more schools are closed and fewer new schools are opened in lower-income, black areas thus increasing the level of educational inequity. Black inner-city residents are suspicious of school reform (particularly when it is attached to neighborhood revitalization) which they view as an imposition from external white elites who are exclusively committed to using schools to recalculate urban land values at the expense of black children, parents and communities.

So, what is the answer to improving schools for black children? Elected officials must advocate for equalizing state funding formula so that urban school districts garner more financial resources to hire credentialed and committed teachers and stabilize principal and superintendent leadership. Funding makes a difference. Black students who attend schools where 50 percent of more of the children are on free/reduced lunch are 70 percent more likely to have an uncertified teacher (or one without a college major or minor in the subject area) teaching them four subjects: math, science, social studies and English. How can the nation continue to raise the bar on what we expect students to know and demonstrate on standardized tests and lower the bar on who teaches them?

As the nation’s inner cities are dotted with coffee shop chains, boutique furniture stores, and the skyline changes from public housing to high-rise condominium buildings, listen to the refrain about school reform sung by some intimidated elected officials and submissive superintendents. That refrain is really about exporting the urban poor, reclaiming inner city land, and using schools to recalculate urban land value. This kind of school reform is not about children, it’s about the business elite gaining access to the nearly $600 billion that supports the nation’s public schools. It’s about money.

Valerie Strauss covers education and runs The Answer Sheet blog.

Castro will take a stronger hand in schools

By Josh Baugh And Lindsay Kastner
Sunday, January 23, 2011

Mayor Julián Castro will take an active role in local school board elections and superintendent appointments, he said in an interview Saturday outside SA2020's final community workshop, one in which education was heralded as key to the city's future.

Castro, stepping directly into a domain previous mayors have avoided, said his plan begins with refusing to accept failure from the city's “urban school districts.”

“I envision, for instance, coming up with a system of measuring the progress of these urban school districts in a mayor's scorecard on their progress and holding them accountable for student success,” he said. “I believe that getting more involved in ensuring that there are knowledgeable and strong board members at these school districts needs to be a part of my job.

“We have sat too long and allowed our school districts to not have as top-notch leadership as they could have, both in superintendents and in school boards.”

Castro said he would support candidates in school board elections that he believes would “enhance the level of excellence for students” in their districts. He said the same applies to superintendents, though “not in a political way.”

“I'm looking for every opportunity to champion those superintendents and what they're doing,” he said.

Recently, San Antonio Independent School District Superintendent Robert Durón notified the board's president, as his contract requires, that he has applied for another job.

His 41/2-year tenure with the district — which already has exceeded the average for urban school superintendents — has been marked by increased test scores, a lengthy effort to close schools and the recent passage of the district's largest bond to date. But SAISD continues to struggle with a high dropout rate and low state ratings, and Durón's relationship with trustees sometimes has been strained.

Backing Radle

If Castro indeed weighs in on SAISD elections, he potentially could have a significant impact on the shape of the board. Trustees Olga Hernandez, Tom Lopez and board President James Howard all have seats up for election in May.

Lopez, the longest-serving board member, said he wasn't concerned by Castro's plan to beef up his involvement in the city's schools, including a “mayor's scorecard” for area districts.

“We're evaluated from all different angles, all different perspectives,” Lopez said.

He was shocked, however, by news that Castro also intends to get involved in school board elections. In the interview, Castro said he would support former Councilwoman Patti Radle should she throw her hat in Lopez's District 5 race.

“I don't know, that kind of catches me by surprise,” Lopez said, noting that he always has supported Castro.

Lopez said it wasn't common for San Antonio mayors to take such an active interest in schools, “but then again that's the mayor's prerogative.”

Radle said Saturday afternoon that she'd been asked by several community members to consider a run for the seat, and she's doing just that.

“I'm still weighing the situation,” said Radle, who's deeply involved in several nonprofit agencies and a capital campaign. “I have a lot of responsibilities right now.”

Radle said she wasn't concerned by Castro's efforts to become more involved in school board elections.

“The issue of children is not out of the purview of anyone, and the issue of job preparedness should be a concern for everyone,” she said. “So I don't think there has to be a divorce between mayor and council on one hand and the school system on the other.”

Char Miller, a retired Trinity University urban studies professor now at Pomona College in California, said Castro is kicking down the wall that's always stood between mayors and independent school districts.

“We have a lot of independent school districts — each one of which is its own political fiefdom — and that may well serve everyone well, but it also means that the City Council and the mayor ... have precious little impact or influence on what takes place there.”

Miller said previous mayors have used the bully pulpit of their office to advocate for change, “but there has never been such a direct insertion by a mayor of the mayor into school board elections and the like, which is kind of astonishing.

“I can only imagine the conversations that are taking place in all of those school boards and superintendent offices,” he said.

‘Education City'

On Saturday, as about 1,000 people wrapped up SA2020, Castro's collaborative long-term planning effort, it was clear that for San Antonio to succeed during the next decade, improving education would be pivotal.

During the session, participants discussed how to connect seemingly disparate issues — from downtown development to economic competitiveness and family well-being.

Ann Stevens, president of BioMed SA, said education “is the river that runs through our lives and binds us together as a community.” Several other speakers, representing the collective thoughts of their working groups, pointed to a strong education system as a game changer — a daunting task made more difficult by looming state budget cuts in the Legislature.

During an activity that required participants to create stories as if they were in the year 2020 looking back over the past decade, one person said: “Once San Antonio became known as the Education City, everything changed.”

For the past several months, thousands of San Antonians have come together to help craft the community-driven vision.

“The hard work, the real effort starts now,” Castro said during closing remarks. “The next months and years are about doing that, accomplishing that.”

SA2020 leaders, such as Daryl Byrd — one of the project's three chairmen — said pointedly that the thrust of SA2020 encompasses everyone here, “from the board room to the family room.” Rackspace Hosting's Graham Weston, also a SA2020 chairman, said that what happens after the visioning process is what will determine whether the project is a success.

“What really matters is doing. What really matters is action,” he said. “If you don't act, the vision means nothing.”

As implementation begins, if SA2020 is to be deemed successful, it'll be because governmental agencies — including the independent school districts — the business community, the nonprofit world and the public all work together.

The SA2020 document will play a role in selecting projects for the city's 2012 bond program, and Castro said the planning project's priorities must be embraced by Bexar County, the school districts and other sectors of the community.

Castro told an impassioned story about when he and his twin, state Rep. Joaquín Castro, were headed to California to enroll at Stanford University. Only their second time on an airplane, the brothers cried all the way to El Paso. About a month later, they were back (temporarily) on their mother's doorstep. It was an intangible attraction to San Antonio that had the Castro brothers pining for home, and now, the mayor wants to foster that same attraction for others to make this city the great place he thinks it can be.

Areas charted

The vision for San Antonio in 2020 comprises these 11 elements:

Arts and culture

Community safety

Downtown development

Economic competitiveness

Education

Family well-being

Government accountability and civic engagement

Health and fitness

Natural resources and environmental sustainability

Neighborhoods and growth management

Transportation

Education reform: Have business-savvy officials improved big-city schools?

Big-city mayors have been turning to leaders from the business world to push their agenda of education reform. Critics say schools need leadership from educators.

By Amanda Paulson, Staff writer / November 29, 2010
Chicago

New York Mayor Michael Bloom­berg surprised many people in early November with his choice of successor to schools chancellor Joel Klein, who announced he was stepping down after an eight-year tenure in which he added charter schools, closed failing schools, and gave more power to principals.

Cathleen Black, chairwoman of Hearst Magazines, has no background in education – even less than Mr. Klein had in 2002, when Mayor Bloomberg had to make a case for his appointment – and is already encountering stiff opposition.

But in some ways, the selection of a businessperson with little in the way of education experience has become the expected path for big-city mayors trying to radically shake up systems struggling with high dropout rates and low test scores.

RELATED - Study in America: Top 5 countries sending students to US

Meanwhile, Washington and Chicago, two other high-profile cities closely identified with mayoral control of schools, are also losing their superintendents this fall.

The changing of the educational guard raises questions about both the future of the reforms in these cities and about the success of mayoral control, touted by some reformers as crucial to effecting major changes.

"These are cities where there's been really significant, and in many ways unprecedented, progress in improved schools and better achievement," says Jon Schnur, chief executive officer and cofounder of New Leaders for New Schools, which recruits and trains principals. "This is an important juncture for each of these cities to show that substantial progress under mayoral control can be followed by more progress under leadership change."

New York State law requires the chancellor to hold a certificate in educational leadership and have three years' experience in schools; the education commissioner, David Steiner, is threatening to deny Ms. Black a waiver unless an educator is appointed as her deputy.

Klein, who has both fervent admirers and fierce critics, previously was a lawyer and top Justice Department official. His education experience was limited to a very brief stint teaching math in a public school.

Ron Huberman, who is resigning as CEO of Chicago Public Schools, was president of Chicago's public transit system – and a former chief of staff to Mayor Richard Daley – when Mayor Daley appointed him in 2009. Even Arne Duncan, the CEO he replaced, had no classroom experience. He left to become US secretary of Education.

"The nontraditional has become traditional," says Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. "It's almost as if educators need not apply." Ms. Weingarten says that she's open to noneducators – especially if paired with top deputies who do have strong education backgrounds – but that she worries that always looking to business leaders will hurt the profession.

Other critics are more blunt. "Yes, a superintendent should have a background in education," says Diane Ravitch, author of "The Death and Life of the Great American School System." "There are very specific issues ... having to do with curricula, instruction, pedagogy, relations.… Education is not a business."

The idea behind mayoral control of schools is that getting rid of an elected school board streamlines and speeds up the decisionmaking process and offers a clear line of accountability.

It was pioneered in Boston in the early 1990s under Mayor Thomas Menino, who was reelected a year ago to his fifth term. But there aren't many examples of how it will fare under transitioning mayors, as is happening in Washington and Chicago.

In Washington, Mayor Adrian Fenty was voted out at least in part over opposition to the controversial reforms of Chancellor Michelle Rhee, who resigned shortly after his primary loss. In Chicago, Daley, who will be replaced next year, is letting his successor name a permanent schools CEO to replace Mr. Huberman.

"People have in too facile a way interpreted mayoral control to mean stability," says Jeffrey Henig, an education professor at Columbia University's Teachers College. "What the D.C. case in particular demonstrates is that it's no guarantee."

Professor Henig emphasizes that mayoral control has often been so tied to powerful mayors that it's hard to imagine how it will fare as they leave.

"What proponents never thought much about is what happens when dealing with weaker mayors," says Frederick Hess, the American Enterprise Institute's director of education policy studies, citing Washington as an example.

Perhaps the biggest question facing these cities is whether the reforms will be retained under the new leadership.

Some of that, of course, will depend on the successors, but also on the reforms themselves.

In Washington, where Ms. Rhee fought hard to change the contract with the local teachers union (making it easier to fire teachers, among other things), "these changes are fairly deeply embedded now," says Mr. Hess.

In the meantime, the market-driven reforms popular with leaders like Klein and Rhee represent the direction in which much of education policy is moving, and most observers expect them to continue.

"Under these three mayors, the public saw big, irrefutable achievement gains," says Mr. Schnur, referring to Bloomberg, Daley, and Mr. Fenty. "I think there's a very strong foundation ... on which to build."

NYC Mayor Seeks Waiver for His Chancellor Choice

By Christina A. Samuels | Ed Week
November 19, 2010

New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has formally requested a state waiver to make publishing executive Cathleen P. Black the city’s schools chief, even as opposition to her selection has become more vocal this week.

Ms. Black is a person of “extraordinary skills and accomplishments” with firsthand knowledge of the demands and challenges of today’s workplace, the mayor wrote in a six-page appeal to state Commissioner of Education David M. Steiner. The letter dated Nov. 17, was posted on the website of The New York Times.

Under state law, district leaders in New York are required to have at least three years of teaching experience, a master’s degree or higher, and successful completion of a professional certificate in educational leadership. The commissioner is allowed to grant a waiver, however, for “exceptionally qualified” people.

Read on...

Villaraigosa, teacher groups vie for 4 schools

Jefferson High is one of the campuses that both Los Angeles' mayor and groups backed by the teachers union have bid to run. Supt. Ramon Cortines will decide.

By Howard Blume | LA Times
November 17, 2009

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and groups of teachers backed by the Los Angeles teachers union will compete for control of four campuses, including Jefferson High School, as part of a groundbreaking reform initiative.

The impending face-off emerged Monday as groups inside and outside the Los Angeles Unified School District scrambled to meet a 5 p.m. deadline for applications to run 30 district schools. In separate news conferences, the union and the mayor lauded their own education records as they marked a milestone in the widely watched reform effort.

After filing "letters of intent" for their targeted schools, the bidders, including charter school operators, now have until Jan. 11 to develop full-fledged proposals.

Backers say the school-control plan, approved in August, will spur rapid progress at 18 new and 12 low-performing campuses in the nation's second-largest school district.

In 2005, Jefferson High, in the Central-Alameda area south of downtown, was the setting for racially tinged brawls involving black and Latino students. In the wake of the unrest, Steve Barr, founder of Green Dot Public Schools, pushed unsuccessfully to have his charter school organization take over Jefferson. Green Dot later opted to open charter schools near Jefferson instead.

Jefferson has become notably calmer in recent years, but academic growth has remained sluggish and the dropout rate high. The new principal, Michael Taft, was handpicked by L.A. schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines, who has said he was impressed by Taft's success at a small academy that is part of the Jefferson campus.

The Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, the nonprofit overseen by Villaraigosa, took over management of 10 schools in July 2008 and gained control of another, a new high school, this fall. On Monday, the mayor made the case that his nonprofit deserves more campuses by saying that his schools, all historically low-performing, had demonstrated more progress than either L.A. Unified or the state's schools as a whole.

Such comparisons have annoyed Cortines, who will choose among the competing applications. He has characterized the performance of the mayor's schools as mixed. For its part, the teachers union, United Teachers Los Angeles, has repeatedly called on Villaraigosa to replace his school management team with more inclusive administrators.

Besides Jefferson, Villaraigosa's partnership said it would seek control of Carver Middle School in South Park, Griffith Joyner Elementary in Watts and a new elementary school south of downtown. The idea is to nurture a feeder pattern for students from kindergarten through 12th grade, officials said.

The proposal from Jefferson's teachers, meanwhile, involves building on the school's incremental progress, said social studies teacher Nicolle Fefferman. The plan is to make courses more rigorous and the school's small academies more autonomous and responsible for individual students.

The Jefferson group, which includes parents, students and administrators, also wants to expand the school's ties to organizations such as the city's Museum of Contemporary Art, which offers internships to Jefferson students.

A final list of all bids was not available Monday, but union leaders said teachers were planning to vie for every available school, which would put them in competition with charter-school operators.

Charter schools are publicly funded but independently managed and exempt from the district's union contracts, as well as from some state and district regulations. Some Jefferson teachers have persistently criticized charter schools, and the message has stuck with some students, including student body President Rosa Hernandez, who said she aspired to become a teacher but not at a Green Dot school.

Green Dot was the only charter to bid for Jefferson, but Chief Executive Marco Petruzzi said his nonprofit has no takeover plans but seeks to work collaboratively with either the mayor or Jefferson's teachers.

Another charter group, the Alliance for College-Ready Public Schools, plans to seek control of Burbank Middle School in Highland Park, according to the California Charter Schools Assn., which compiled information on charter bids. Another organization, ICEF Public Schools, submitted a bid for Hillcrest Drive Elementary in Baldwin Hills/Crenshaw. For the most part, however, charter operators bid for the new schools.

No charter signaled interest in East L.A.'s Garfield High, the subject of earlier contention among community factions. But the adjacent Montebello Unified School District did submit a surprise entry for Garfield.

Montebello's staff would be eager to team up with Garfield's faculty but could not provide funding for the effort, Associate Supt. Art Revueltas said.

Instead of a run at Garfield, several charters chose instead to bid for five small high schools at the neighboring, soon-to-open Esteban Torres campus. That move sets up a potential legal battle over whether charters can hire their own faculties or whether Garfield teachers have the right, under the district's union contract, to follow former Garfield students who are transferred to the new schools.

At his news conference, Villaraigosa, surrounded by charter operators and allied community groups, declined to dwell on the likely turbulence ahead. Instead, he chose to praise competition and invite all comers.

"Everybody's got to be welcome and step up to the plate," he said. "Hold all of us accountable."

"Bracey Report" Curtain-Call Takes on Trendy Education Reforms

Here's the link to the full brief

It centers on "three prominent policy-relevant assumptions":

1. High-quality schools can eliminate the achievement gap between
whites and minorities.
2. Mayoral control of public schools is an improvement over the more
common elected board governance systems.
3. Higher standards will improve the performance of public schools.

Worth the read.

-Patricia

Press Release
November 9, 2009

Late researcher's final work turned his critical eye toward 'high-quality' schools, mayoral control, and the push for higher standards

Contact: Kevin Welner, (303) 492-8370; kevin.welner@colorado.edu

BOULDER, Colo. and TEMPE, Ariz. (November 9, 2009) -- The 2009 edition of the annual "Bracey Report on the Condition of Public Education" offers a sober assessment of three popular education reforms, finding all of them wanting. Readers will be informed by one last critical analysis from celebrated education researcher Gerald Bracey, who completed his 18th and final "Bracey Report" shortly before his unexpected death October 20 at the age of 69.

The 2009 report is published today by the Education in the Public Interest Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the Education Policy Research Unit at Arizona State University. Previous editions of the report were published in the educational journal Phi Delta Kappan.

Bracey first targets blithe calls to create "high-quality schools," calls that he contends ignore the enormous challenges that urban schools in particular face when educating children born into poverty. He then looks at mayoral control and concludes that little evidence supports claims that turning control of urban schools over to mayors will spur meaningful educational improvement. Finally, Bracey examines the drive to impose ‘higher' standards on schools, which he maintains is little more than a rush toward even more standardized testing that is likely to further impoverish education.

Edited after his death by Susan Ohanian and Pat Hinchey, the 2009 Report departs from Bracey's past practice, which typically entailed a comprehensive survey of policies relating to public education. Instead, it focuses on these three specifically defined policies. He analyzed the record and research regarding each policy and came away skeptical, leveling particularly pointed criticism at the administration of President Barack Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan for uncritically advancing questionable approaches.

In examining the push for "high-quality schools," Bracey first noted that he found no single definition or agreement on the specifics of "high quality." Moreover, he wrote, the relentless focus on creating such schools has consistently ignored the overwhelming impact of poverty on the educational opportunities for children. He wrote, "Thus, the key question becomes can schools alone overcome the difficulties associated with poverty? Advocates who answer yes usually contend that to be high-quality, schools need only high standards, high expectations, and strong principals leading a faculty of highly qualified teachers. However, terms like 'high standards' and 'high expectations' are usually left undefined, as if their meanings were self evident--which they are not. Ignoring such gaps in rationale, No Child Left Behind's reliance on testing and sanctions codifies the conception that schools alone are capable of erasing the achievement gap and need only to be required to do so." Why, he asks, would the new administration choose to continue down that path?

Bracey similarly found that programs putting mayors in control of public school systems in New York and Chicago do not live up to their claims. For instance, he wrote that "vaunted improvements in test scores do not appear for Chicago's black and Latino students." He concluded that Chicago's "Renaissance" looks to some "more like a return to the Dark Ages."

Finally, turning his attention to the demand for higher standards, Bracey observed: "After 100 years of cries for higher standards, we are still in an education crisis. The push for higher standards has not worked. Perhaps it is time to try something else."

For that "something else,' Bracey returned to a school that President Obama might know well himself. Citing an essay in Education Week by Seattle University's David Marshak, Bracey suggested that Sidwell Friends School, where Obama's daughters are enrolled, offers a model for the children of all other American parents--a fresh, richly textured and human-centered approach to the questions of quality and standards, an approach that is a striking contrast to the model being pushed on America's public schools.

"Many would find Sidwell's approach 'high quality,' but test scores are not mentioned in its statements of philosophy or expectations," Bracey wrote. "Sidwell emphasizes 'greeting the day with enthusiasm,' 'a search for truth,' and 'sensitivity to the human condition.' The President has not answered Marshak. He should."

Find "Bracey Report on the Condition of Public Education" on the web at:
http://epicpolicy.org/publication/Bracey-Report

CONTACT:
Kevin Welner, Professor and Director
Education and the Public Interest Center
University of Colorado at Boulder
(303) 492-8370
kevin.welner@colorado.edu

The Education and the Public Interest Center (EPIC) at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the Education Policy Research Unit (EPRU) at Arizona State University collaborate to produce policy briefs and think tank reviews. Our goal is to promote well-informed democratic deliberation about education policy by providing academic as well as non-academic audiences with useful information and high quality analyses. This policy brief was made possible in part by the generous support of the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.

Visit EPIC and EPRU at http://www.educationanalysis.org/

EPIC and EPRU are members of the Education Policy Alliance
(http://educationpolicyalliance.org)

Education Secretary Leads Chorus Calling for Big City-Hall Role

This is an important issue to be following.

-Patricia

Interest in bringing school districts under the municipal umbrella continues to grow.
By Lesli A. Maxwell
October 12, 2009

The troubles that plague many local school boards prompt some observers to throw up their hands. But when it comes to big-city districts, there’s a popular remedy that continues to gain momentum: mayoral control.

This governance arrangement sidelines school boards, for the most part, in favor of a strong chief executive handpicked by the mayor.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who for seven years ran Chicago’s public schools under Mayor Richard M. Daley, is using his bully pulpit to aggressively promote the approach as a necessity for reversing decades of abysmal academic performance in some cities. In a speech to mayors and school superintendents last spring, in fact, Duncan said he would consider his time as education secretary a “failure” if more mayors didn’t take over city school systems by the end of his tenure.

Read on...

Don't put mayors in charge of schools

Some good points made in this Ed-Op piece. Another sad link is the role of the manufacture in developing high school course sequences.

-Patricia

By MIKE SULLIVAN | Houston Chronicle
May 30, 2009

We are certainly living in interesting political times, with politicians of different stripes wearing curious new hats.

For example, the president of the United States today also wears the old fedora of an auto industry executive. Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter just traded hats in jumping from the GOP to the Democratic Party. And bringing us full circle, Minnesotans appear to have given comedian Al Franken a chance to trade his jester’s hat for a seat in the U.S. Senate.

But to me, the most disturbing development of all came when the U.S. secretary of education, Arne Duncan, recently announced a new movement to place mayors in charge of struggling school districts.

Running a school district is one hat we shouldn’t ask, or permit, mayors to wear.

As a former trustee of the Humble Independent School District, let me assure you there is already plenty of politics in our educational system without putting a full-blown politician with so many other responsibilities at the top of the organizational chart.

Indeed, given the overwhelming volume of duties confronting any mayor, it raises the question: Why would a mayor want to involve himself/herself in school district issues, when the current system of electing school board trustees can adequately handle the job? Can’t we trust voters to choose the people and the policies they want to govern their local school district?

Or are we destined, as Americans and Texans, to continue this dangerous new trend of ceding more power and control of our lives to the ruling class? When did we cease to be a government “of the people, by the people, for the people”?

Ask any mayor or mayoral candidate the following four questions:

What is WADA (weighted average daily attendance) and how does it affect our school funding?

What is an IEP (individual education plan) and how does the federal government determine which student needs one and which doesn’t?

How does the Permanent School Fund influence bond construction costs?

And what’s the difference between the Texas Education Agency and the State Board of Education?

These are just four questions that every school board trustee has learned the answers to through mandated annual state training.

School board trustees and superintendents receive specialized training and are committed to serving their districts. They do not need municipal government politics creeping into their business.

Of course, the idea of a mayor controlling a school board or school district is not new. It has been tried around the country, and the results have been, at best, mixed.

No mayor of Houston, current or future, should meddle in school district affairs. The business of running school districts must be left to those elected by the public for that specific purpose, and to the superintendent that those elected trustees chose.

Oh, one more thing. Houston’s mayor earns $176,762; council members make $51,758; school board trustees make nothing. School board trustees are clearly not serving for the salary and benefits. They serve for the sake of serving — because they are committed to the education system, the students and parents, and the teachers.

That’s the one hat they want to wear; that’s the hat they deserve to wear; that’s the hat we should let them wear without more political meddling.

Sullivan is a former trustee of the Humble Independent School District and the current District E council member for the city of Houston.