Clarence N. Stone, George Washington University
Testimony on the DC Public Education Reform Amendment Act of 2002
February 13, 2007

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Public Hearing on Bill 17-001 "District of Columbia Public Education Reform Amendment Act of 2007"

Before Vincent C. Gray, Chairman, Committee of the Whole

Good morning Mr. Chairman, my name is Clarence Stone. I am a Research Professor of Public Policy and Political Science at George Washington University. In addition, from 1993 to 1998, I was Principal Investigator for an eleven-city study titled Civic Capacity and Urban Education. The study was funded by the National Science Foundation. Professor Jeffrey Henig, who testified before this committee two weeks ago, was the Co-Principal Investigator for the project. He was also the principal researcher for the Washington, DC, part of the study. I have read his testimony and endorse the advice he has rendered.

Let me come right to the point of my testimony. As a stand-alone matter, it is not clear that the choice between an elected school board and a system under the mayor's direction makes much difference. The important things are the actions that accompany a decision about school governance. Mayoral control is no silver bullet, nor is the election of a reform-minded school board. A few years back, the Commonwealth of Virginia changed state law to allow local jurisdictions to switch from appointed to elected school boards. Many places chose to make the change, but to my knowledge there is no evidence to indicate that this change made a difference. Some individuals have expressed the view that the shift was a mistake.

Altering governance structure can be a catalyst for change, but other factors are probably more important, especially for sustaining reform. The risk in relying on an elected school board is that it cannot bring about instant change, and it may be voted out of office before it has a chance to acquire the insider knowledge needed to make real change. It is not even clear that board members, on their own, are well positioned to gain the broad and deep understanding of the system needed for reform. Mayoral leadership also runs the risk of public disappointment that high-visibility change is not fast enough, and city hall can also lack depth of understanding. The intricacies of running a school system are not quickly mastered.

It is important to ask why a new cast of players or a change in governance structure by itself makes so little difference. The answer lies in the nature of education and the issue of who really matters. At its core, education is about children and their families and about teachers and principals. If you cannot align these four factors constructively, then you have lost. It does not matter if you construct new buildings, put in a fresh curriculum, end social promotion, change the school calendar, or contract out multiple services - it will amount to little. Better managed schools systems do not necessarily produce better academic performances. Lasting education reform is not a top-down matter.

Here are my recommendations:

1. Put in place resources and an organized structure to see that parents in lower-income areas are organized and engaged. Too often in urban school districts, the schools serving poorer communities have been the places where the weak and inexperienced teachers are placed and the lackluster and burnt-out principals are put. Parents are the best line of defense against such practices. That is why sub-par teachers and principals don't last long in middle-class communities.
2. Go over the collective-bargaining agreement and eliminate every provision that stands in the way directly or indirectly of the placement and retention of good principals and teachers in schools serving lower-income neighborhoods. If the mayor's office cannot do this, then the battle is at least half lost from the beginning. If the mayor is not willing to take on such tough challenges, then there is not much point of putting that office in charge. If it is a barrier, embedded privilege has to be tackled.
3. Expand and upgrade the quality of pre-K child care to make the most of early childhood development. The mayor's responsibility in education is much broader than K-12. For those eager to see what contracting out (particularly to the nonprofit sector) might yield, this would be a good area for testing its capacity to produce significant results.
4. Expand and upgrade the quality of after-school programs. Enlist the recreation department, the library system, museums, the voluntary sector, and anyone else who can help create a youth culture that has a healthy dose of adult involvement and that is able to move youth toward the acceptance of adult responsibilities. The mayor's opportunity to improve education extends well beyond the official bounds of the school system. Consider why secondary education is harder to improve than elementary education, and incorporate that consideration into a broad plan of action for youth. As adolescents become more involved in peer-group activities, the influence of the classroom may diminish. Community plays an increasing role. Therefore it is well to bear in mind that the mayor can be an education leader without controlling the school system, and, even if the mayor has direct responsibility for schools, his leadership role in education is wider than that.
5. Pay particularly close attention to the training, professional development, and placement of principals. They are the squad commanders who will determine on the ground how the campaign for school reform is waged.

The final thing I would say is to beware of razzle-dazzle, quick-fix solutions. To speak bluntly, this means to be careful about excessive reliance on bright young aides, particularly those who bring an abundance of largely untested ideas onto the scene, who are impatient about building for the long haul, and who lack familiarity with the distinct features of the District of Columbia as a civic community.

When big challenges confront us, we tend to turn to executive leadership. However, by now we should know to be wary of unchecked executive power and of the staff who sometimes exercise it. Here, then, is a place where the city council and the board of education can play a vital oversight and questioning role.

As then Mayor-elect Fenty was making his rounds talking to incumbent mayors about school reform, I would have felt much better if I had also read about his staff-designate talking to Robert Sexton, head of the Prichard Committee in Kentucky; Ellen Guiney, Executive Director of the Boston Plan for Excellence (the nonprofit intermediary that has been a close partner with Superintendent Payzant); and Susana Navarro, Executive Director of the El Paso Collaborative for Academic Excellence. They, not mayors, are the seasoned veterans of school reform. They head organizations with long records of work in the trenches. They know that it is foolhardy to isolate themselves from those inside the established system. It is helpful to know what pitfalls have snared reformers in the past. Veterans of school reform don't make the mistake of thinking they can do it on their own, without tapping into the established channels of experience.

Sexton, Guiney, and Navarro head organizations that connect professional educators with those in the community, both at the grass-roots level and the grass-tops level. In his testimony, Jeffery Henig said this, and it bears repeating:

What the District needs first and foremost is a strong cross-sector and sustainable constituency (including business, parents, foundations, all segments of local government, and voters on both sides of the Park and both sides of the Anacostia River) willing and able to keep education support and effectiveness high on the agenda even in the face of competing demands.

I endorse this statement wholeheartedly, and would add not to forget about education professionals. They are essential allies. Some have valuable insights and profound commitments. If you look closely at the Boston experience with mayoral "control," what you find is that Mayor Menino provided political protection for Superintendent Payzant and Ellen Guiney of the Boston Plan to work on the nitty gritty. The mayor took the heat but stayed out of the details. The Prichard Committee in Kentucky is independent of the state government, heavily funded by business but with a staff and a mission squarely fixed on working with educators as the organization defends and advances a reform agenda. It has had enough success to be invited into places like Cincinnati and New Orleans to work on such matters as increasing parent engagement.

El Paso's Collaborative has on its board the superintendents of the area's three urban school districts, the mayor of El Paso, the county executive, the head of the Greater El Paso Chamber of Commerce, the head of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the president of the community college, and the lead organizer of EPISO (the El Paso Interreligious Sponsoring Organization - the area's major community- and faith-based organization). The chair of the Collaborative Board is Dr. Diana Natalicio, the President of the University of Texas at El Paso. She provides the base of organizational stability and civic prestige that enable Susan Navarro and her staff to apply their expertise and their commitment to the mission of school reform. Kentucky's Prichard Committee, the Boston Plan for Excellence, and the El Paso Collaborative-all three are sturdy efforts, typically in place for 20 or more years. And they have made a difference.

Every community is different, but I suggest that one of the lessons transferable from city to city is about the value of the nonprofit sector. That is an important place to build an institution with a broad but unmixed mission of promoting educational advancement. One of the most important acts of leadership a mayor can perform is to head a campaign to create a heavy-weight education intermediary and that means seeing that it has ample resources. Once established, it would not be an arm of the mayor's office, but should be linked effectively with the school system, with various parts of the city government, and with multiple levels and sectors of the community. Some modest efforts are in place now, but they need to operate on a larger scale.

Chief executives do not have to be "in charge" in order to lead. I offer the example of former Governor James Hunt. A few years back as North Carolina's chief executive, Governor Hunt played the key role when that state launched its Smart Start program. This was a government-initiated but autonomous nonprofit with a mission of improving the capacity of local communities to provide top quality programs for pre-school child development.

Such initiatives may not have the-slash-and-burn appeal of privatization, but they could be a key to sustained reform. As Jeffrey Henig has said, school reform is not a dash; it's a marathon. It would be good to prepare for a long-term effort. That has less splash than putting everything into a mayoral basket, but there is much to be said for spreading the responsibility for educational improvement. I close with the metaphor of a chess match. Prevailing in the challenge to improve education is not a matter of identifying and using a key piece; it is a matter of orchestrating the movements of multiple pieces. That is better done with a mayor, than by a mayor.

Thank you for inviting my testimony.