Mary Levy
Testimony on the District of Columbia Public Education Reform Amendment Act of 2007
January 30, 2007

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ON BILL 17-0001, "DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA PUBLIC EDUCATION REFORM AMENDMENT ACT OF 2007"

Mary Levy
January 30, 2007

Thank you for inviting me to testify. My experience in the area of the abover-eferenced bill is that I have studied the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) for over 25 years, including the subject of their governance. I have read the history of the school system, and research on public education governance, especially that of mayoral takeovers, and I have some familiarity with governance elsewhere in the country through participation as legal counsel in school finance litigation in several states. I have lived here for 40 years, and my children are both graduates of the DC Public Schools.

A brief description of the legal effects of the legislation, as I understand it:

• The Board of Education as a governing body for DCPS will be abolished, and its powers and functions taken by the Mayor and Council.
• DCPS will become a city agency, operating under the same rules as agencies such as the Police Department or the Department of Health, unless and to the extent that the final version of the legislation explicitly creates exceptions.
• DCPS will operate as a local school district only, with its existing federal grants authority and similar state functions moved to the State Office of Education.
• Facilities construction, renovation and maintenance will be controlled by a separate authority reporting to the Mayor; the authority will make decisions with significant impact on the educational program, such as closing and consolidation of schools, school design, and priorities for repairs and renovation.
• Oversight as well as policy and operations will be in the hands of the Mayor and Council. In its structure, this takeover is more like a state takeover of a local district elsewhere than a mayoral takeover. When a mayor takes over a city school system, the state education department continues to do oversight and retains authority to set rules. When the state itself takes over a school district, power is exercised by the governor, state superintendent, state board and state legislature.
• Constituent problems will be dealt with through an Ombudsman, but also by Council members.

The arguments supporting the takeover, as I understand them, are

• History: Since its inception in 1969 as an elected or mixed elected and appointed body, the Board of Education has never succeeded in improving the schools, a history suggesting that the problem is structural, and not particular to the individuals on the Board.
• Fragmented governance: The existing complex governance structure diffuses responsibility, defeats accountability, and discourages good people from coming to and staying in DCPS. Consolidating responsibility and accountability in the Mayor and Council mean that no one can slough off responsibility.
• Group vs. individual control: Supervision and governance by committee is ineffective in holding the Superintendent and the schools accountable for performance. Groups are inherently too slow and conservative in acting, and lack the focus and consistency to guide a Superintendent effectively. The inertia inherent in the existing, entrenched elements of the school system can only be overcome by an individual who will insist on swift action.
• Urgency: Reforms urgently needed are slowed by the Superintendent's having to gain approval from the Board of Education for many initiatives. The ensuing debate, processes, and resolution of doubts consume too much time.
• Coordinated child service needs: DC government agencies provide services that many DCPS students need to succeed in school, such as health, mental health, and recreation and other out-of-school-time activities, as well as early childhood, postsecondary and adult education. These services cannot be coordinated without direct DC government control of DCPS.
• "Best practices" elsewhere: In cities such as New York City, Chicago, and Boston, mayoral takeovers have been praised as effective.

There are equally rational counter-arguments:

• The part-appointed, part-elected Board has overseen and advanced a number of important improvements, including formulation and adoption of some of the country's most highly rated academic standards, a strong academic assessment system, limits on social promotion, an effective teacher recruitment program, teacher training, a procurement system superior to that of the DC government, and additional initiatives that may soon bear fruit.
• The delays resulting from debate and consultation with the community are an important part of democracy, and bring about better decisions, preventing mistakes caused by haste and lack of important information.
• Much of the fragmentation and consequent lack of accountability in the current system of governance will remain: The District's Chief Financial Officer will continue to control all DCPS fiscal operations and information. Multiple city agencies, including the Police Department, the Attorney General, the Department of Health, and the new facilities authority, will control other school system operations. Congress will continue to hold hearings and issue mandates.
• The Mayor and Council are responsible for so many city functions, and the parents of children are such a small percentage of the electorate that ineffective performance in running DCPS will not result in accountability through elections.
• DC government services in support of children that are controlled by the Mayor are not now well coordinated. Why assume that DCPS services would be?
• Mayoral takeovers in other. cities are not generally correlated with improved academic achievement, according to the research literature, and improved academic achievement has occurred in independent as well as Mayor-controlled school systems. As to the principal examples cited by proponents of the mayoral takeover, New York City has mixed results on test scores, strong criticism from respected sources, and too little time to prove anything. Chicago's test scores at the national level are poor, despite years of mayoral control, and the governance system differs significantly from that proposed in this bill. Boston's system is governed by an appointed Board that appoints the Superintendent. All three have independent oversight and considerable control by state education agencies.

As the two above lists should make clear, I see little basis in these arguments for making a decision on this bill one way or another. Others may see a basis, depending on the weight and credence they assign to these arguments. In my own view, based on my knowledge and experience with the District and DCPS, the decision comes down to two sets of factors - people and structures: (1) whether the individuals - Board or Mayor - make good policy choices and have the capacity to implement them, and (2) whether provisions are added to the legislation to address its weaknesses.

The prediction of individuals' performance is highly speculative. The members of the Board of Education are mostly new, and their collective interaction unknown. The Mayor has not told us what he wants to do, nor does he have a record as an executive. If he and his Chancellor implement the plans we have already adopted with an attitude of respect to parents and communities affected, we can be optimistic. The history of failed reform of the last 18 years tells us that if he and the Chancellor start over with a "new plan" yet again, or do not listen to parents and community, the system will fall into a downward spiral. Quick reform usually entails uniformity (one-size-fits-all), eliminating programs that work as well as those that do not. Bad decisions will send parents, students, teachers and principals to charter schools or the suburbs even more quickly than they are now going.

As to structure, we had best not neglect it, since the structure may outlast the individuals stepping into it by many years. The structural concerns, as I see them, are:

• The Council's role, if it has line item budget authority and the ability to make policy and operating decisions through legislation, is problematic. The potential is strong for politicization of school decisions, for their becoming fodder in dealmaking. And it is questionable, all apart from politicization, whether Council members, with all their state and local responsibilities will have the time and capacity to make well-informed appropriate decisions. Elsewhere, even in cities with mayoral takeovers, city councils do not have line-item budget or policymaking authority.
• The existing conflict of interest, whereby DCPS in its state role oversees itself and its competitors, the charter schools, will not be eliminated, but will be moved to the level of the Mayor. Elsewhere in the country, state and local controls are separate. With the advent of dozens of charter schools as separate Local Education Agencies, the District has become like a state.
• Independent oversight and checks and balances are lacking. Only the Council will have the power of oversight. Information will be created and controlled solely by those operating the system. Elsewhere in the country, state superintendents and state departments of education oversee and exercise considerable power over local districts, whether controlled by school boards or mayors.
• The bill lacks procedures to ensure parent and community input and influence on policy decisions. The law forces parents to turn their children over to public schools for many hours each day; their concerns need to be respected in law as well as in non-binding assurances.
• Continued control of DCPS' day-to-day fiscal operations by the City's CFO will maintain the existing confusion and lack of accountability for financial performance and discourage good superintendents and school system CFOs from coming here. The CFO must have full access to financial information and the ability to investigate and halt payment for cause, but budget and education cost accounting systems and personnel should be the Superintendent's prerogative, as they are everywhere else in the country.
• The facilities authority as described in the bill disconnects facilities decisions from the educational system that the facilities are supposed to serve. Moreover, it could easily become another bureaucracy that slows work and diffuses accountability. Long ago, the District had a similar system. It was changed because it did not serve education.

Some of these concerns could be addressed by amendments to the legislation, for example strong constraints on the Council's authority to intervene in school system operations and policy, public notification and information requirements, and provisions guaranteeing processes for parent and community participation in policy-making. However, there may be no way to resolve the conflict of interest in the Mayor's controlling all DCPS operations as well as those of bodies that are supposed to exercise independent oversight over those operations and over DCPS' competitors, the charter schools. If operating and overseeing the school system are united in the same authority, oversight will almost inevitably be compromised. I hope the Council will carefully consider these issues, abstruse though they may seem, and consider overall structures alternative to both the existing and that of the bill as it now stands.

I have attached some materials based on the research literature, and would be pleased to discuss these with you or your staff at any time. Thank you.

ANALYZING THE MAYORAL TAKEOVER PROPOSAL

Wielders of power and control-who are they?

• Are the lines of responsibility clear?
• How will they be held accountable?
• Will they know what they're doing? Will they have the competence, the knowledge, the time, and the resources to make good, well-informed decisions?
• What problems does the proposed governance structure seek to solve?

Content of education reform proposals-what are they?

• What are the goals?
• One-size-fits-all centralized education model, decentralized locally autonomous schools or something in between?
• Are they evidence-based? Same reforms previously tried? And if so, why should they work this time?

Access for those most affected and most informed: parents, students, teachers, community around schools

• Individual problem-solving and constituent services
• Input on policy and other system-wide decisions

Checks and balances-are they there?

• What protections against corruption, political favoritism, disregard of incompetence?
• Do they go so far as to hamper needed activity?
• Are there conflicts of interest as those running the system are also responsible for oversight?

Structural Effects of Mayoral Control and Their Possible Outcomes

Mayoral Control of Public Schools: Lessons From Other Cities

Mary Levy
Public Education Reform Project,
Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights & Urban Affairs

March 19, 2004

Cities usually cited as examples of new mayoral control are Boston (1992), Chicago (1995), Cleveland (1998), Detroit (1999), Philadelphia (2001) and New York (2003). The following is based on reading and study of the literature on mayoral control.

Limits

Lesson 1: We do not yet know much. Other cities' paths to success and failure may not apply in the context of the District of Columbia

• The history is recent, and limited to a handful of cities.
• Events, mayors, structures, strategies, constituencies and outcomes vary from one city to the next.

Lesson 2: The "trend" to mayoral control is limited. Most cities still have independent elected school boards with their own taxing authority, but the minority with appointed boards has increased.

• Of 62 members of the Council of the Great City Schools, 48 have elected boards, 12 have appointed boards and 2 have a mix.
• Of the 50 elected or part-elected boards, 9 depend for funding on their city or county government.
• Boston, Cleveland and Detroit changed from elected to appointed boards; Chicago, New York and Philadelphia have had appointed boards for years but have recently given their mayors greater powers. Baltimore, which had strong mayoral control, is losing it to the state.

Lesson 3: Nothing inherent in mayoral control leads necessarily to better schools. Researchers agree that:

• Governance arrangements are best viewed as enabling
• The process is not self-executing. The outcomes depend upon multiple choices and factors, not all within governmental control

The Process of Greater Mayoral Control

Lesson 4: The common context in which mayoral control has increased is -

• Large city schools with heavy minority enrollment, low average achievement, fiscal problems and charges of mismanagement
• Years of superintendent turnover, policy churn, public discord, and attempted reforms that have not resulted in system-wide improvement, leading to a loss of confidence in boards and superintendents and the urge to "do something."
• Impetus for change from business, state government, foundations, good-government advocates, especially corporate elites, and a desire to try corporate governance structures
• Racial division and sometimes polarization, with resistance to more mayoral control centered in African-American communities

Lesson 5: Bases for resistance to mayoral control. Many are legitimate and need to be addressed.

• Fear of loss of jobs from cost-cutting, privatization, or bias, particularly where schools have a history as an important source for minority group employment
• Perception of assault on schools as an institution that has served as a particular source of leadership and pride in African-American communities
• Loss of influence and access in a shift from ward-based, school-centered electorates to a city-wide electorate that is larger, less informed and more concerned with competing issues
• Value placed on electoral process and representation
• Suspicion of the motives of those advocating mayoral control, especially business, as less concerned with education than with increased financial and political power through control of the schools
• Fear, often based on experience, that change will not benefit them, and perhaps will not improve schools at all

Lesson 6: Variables in the context. Cities differ in such critical factors as:

• The prior governance structure as elected vs. appointed vs. state controlled
• The level of civic capacity and grassroots activism
• The constituencies supporting or opposing the mayor, their alignments with each other, and their size and influence
• Competing goals and issues for the mayor and other actors and constituencies
• Mayor's own style, tactics, choices and interests
• Role of state government-legislature, governor, department of education

Lesson 7: Mayoral control is variable. Mayors operate. directly and through appointed boards, formally and informally, in varying degrees of control, depending on local politics, laws, and the individual mayor. A mayor's style and interests are important.

• The Mayor appoints the superintendent/CEO in three cities - Chicago, Cleveland and New York. Elsewhere the school board appoints, with varying degrees of mayoral influence.
• Individual mayors, based on personal drive and electoral pressures, may seek to lead reform, choose and then defer to a superintendent/CEO, use schools for patronage and electoral advantage, or avoid involvement. Some mayors seek greater control while others merely accept it, sometimes reluctantly.
• Mayors are limited by electoral concerns, competition for their time and attention, veto points all over the political system, resource availability, the political need for quick results, and the general experience that school improvement is difficult and slow.

Outcomes So Far:

Lesson 8 Student achievement. It is difficult to link changes in governance to improvements in student achievement, though modest increases in test scores have occurred in some cities, and the lowest performing schools have generally improved compared to city averages.

• Boston, Chicago and Cleveland, with the longest history of mayoral control, have improved test scores in both elementary and secondary schools, though their racial achievement gaps remain. All three have-had the benefit of considerable and unusual stability in governance and the superintendency.
• Detroit's scores have gone down.
• The lowest 20% of schools have improved, and have done so more rapidly than their school systems as a whole.

Lesson 9: Finance and management. It is easier to clean up district-level finances and change management practices than to dent student achievement

• City schools under mayoral control have balanced budgets, but had the benefit of previously stronger local economies
• Anecdotal reports indicate improvements to facilities, maintenance, texts and teacher recruitment
• Higher spending on central administration than other cities

Lesson 10: Educational policy and practice.

• Mayors tend to concentrate on measurable results, notably standards and test scores.
• Mayor-controlled systems tend to increase centralization and rely on top-down reform
• Reforms are likely to include higher and more limited promotion standards, focus on low-performing schools including identification and interventions for failing schools, focus on reading and math, and adoption of standards and common curricula
• Higher per pupil spending on instruction and teacher salaries than other cities - but apparently carried over from time predating takeover and more student support staff than other cities.

Lesson 11: Leadership, politics, constituencies, community

• There is no political majority urging a return to school board dominated regimes.
• No different from other cities in the tenure of the mayor or superintendent, but appointed board members have shorter tenures than elected members do
• Mayors tend to appoint loyalists to the school board with the understanding that the CEO is the key person for policy and details. The CEO is a high-level patronage job.
• School boards shift from being forums for public debate, contention, access and constituent services to being more elite, unanimous, and distant.
• Business interests gain while grassroots lose in influence and access. Outcomes for unions and their members vary.

Factors Favoring Success

Political context: The political stars need to be in alignment for greater mayoral control even to be possible, let alone successful in improving schools:

• Committed and skilled leadership by a mayor willing and able to spend substantial amounts of time and political capital
• Willingness on the part of city officials to use scarce resources and preferably a strong local economy
• A stable coalition of supporters of greater mayoral control, especially those constituencies that elect and may re-elect the mayor and that are most influential in the practice of governing the city
• Cooperation between the mayor and the existing school administration
• Local trust in the mayor's leadership and abilities to improve schools
• A grassroots foundation for reform

Policy context and actions:

• Clear and attainable goals
• Appropriate and effective educational policies
• Implementation of policies and plans, and a cadre of competent, committed professionals to
• Accountability of those in control
• Stability of leaders, staff and plans

References 

The presentation above is a summary based on the following:

Michael W. Kirst. "Mayoral Influence, New Regimes, and Public School Governance, CPRE Research Report Series RR049, May 2002, Consortium for Policy Research in Education. www.ecs.org

Kenneth K. Wong & Francis X. Shen. "Do School District Takeovers Work? Assessing the Effectiveness of City and State Takeovers as a School Reform Strategy," The State Education Standard, Spring 2002 (National Association of State Boards of Education), pp. 19-23. www.ecs.org 

Debra Viadero. "Big-City Mayors' Control of Schools Yields Mixed Results," Education Week, Sept. 11, 2002. www.edweek.com

Kenneth K. Wong & Francis X. Shen, "When Mayors Lead Urban Schools," Paper prepared for School Board Politics Conference, Program on Education Policy and Governance, Harvard University, Oct. 2003. www.ecs.org 

Jeffrey R. Henig & Wilbur C. Rich, eds. Mayors in the Middle: Politics, Race, and Mayoral Control of Urban Schools, Princeton University Press (2004)