Do mayors run better school districts than traditional superintendents? Depends on the mayor, the district, and the superintendent. While Mr. Bloomberg seems to be doing well in New York, the mayor of Los Angeles seems to be stumbling. As for able superintendents, I think Tony Alvarado did some good work while he was running schools in the Big Apple. As is so often the case, we seem to be more interested in “who” rather than “what”, “why”, and “how”. But you don’t get the right answers until you start asking the right questions.

I’ve met about 50 superintendents in my career. And I will admit that at least 45 of them seemed completely ineffective to me. It’s not that they weren’t nice people, or that they didn’t care about their job. It’s merely that they never actually did anything or publicly supported anything that might make their districts better. This strategy of calculated inaction, however, is precisely how most superintendents keep their jobs. And, make no mistake, we have only school boards to thank for this sorry state of affairs. (But to balance that opinion, school board members are not required to know anything about education. Perhaps there’s some reform to be made here, no?)

In general, the mayors I’ve met are stronger and more savvy leaders than their school district counterparts. But they also have a lot more on their plate. So simply deciding that big city schools should be run by big city mayors probably doesn’t make a lot of sense. I think a good superintendent would have a better shot of changing a large school district than would a good mayor. But, yes, I will concede that there are precious few good superintendents out there.

Perhaps, as I’ve suggested, the entire question is wrong. Switching to mayoral control of schools is just one of many structural reforms that most people seem to have become infatuated with these days. It’s easy to understand. Mayoral control speaks to that part of the American ego that believes in heroic leadership and the notion that it resides only in special people who don’t typically end up in education. Perhaps we will never quite escape our Judeo-Christian origins in this regard along with our enduring faith in a single savior. So much the worse for our schools and our children.

But just as we are learning that big money CEOs don’t always lead their companies to financial success, I’m not sure that big time mayors will have any more success with urban school districts than traditional superintendents. Again, the reason for this is that structural change simply can’t get much traction in light of the well-established and highly dysfunctional culture deeply rooted in most districts.

Culture trumps structure every time. Culture endures while structure is impermanent. Culture grows from the grass roots. Structure simply determines how the lawn gets mowed. It’s not that structural changes aren’t important. But they can only be effective as foundations for larger and more comprehensive cultural reforms.

I don’t think too many mayors can change the culture of their districts. For one thing, many may not be around long enough. For another, they may not be able to devote the time it takes, day after day, in person, to represent the kind of change they’d like to see. Then there’s the unfortunate, but all too common, problem that a shift in popularity over an unrelated issue may weaken a mayor’s ability to lead schools effectively.

Concentrating on heroic leaders at the top too often comes at the expense of tending to the people who work at the bottom. Teacher culture, which is often a reaction to building administration, always rules the day. But it’s much easier to switch chiefs than it is to change Indians. So we keep hoping that swapping one person for another will carry the day.

It won’t. And there’s no reason to believe it should.

We’re very fond these days of looking for ways to fire people. So why not fire the superintendent and give his or her job to the mayor or the governor or the attorney general? Why not fire a few principals or a pack of teachers? Why not cut football and put the money into reading? Because all this structural reshuffling doesn’t really work.

Our taste for termination is, I think, just a case of wanting to do what’s easiest rather than doing what’s right or doing what works. As such, I believe it lacks the moral weight necessary to turn things around in most cases. Heck, when it comes to teachers, more than half quit within the first five years. They leave so fast, we hardly have a chance to fire them. Before we start sharpening the hatchet, let’s not forget that firing is costly, and that just the threat of being fired can alter a culture in negative and unforeseen ways that usually last longer than the person or the policy that encouraged them.

It may be blasphemous to say but does it really matter who sits in the big chair when it comes to running a large urban school district? How many school leaders can we name who’ve made permanent, positive changes during their tenure? This is no slight to any mayor or superintendent; changing a big district is a hyper-Herculean task. But it does make one wonder if the problems we need to solve in our schools can be tackled form the top. Working in classrooms as I do most of the time, I think the fight should be fought at the bottom. And that it should be more about training teachers and principals than terminating them.

Let’s acknowledge that the culture of education is based on fear. I think most of us who’ve been in the trenches have found this largely to be the case. Kids are afraid of teachers. Teachers are afraid of parents and principals. Principals are afraid of just about everybody, and so forth. Most decisions are made out of fear. And consequently, most changes merely create more fear. Does changing the managerial structure of a district make people more fearful or less fearful? Do teachers and principals feel better with a mayor for a boss? I doubt it.

But if we’re stuck on the heroic leadership meme, as I fear we are and will be for some time, how about this for an alternative? Successful leaders from any sector could serve as superintendents. I don’t even mind paying them a little more for their star power. Furthermore, I’d like to see them create their own governing boards in the same way that corporate boards are created. (And I’d like to see public oversight handled by a small group of trained professionals with education expertise.) In this scenario, districts could actively seek out new blood, not based on prior education experience, but on the basis of prior organizational success. Working full time, these non-traditional superintendents could bring all of their heroic powers to bare on solving critical problems. After all, who wouldn’t want Warren Buffet or Tony Dungy at the helm?

If we’re looking for great leaders for our schools, let’s quit fooling around with titles and territory and just look for great leaders for our schools. Let’s not arbitrarily decide that if someone is elected mayor, they might be a great school leader. In fact, let’s be weary of any elected politician who would seek to run a school district. We have enough politics in schools already.

The problem we're trying to solve here is that with occasional exceptions urban school boards don't work. As explored in a recent HuffPost, it's difficult to elect and sustain a board capable of providing stable and effective leadership. Boston, Chicago, NY, and DC indicate that a partnership between a strong mayor and a courageous superintendent can be an effective alternative.

Nelson Smith made the right point--our cities need portfolio managers (as described by Paul Hill in It Takes a City).

Mayoral Control of our urban schools? I’m for it. In most cities, the politics are as broken as the schools themselves and mayoral control is the only real chance to change that. Sure, it is no guarantee, but mayoral politics are much more akin to true democracy than school board elections. Right now democracy plays little or no role in the governance of our schools. Wait you say, “Aren’t school boards elected bodies?” Yes, but it is democracy lite; three parts special interest and one part democracy. In that equation, the kids lose. In Los Angeles, the kids have been on the losing end of the deal for nearly 40 years. In Chicago, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Washington D.C., the kids are now winning. It is going to take a good decade of mayoral control to reverse 40 years of misrule, but those cities are making real progress. For those who say real education reform must take place in the classroom, I would say, you can’t change anything in the classroom, and the quality of the support for teachers and principals, until you fix the governance.

I know there are those that would say that a school board is an elected body and can be voted out, so therefore, there is accountability. However, have you ever asked someone who their school board member is? I predict if you took a poll maybe 3% of voters would be able to name their school board member. If you took a similar poll and asked voters to name their mayor, I’d bet at least 60% of them in any given city would know who their mayor is. You can’t legitimately vote for someone if you don’t even know who they are or if they even exist!

Mayoral control is legitimate democracy: it brings greater accountability in educating our youth, our future. It particularly answers the need to elect a leader whom we can hold accountable for the performance of our public schools. I am blown away by the sheer audacity of Mayor Daley, Mayor Fenty, Mayor Bloomberg, and Mayor Menino to stand up in front of the people of their great cities and say, “Put me in charge of the schools, and if they don’t dramatically improve, vote me out.” The progress these cities are making in bringing justice to education is remarkable. Right now, in the fight to stop 60% of our students from dropping out of high school and increase the number of students graduating from college, the Mayor of Los Angeles by law only has a bully pulpit. Mayor Villaraigosa (and Mayor Riordan before him) has used his considerable influence to raise money for like-minded candidates to push a coherent agenda of school reform. However, lacking true mayoral control over our schools, to date, Mayors Villaraigosa and Riordan have not had the power to make one teacher better or remove one ineffective teacher in a school district of 630,000 students and 45,000 teachers. Both mayor’s efforts to reform LA Schools through the school board have been compromised away and made ineffectual by the power of special interests.

As the founder of a charter management organization in South Los Angeles, I can tell you that the children in our city need a bold plan fearlessly implemented. Too quickly newly elected school boards become defenders of the system called the “Unified School District” rather than the champions of a child’s right to a free, public and high quality education. Often, the few well-meaning school board members who stand up to the special interests typically vote in the minority. Mayoral control doesn’t guarantee a good school system, but it greatly increases the odds. The public as a whole can hold someone accountable for student learning. A mayor who doesn’t push through the clamor of special interests and does not focus on what is best for the students will soon be looking for another job. Finally, the public can vote “yes for the kids” and “no to the special interests.” After all, the mayor cannot say, as our school boards often do, “Unfortunately, I am only one vote on a seven member board. Sorry, your son won’t graduate from high school or your daughter won’t go to college.”

Too often U.S. debates about education focus more on issues of governance than educational substance. The issue of mayoral control is one example; others include the search for silver bullets through governance shifts like centralization – or decentralization (a recurrent theme in big cities), charters (vs. district-run schools), or national (vs. state or local) standards. All of these ideas can offer potential gains under the right circumstances and pitfalls under the wrong ones. Unfortunately, the never-ending debates about governance often deflect us from more important considerations of educational quality: What kind of learning and teaching are pursued, how capacity for high-quality teaching and leadership is built, and what steps toward equity are taken. We need much more focus on these issues, as well as consideration of the conditions under which structural changes are likely to work toward good educational ends – and when they are not

At present, there seems to be no correlation between the control of urban districts and their outcomes. In some cities, mayoral control has meant greater management stability and student achievement gains. In others, it has meant little more than an “under new management” sign, with so-called improvements yielding no or negative impact on student learning. In many communities, mayoral control is seen as a choice of last resort, a panacea intended to solve all that ails the local schools. Unfortunately, most of those cities fail to see that strong outcomes are only driven by equally strong inputs and practices, no matter how commanding the personality at the top of the educational system may be.

Boston offers the most promising model for a district that has succeeded under mayoral control and the long-term educationally thoughtful leadership of former superintendent Tom Payzant. The urban district assessment (TUDA) offered by our only common yardstick -- the National Assessment of Educational Progress -- shows Boston with the largest gains in student proficiency rates between 2003 and 2007 in 4th and 8th grade math and 4th grade reading.

However, Boston was tied with San Diego for gains in 4th grade math and with Houston for gains in 8th grade math – neither of them under mayoral control. Atlanta, Washington DC, and Charlotte gained as much as Boston in 4th grade reading – none of them during this time period under mayoral control (DC’s mayor Adrian Fenty took over in 2007). Without mayoral control, Houston and San Diego gained more than other urban districts in 8th grade reading during this time, while mayorally-controlled New York City actually dropped two points. And while New York showed growth in other areas during these years, the gains in previous years – before mayoral control – were as large or larger in many areas.

Generally low-scoring Chicago made only modest gains under mayoral control, just at or below those of the urban district average. Meanwhile, Austin, one of the highest achieving urban districts in all subjects during all of these years – was led successfully, without mayoral control, by long-term superintendent Pat Forgione.

At the end of the day, it turns out that the skill and experience of the driver and the route he or she takes matters more to reaching the destination than who holds the car’s title.

Cities like Boston and Austin are cases in point. In Boston, Superintendent Tom Payzant led a school system under Mayor Tom Menino’s control. In Austin, Superintendent Pat Forgione led Austin ISD under the traditional governance model. Both men recognized that good teachers, strong instructional leadership, and more thoughtful and focused curriculum were fundamental building blocks of good education. Both invested in teacher and principal development and professional learning, stimulated innovation and redesign of factory model high schools, sought to distribute resources more equitably, and improved the management of the central office. Ultimately, both understood they reported to the teachers and the families of the community. And both left stronger urban districts in their wake.

This is not to say we don’t have governance issues in urban districts. Dysfunctional school boards and revolving door superintendents are much too common. Political concerns and patronage too often intervene. But as Harold Levy points out in his blog, mayoral involvement can as often exacerbate political interference and poor decision making as reduce it – favoring wealthy parents or communities over poor ones with greater needs. Indeed, a century ago, mayoral control of urban districts was the norm. It was disassembled by progressive reformers concerned with the unhealthy role politics played in educational decision making and the extent to which patronage trumped expertise in the hiring and firing of teachers and other personnel. Mayoral control has vascillated in popularity ever since, with the current iteration demonstrating mixed results.

Mayoral control may sometimes work to stabilize school management – especially when it is coupled with adequate public oversight and accountability, transparency in the availability of data about decisions and outcomes, safeguards for parent participation in decision making, and parameters to guide educational decisions based on professional knowledge and expertise, not what is most politically popular or expedient.

But before a community starts on this journey, it must set its GPS system to the right guideposts. These include investments in quality teaching, ensuring teachers and principals gain the content knowledge, pedagogy, clinical training, and ongoing professional development necessary to succeed in the 21st century classroom. The guideposts also need to include assurances of equitable investments in instructional resources – particularly in schools serving historically disadvantaged communities – spent to provide an equal chance of success, meaning effective, well-supported educators and high-quality learning opportunities for all students.

Good governance requires oversight and public accountability. That can come from a mayor, a school board, or a town council. But it also requires expertise about what works and a commitment to school improvement, teacher development, equitable resources, and the development of organizational capacity. Collectively, if schools are to improve, that has to be our ultimate destination, regardless of who is behind the wheel.

Is 'Mayoral Control' The Answer For Urban Schools?

There is no one best answer to the question is 'Mayoral Control' the answer for urban schools? History shows that in some urban environments, mayoral control has provided a sense of stability and improved school operations. But history also shows that mayoral control in some urban environments has failed to make a difference. The energy generated by this question demonstrates how easy it is to become entangled in the mesh of trying to find simple solutions for complex problems.

It doesn’t really matter whether the school board is appointed by the mayor or elected by the voters. What matters is whether the people who actually end up on the school board are high quality individuals who can reach consensus and commit to a shared vision of high achievement for all children; whether they can achieve a sense of collegiality and togetherness in pursuit of that shared vision; whether they can operate based on a system of governance driven by policy development and appropriate oversight; whether they can sustain a commitment to keep their distance from district management decisions and the day to day operation of schools.

What really matters is that the system for selecting school board members provides for appropriate public involvement, that board members understand their commitment must be to the children of the district and not to a personal agenda or political constituency, and that board members constantly build civic capacity for continuous improvement.

In some school districts, this can be done best by direct election of school board members. In other districts, this may require mayoral appointment.

The point is that if we are to really improve America’s urban schools, we must improve public school governance. This is a much more complex undertaking than answering the question is mayoral control the answer for urban schools. Because the answer is both “yes” and “no.”

David G. Sciarra, executive director of the Education Law Center in Newark, NJ, submitted the following:

We know that the form of local school governance does not – alone – translate into improved operations, transparency and accountability to stakeholders. Nor does governance by elected or appointed boards, the mayor, or a chartered board of trustees automatically result in the focus on curriculum and instructional issues we need from those who operate public schools, especially in poor and racially isolated communities.

But local education agencies, however governed, are legal constructs of states, established by state law to carry out the states’ obligation to educate its children, as enshrined in the fifty state constitutions. So states are directly responsible when local mismanagement, corruption, interference or incompetence impedes educational progress.

What is needed are state education agencies with robust technical capacity and ample legal authority, backed by state political leadership, willing take on the difficult and painstaking work of straightening-out dysfunctional local governance, whether by mayors or school boards. Innovation to enhance SEA capacity in this critical area is long overdue.

School boards make sense for school systems but not for systems of schools.

Since this question is about “urban schools” I’ll assume a certain minimum scale – let’s say 50 schools and 20,000 kids. If those schools are all part of a centrally-run system, where a superintendent and central-office staff allocate teachers, books, and buses, then it may make some sense for that system to be overseen by an all- or mostly-elected body representing the neighborhoods that make up the city.

But if those 50 schools are autonomous, making their own decisions about teachers and books and buses; and if each answers to its own governing board as well as a “portfolio manager” designated by the state; if students enroll from all around the city because parents choose the school instead of being zoned into it; then the argument for a politically-representative citywide school board is much weaker.

What about that “portfolio manager”role, that of creating new schools and periodically removing the low-performers; could that be the niche for a traditional school board? Not so much. Creating a new school from scratch (not building a new building but evaluating, approving, and nurturing the startup of a totally new school) demands a different skill set from that of the traditional school board. Politically-elected boards have a tough time culling the herd. Even if the Committee of the Whole sees a need to close a lousy school, the member representing its neighborhood may need to grandstand for the benefit of angry parents sitting in the Board chambers.

Earlier discussants have made good points about mayoral control: that a mayor can provide running room for a creative and brave superintendent; that citizens hold mayors responsible for the schools even if they lack direct authority; and that through the budget they have more influence than they might admit (and I’d add, sometimes use the lack of direct control as an excuse for doing nothing). And of course, no governance arrangement is a panacea. We probably dodged some bullets by not having mayoral control of schools under James Michael Curley and Jimmy Walker.

At a time when we’re looking for radical improvements in urban student achievement, the old political model of decisionmaking gives too many players veto power. A system of schools with accountability close to the student, and reporting to an executive who’s sensitive to public input but able to make fast decisions, seems far better suited to today’s needs.

On Day Three of this topic, let's ask the question slightly differently: In addition to direct control, are there other meaningful ways that mayors get involved in urban school reform? What are they?

One common reform effort among mayors is the active support for the creation of charter schools. Mayors Daley and Bloomberg have supported charter schools in Chicago and New York, where they each have possessed direct mayoral control of the traditional school district. Other mayors have not had that power but have supported charter schools in other ways. Former Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson persuaded his legislature to allow him to authorize charter schools and his successor, Greg Ballard, has continued to implement that strategy well. St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay was not able to persuade his legislature to give him the power to authorize charter schools, so he did the next best thing: he actively encourages and supports organizations to start charter schools and his office evaluates proposals for new charters. Those proposals that meet high standards are then recommended to existing authorizers. Mayor Booker in Newark has followed yet another strategy by supporting the establishment of the Newark Charter School Fund. Daniel McKee, the mayor of tiny Cumberland, Rhode Island, is leading a group of mayors from throughout his state in support of the creation of more charter schools. Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson founded the St. Hope Charter Schools before he was elected mayor. Most recently, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino has become a charter supporter.

Thus, mayors have more than one tool available to them to improve urban education. Direct control is a good strategy in some cities, but not all. More and more mayors are determining that another good strategy is the active support of the creation of more charter schools.

Accountability is an issue that has long been at the forefront of discussions on education. Mayoral control has worked to address the issue of accountability in areas such as New York City and Chicago. Mayors have also provided broad-based political support for school improvement by leveraging the support of business and community leaders. While several cities have experienced success under mayoral control, we must refute the “one size fits all” notion. Urban cities throughout the country are vastly different as are their needs and situations. Not every city is equipped with the structure or leadership for mayoral control; further more, not all cities prefer such governance. As New York City considers the renewal of a 2002 law that granted mayoral control, mayors in upstate New York admit their lack of interest in governing their local schools.

Critics assert that mayoral control destroys the democracy of the school board, since school board officials are generally elected by the public. However, proponents of mayoral control argue that low voter turnout and low level of awareness that mark board elections routinely enable organized interest to exert an unhealthy influence. As a result, cities are plagued with passive leadership unwilling to upset the status quo and foster true school reform.

The bottom line is that success can be experienced under both forms of school governance. Several key common factors lead to such success including the power, influence and level of involvement of the leader. Therefore, governance should vary based on local need. However, strong leadership should be a consistent component in all given situations.

Just about every city dweller I know – including those who know a lot – think their Mayor is in control of every city service. Do an informal survey of your non-education policy focused friends and you’ll find that they believe – overwhelmingly – that their Mayor’s portfolio extends to schools. Sure, they know a school board exists, but they are not quite sure whether their purview is simply the vetting of school policies, hiring, budgets or what-have-you. The confusion is even more pronounced when you start talking about how schools get financed. Turn to the subject of accountability, and things really get fuzzy. Maybe that’s why only about 10-15 percent, on average, of the electorate votes in school board races, particularly in big urban areas. It’s also likely why they believe the Mayor has more power than he or she actually does – precisely because they have oversight over every other major city service, are held to account directly to the public about performance and by all accounts, are probably voted in or out based on a number of factors, including schools, even when ‘hizzoner may have no control.

The fact is, while scores of academic literature and analyses can shed light on how and whether mayoral control really works, it’s the political process, not the educational process, that really makes the case for it. Like Governors, who indeed do control the education purse strings and can stand on – or against – education as a key platform issue, mayors are the most effective, direct form of democracy in action in urban areas because their actions are transparent, their position engages deeply the majority of the electorate and they are most apt to make quick, efficient decisions (lest the next ribbon they cut or sporting event they attend become a target for disgruntled citizens).

In short, mayors are ubiquitous, and if we want great education in urban centers, putting them in the hot seat, giving them direct control over school leadership and schools, and making school boards obsolete is the best, surest way to change the status quo and kick out the inertia and patronage that has hidden out of sight (and thus, out of mind) behind school system walls for years, often until it’s too late.

I’ll echo what’s already been said by others because it bears repeating: Mayoral control is not a universal remedy for what ails every urban school system, but the evidence we’ve seen merits further exploration. What mayoral control has allowed is a greater degree of accountability and personal responsibility, which in turn has promoted quicker, more aggressive reforms. When enterprising local leaders are able to wrest control away from the entrenched education establishment, we’ve witnessed major transformations in attitudes and expectations, which is a critical first step to achieving lasting reform.

I’m an advocate for local control in education because I recognize that each community is different. Mayoral control has certainly worked well in some large cities, and I applaud it. But in other areas, engaged school boards have been able to implement the right kinds of reforms to improve student achievement. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to education, whether you’re talking about governance or curriculum.

Realizing significant achievement gains is about more than change in local governance structure to mayoral control, though it may well help. It seems to have in Chicago, Boston, New York City, and maybe Washington, DC. But results in Atlanta and Charlotte-Mecklenburg show gains must be about more than mayors eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/
0000019b/80/37/0e/c3.pdf. They are likely about school boards and superintendents doing several things cooperatively and in tandem—a coherent vision for improvement, wise and regular use of data, aggressive efforts to recruit and support talented teachers and principals, strong and transparent accountability, aligned curriculum, and a general laser like focus on building capacity up and down the system pubadvocate.nyc.gov/advocacy/schools/documents/
EducationWeek_ShouldMayorsRunSchools_.pdf.

Generally speaking the governance system for United States public schools makes little sense. The US has the most decentralized system of school governance of any developed country. It is touted as more democratic, but voter turnout belies that proposition. If politicians were serious about letting the voters speak on how to run our schools, they would not schedule elections at obscure times other than the November general elections when voters are most likely to show up at the polls communitypub.com/news/x124623909/House-bill-
to-move-school-board-elections-to-November-picks-up-steam.

No one yet has the perfect answer for strengthening urban school leadership and governance. But one thing is clear: the focus and action must always be on students and effective teaching, not ideology, racial dominance, political advancement, contract award favors, or petty jockeying for the public limelight.

I agree with those who say that mayoral control is not a panacea for the ills that confront our public education system. At the same time, the successes achieved in Chicago, New York, and Boston can be attributed in substantial part to the fact that the chief executives of those cities have taken responsibility for improving the quality of public education and are willing to be held accountable for success or failure. The finger-pointing that accompanies our traditional school board model is highly unlikely to lead to systemic change. At the same time, the mayoral control model must be accompanied by the selection of a highly qualified and disciplined superintendent. For those of us who live in the District of Columbia, we have high hopes for the success of Michelle Rhee, who is operating with the full support of Mayor Fenty. Chancellor Rhee has the potential to bring about major reforms to the failed D.C. public school system and this will only be possible because of the mayoral control model.

Part of the problem with school boards is that members are often elected with a low percentage of the public voting. That gives rise to the influence of groups who have a stake in the status quo. There is anecdotal evidence that teachers unions will run supporters in these elections in organized campaigns. That will produce school boards who may acquiesce in agreements and practices that are not in the best interests of children but are more focused on the adults within the education establishment. A rigorous study of the membership of school boards would be helpful to this debate.

Even with mayoral control, the views of parents must be solicited and their concerns addressed. As elected officials, mayors are always responsive to the views of their constituents. At the end of the day, the key issue is whether the children in the system are receiving the quality education they require to make them career-ready and college-ready. This has certainly not been happening under the traditional school board model. Further experimentation with mayoral control is a big step in the right direction.

Updated at 10:31 a.m. on July 6.

Anyone who believes in a panacea school governance reform is ignorant of the history of education in the United States. Mayoral control appears to be the latest governance fad in public education, and as with urban school bureaucracies with large ward-based school boards (which were once new!), rural school consolidation, small appointed urban boards, small elected urban boards, and site-based management, the proponents of mayoral control make exaggerated claims as to what it can accomplish.Mayoral control is no more "the" answer for urban school systems than any other proposed reform, and American schools have a history of adopting structural reforms without changing what happens in classrooms.

To put it in inelegant terms, there ain't any magic bullets in this business. And simply going to mayoral control is no magic bullet.

Having said that, I would say that mayoral control seems to have been a positive factor in improvement in New York City and Washington, D.C. But that may simply be a function of the fact that there are two capable mayors in those cities who made two very daring and strong picks of superintendents.

Would other mayors do as well, if given the authority over their school systems? Yes, they would be subject to some personal accountability lacking in most of today's school boards. But would they risk and invest as much as Bloomberg and Fenty? My instinct says, generally, no.

One final point: I think the real heart of this discussion is an awareness that current systems of local school governance are not generally getting the job done. I'm not sure whether this is due to the undue power of special interests, some sort of malaise on the part of citizens as manifested in low turnout and participation, poorly trained administrative leadership, or sometimes unaccountable board leadership.

But the real discussion ought to be about why we're turning to mayoral control as a resort.

Mayoral control works when mayors choose superintendents of great courage, who demand improvements and who add quality school choices for the community. Providing better quality of schools and choices makes them far more accountable to the public than a school board mired in the conflicting political agendas of each member.

School boards may create effective environments, they just usually don't. Mayoral control increases the odds for students.

We have yet to create the superior governance system for our public schools, which will hopefully be a collection of different boards and elected officials who have each been granted authority to authorize and oversee a collection of schools. Ultimately, parents should be able to choose a school that fits their need in the public sector as they would if they had the means and desire to choose a private school. Money for a child's education should follow that child to the school, as in the case of public charter schools, so that there is a direct accountability. No ability to attract students, no money.

Checker Finn and I wrote about the need to reconsider the whole idea of elected school boards a few years ago in Education Next, and I only feel more strongly about this today:

http://www.hoover.org/publications/ednext/3261226.html

Schools should be free to follow any number of effective instructional practices and management style...Montessori, Waldorf, explicit, constructivist, team leaders, one leader, grouping, ungrouping, arts emphasis, math and science emphasis, single gender schools, ethnic historical emphasis...whatever makes a great school community resulting in students whose achievement demonstrably exceeds the very basic demands of state testing systems.

The boards or individuals who oversee schools should be concerned only with their success, not the excrutiating detail of their daily business. The excrutiating detail of personnel contracts, construction, pensions, and number of teachers is what most boards spend their time on. And parents are not invited to these negoatiations. Not only are they not public, but these battles, whose results are imposed on every school, preclude innovation and leadership at the school site. It simply should not continue.

Mayoral control was created out of a need to focus on the detail that matters. It is getting us closer.

Mayoral control holds obvious promise. Crucial backing from strong mayors has allowed reform-minded superintendents to move the ball in Boston, New York, Chicago, and DC. These happy tales have led some enthusiasts to champion mayoral control more broadly. So far, so good. The risk is that advocates oversell mayoral control without due concern to its design or its risks.

There is little compelling evidence to suggest that mayoral control is a consistent remedy. Most of the existing research consists of case studies of a handful of cities where strong mayors demanded control of the schools and threw themselves into school improvement. More generally, Stanford University’s Michael Kirst has concluded that it is “difficult to predict” whether mayoral control will help.

Ultimately, the case for mayoral control rests on the conviction that it is hard enough to transform troubled schools under the best of conditions, and that it is impossible amidst undisciplined politics, acrimonious governance, and incoherent and impatient governance.

In such cases, handing the reins to an engaged and accountable mayor may make good sense. In a bit of an understatement, though, let’s simply note that all mayors are not engaged or accountable. Mayors may politicize school systems for short-term political ends or neglect schools for other priorities and transparency, and with it accountability, can suffer. How mayoral control is adopted matters more than simply whether it is.

On that score, there are at least four elements critical to determing whether mayoral control "works":

1] Transparency. In the past decade, in cases like AIG and Tyco, corporate America saw that overly cozy boards could fail to provide essential scrutiny. The council should insist on regular public hearings and reports on district affairs.

2] Strong oversight. In New York, the civic leadership and the newspapers have sometimes allowed enthusiasm to trump healthy skepticism. Mayoral accountability only works when local public officials and civic leaders are prepared to ask hard questions and insist on verifiable measures of performance.

3] Agreeing in advance on metrics. How to judge the success of reform should be settled up front. Metrics should encompass more than test scores and graduation rates—measures for gains in teacher quality, safety, construction, finances, and other key responsibilities should be established.

4] Finally, mayoral control only works where, as in Boston or Chicago, mayors put their reputations on the line and their political clout to work. If mayors, or their successors, lose interest while tending to economic development, public safety, or a multiple other constituent concerns, we're going to find ourselves in a decade bemoaning the harmful legacy of mayoral control.

The early birds on this blog already said it: there's no single, uniform structural/governance solution to the problems of urban education. It's a sad fact that most elected big-city (and, for that matter, small-city) school boards don't work very well--and some are bloomin' disasters. It's also a fact that half a dozen cities have indeed benefited from mayoral control. But I could take you to a lot of cities--we might start in Ohio--where the current crop of mayors are neither interested in nor competent to run the schools. Conceivably, making them responsible for public education would eventually cause people to get elected who would take this responsibility seriously, but I don't think we can count on it. I don't, in fact, think we can count on any one structural overhaul working in every situation. (State takeovers of urban districts surely haven't done much good in New Jersey, for example.) Instead of searching for a silver bullet we need to face the blunt reality that different situations may call for different solutions. (One that I hope some state will try is doing away with "LEA's" altogether and conferring "charters" on every school in the state, answerable to a set of accountable authorizers for whether they get the job done.)

Mayoral control is not a high principle of state, akin to free speech or racial equality. It should not be adopted uniformly. In the wrong hands, it could be disastrous. Mayors, after all, often make political decisions. Consider: The only part of the school system that New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani controlled directly was the siting of new schools. At one point he built three brand new schools on Staten Island, a borough where crowding was minimal and students could have been reassigned to more empty schools -- and none in Washington Heights, where the handful of decrepit buildings were wholly insufficient to accommodate the flood of new Dominican immigrants. Why? He'd made a political deal with the (then) Staten Island borough president.

In the right hands, mayoral control can lead to meaningful educational progress. In New York, we had a feuding school system at war with itself for 40 years, ever since an experiment with “decentralization.” In 1968, the state legislature devolved power from the mayor and a strong city superintendent to a weak chancellor and 32 locally-elected school boards. Many of those boards (and the district superintendents they elected) quickly proved to be corrupt and prone to racially divisive decision making. The error of decentralization took decades to fix, as lawmakers slowly clawed back the power that had been given to the districts. As late as 2000, when I became the city's schools chancellor, I could remove failing district superintendents -- but I could not install replacements of my choosing: The law required that they be nominated by the local boards, many of which were still in the grips of local politicians enforcing the spoils system. This made me very "gun shy": Before removing a superintendent, I had to be sure that the local board's nominees wouldn't be worse. They often were.

A school system head should not have to play Russian roulette.

I would posit three tests before conferring mayoral control:

1) is the mayor going to fight for adequate school funding, including wages that will attract qualified teachers;

2) is the mayor attentive (but not subservient) to the viewpoints of the parents and the professional educators;

3) does the mayor make his procurement, school siting and budget decisions in a non-partisan, objective manner?

Finally, no mayor should be given plenary power. We have long passed the day when the decisions of teachers and educational administrators cannot be questioned, particularly by parents. Disenfranchising parents leads to failure; ignoring the professional judgment of educators is folly. New York ill-fated decentralization experiment came about largely because many parents felt isolated from the schools; it was not a system calculated to improve educational outcomes so much as placate disrespected parents and frightened teachers. Today, we know that in the most effective schools parents are engaged both in their own children’s learning and in the school as a whole, and teachers feel empowered by their administrators. We need to strive for models that encourage both parent and teacher engagement. Mayoral control does not mean unfettered discretion.

Too often, the debate around mayoral control devolves into a debate between one side that says mayoral control, in and of itself, will fix a city’s schools, and another side that says mayoral control is an evil power grab. It’s good that we’re addressing the much more meaningful question: Under what circumstances can mayoral control improve schools?

I want to emphasize, first off, that mayoral control is not for everybody and shouldn’t be viewed as the only way to run schools. I recently visited the ABC district in Los Angeles County, which is producing great results for students with a traditionally elected school board, a strong union, a real sense of collaboration—and no mayoral control. Imposing mayoral control on such a district would undermine a structure that has led to teamwork, cooperation and good results for students.

Still, mayoral control can—and does—work. In fact, in New York City, my home district, mayoral control has brought stability, consistency and resources—important factors that often are missing in urban school districts. Under mayoral control, we’ve seen steady improvements in the quality of education, rising test scores, safer schools and greater public confidence in city schools.

But, being teachers, we aren’t satisfied with the fact that our schools are merely better than they were before. We want them to be the very best places to teach and learn.

And while the future of mayoral control in New York City is uncertain right now, we have learned some lessons in New York over the last seven years about how to improve mayoral control.

I won’t pretend to have all the answers, but below are some elements that could improve mayoral control by building in transparency, oversight and accountability:

• Independent reviews of school expenditures and transparency in school finances;

• Independent reviews of student achievement results and other school data;

• A policy board that holds public hearings and has real deliberations on school policies; and

• A formal structure to encourage parents to speak out and to solicit community input.

Whether the governance model is mayoral control or something like the structure used in the ABC district, we need to take steps to bring credibility and transparency to the decisions that affect schools. If teachers’, parents’ and community members’ voices are heard; if the system is based on trust and collaboration; if the entire community shares responsibility for educating our children; if we have stability, resources and a shared vision of what we expect from our public schools—then teachers and students will succeed.

Conversations have centered around the merits of mayoral control of school districts for years now. And in some cases, like in Chicago and Boston, some degree of mayoral control works. With the proper oversight and accountability, as well as the involvement of a highly functioning school board and an engaged community, these kinds of relationships can work. But perhaps most importantly, what sets those school districts apart from other mayorally controlled districts, what really makes them work, is the strong relationship between the mayor and the school board.

School boards cannot exist in a vacuum. They need to be accessible and have access to all the resources in their communities. This is where mayors come in. In strong mayor-school board collaborations, like we’ve seen in Chicago and Boston, the mayor empowers the school board by providing resources to them that they would not otherwise have access to. But the school board is critical so that the community does have input into the schools.

Mayors can bring access – to public works, to the community, to city agencies – that school boards and school districts simply cannot command on their own. Not to mention the political muscle that mayors can wield. And it is up to our school boards to engage and enlist mayors so that they can be better governors of our schools.

But we must also admit that our school boards are not perfect. There are school districts – urban, suburban and rural – that are struggling. They face trials and hurdles that are daunting to even the stoutest of hearts. And it is the challenge of those school boards to first admit their flaws, and then look inside to see what can and must be changed. By enlisting the help of their state school boards association, NSBA, and the Key Work of School Boards, they can take a step towards improvement. But it is just one step . . . the next step is to reach out to the community – and in our urban districts, to the mayor – for the assistance that only they can bring.

We must also understand that our mayors are not perfect either. They face myriad challenges that do not include school governance. But when school boards and mayors work together, harnessing the power that each possesses – school boards with their intimate knowledge of how our schools are run and mayors with their political clout and access to resources – is unstoppable.

It is truly through these unique urban partnerships between the mayor and the school board that increasing student achievement for all of our students, even those in our most challenged districts, will become a reality.

In many cities, including Chicago, mayoral control is the answer for turning around schools. In Chicago and other cities, the leadership of the mayor has rallied the whole community around the schools. The mayor has built support from the business and community leaders, and has provided resources from the police, health officials and other departments.

Mayoral control also clearly defines accountability. One person is in charge. If the schools succeed, the mayor gets the credit. If they don’t, the mayor takes the blame. In districts run by boards, the accountability isn’t as clear. For cities that need to take bold action to improve their schools, creating a clear line of accountability to one person is an important step in turning around the schools.

Mayoral control isn’t the solution in every city. But it is an important tool to consider in cities that need to make dramatic improvements in their schools.