John W. Hill, Federal City Council
Testimony on the District of Columbia Public Education Reform Amendment Act of 2007
February 20, 2007

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Testimony submitted by

John W. Hill, Chief Executive Officer, Federal City Council

Before the Committee of the Whole

Council Chambers
Tuesday, February 20, 2007, 1:00 PM

Good afternoon, Chairman Gray and members of the Committee of the Whole. My name is John Hill, and I am the Chief Executive Officer for the Federal City Council. I am grateful for the opportunity to appear before you on a panel with my colleagues from The Greater Washington Board of Trade and the DC Chamber of Commerce to give testimony on Bill 17-1, the District of Columbia Public Education Reform Amendment Act 0f 2007.

Today, I come before the District Council representing the Federal City Council. The Federal City Council established in 1954 is composed of and financed by over 200 of the region's top business, professional, educational, and civic leaders. As an organization we have had a long standing interest in improving education in the District.

We urge you to declare a public school state of emergency and to support the drastic reforms that are needed to educate the 55,000 students who are now dependent upon a system that is clearly very badly broken.

Across the board, we are failing to educate our children. Seven out 0f ten fourth graders in our schools are reading below basic levels, and more than five out 0f ten are failing t0 learn basic math requirements. In eighth grade, again, more than half of our students are failing to meet basic reading and math requirements. These statistics place us significantly below the national average and behind other major urban districts such as New York City, Houston, and Boston - all of which are districts that dwarf the size of our school system. We are graduating only four out of ten of our students from high school within five years, much less from post-secondary institutions. As a result, we are putting at risk a large number of children who will grow up facing obstacles to finding well-paying jobs and other opportunities. Our children are able and willing to learn, but they are doomed t0 failure by the public school system now in place.

This is unacceptable, and it is wrong.

The fundamental failings of our public schools are not new. In 1989, the Federal City Council - at the request of the DCPS School Board and Superintendent and with strong support from then Mayor Marion Barry - convened the D.C. Committee 0n Public Education (COPE), comprised of 64 individuals representing the parents, churches, academic institutions, and business community. In its report back to residents and elected officials, COPE found that our public school students were performing roughly in the 40th percentile or below in terms of meeting basic skill levels in reading and math. Since then, you can imagine the number of students who have passed through our school system and been placed at a severe disadvantage.

Seven years later, in 1996, the District of Columbia Financial Responsibility and Management Assistance Authority found similar results, reporting more than 60 percent of District students scoring below the national average in reading and math and 40 percent of high school students dropping out or leaving the system in the early 1990s.

Ten years later, we continue to bemoan our inability to provide a quality education t0 our children. The time for incremental change and half-measures is over. It is time to realize that bold steps are needed to bring accountability and results to public schools.

We cannot ignore the opportunity before us to turn the ship around for the 55,000 children who are in our public school system today and the many more who are to come. Our school system is in a state of emergency. No where else in our city would we allow the lives of 55,000 residents to be doomed to failure, particularly where the consequences are so dire. Children who do not learn to read by fourth grade are more likely to be underemployed and face incarceration 0r even death. Our response to them cannot be to maintain the status quo.

We can debate the types of specific reform policies that could be pursued in the many different facets of the school system that affect the instruction and achievement of students. In truth, there are many parts of the system that deserve attention, including facilities management, principal and teacher quality, curriculum, school-based health, or other important areas. At the end of the day, the end goal must be to eliminate the achievement gap for students in our public schools and give them the best opportunities for them to succeed in life. Many of our students already reach success, but they do so in spite of the problems in our school system. Our students success should no longer be left to chance.

Now is the time for bold steps forward. Reforming the governance structure in our school system is essential to implementing the necessary reforms that will immediately help improve student performance but also be sustainable over time. Mayor Adrian Fenty's proposal to align accountability and performance of the schools under his leadership is exactly the right approach. We believe this will translate into stronger and more effective leadership from the top down, streamlined accountability and responsibility, a sense of urgency to move forward with major reforms, and better coordination between the school system and the rest of the District government.

Leadership is the key ingredient to saving our school system. Under the Mayor's proposal, leadership is streamlined, clear, and direct. The Council is also given an appropriate share of oversight and budgetary authority to ensure that we get results for our children. Leadership from the top is necessary if we are to attract and retain the quality of leaders we want in our school administration and in our classrooms.

Aligning responsibility for schools under the Mayor will provide a Chancellor the freedom to lead the system through the difficult and important job of reform, without the interference of politics and without having to respond to multiple "bosses". The Mayor's job should be to insulate the Chancellor from politics, focus the Chancellor's energies 0n educational improvements, and ultimately hold the Chancellor accountable for his or her efforts. This is the kind 0f leadership that the school system needs-leadership without distraction and with a sharp focus on results.

The idea of Mayoral control is not new. In the COPE report cited earlier, the working group recognized the need to align accountability and responsibility with a single entity. COPE saw two potential solutions. One was to give the school system complete autonomy to run the schools, determine allocation of resources, and t0 generate its own resources with separate taxing authority. The alternative was to place control of the school system with the Mayor so that accountability, performance, and resources were aligned under one entity. More than 15 years later, it seems clear that this latter approach holds the most promise for bringing needed reforms.

We know that this approach is beginning to work in the other major urban jurisdictions that have placed schools under the authority 0f the Mayor. One reason for this, we believe, is that the streamlining of authority under the city's top elected leader has made it easier for school superintendents to do their jobs. In the District, we have replaced superintendents once every 2.4 years, making it no wonder that we have been unable to sustain reform further down into the system. Prior to mayoral control, Chicago, New York City, and Boston all experienced a similar turnover. Today, these cities are able to attract school leaders and are reporting significant differences in their willingness to stay on for a longer period of time.

As a result, these cities are also seeing preliminary improvements in student achievement. Boston, for instance, has shown dramatic gains in reading proficiency among high school students, particularly for African American students. In Chicago, average scores in reading and mathematics have increased for students in elementary through high school grades. In New York City, almost 60 percent of students are now at or above basic reading levels, improving at a rate surpassing all other urban school jurisdictions. While these are all preliminary results, they are encouraging, given the size of these school districts and the challenges faced by urban school systems. This is the direction that the District should be headed.

In the late 1990s, the Control Board also studied the newly implemented Chicago Public School model of mayoral control over the school system. Our hope was to get to that model in the structure that was developed. At the time, Congress was taking management responsibilities over major agencies away from the sitting Mayor so the model could not be fully implemented.

Had we been able to do that we might not be here today discussing Mayor Fenty's governance proposal. It would have already been a reality.

It is a legitimate question for one to ask whether there is anything inherent in mayoral control that improves student achievement. Based on what we are seeing in other urban areas that have adopted this model, the answer is yes. We believe that mayoral control is working because it provides direct accountability for how students are educated, creates an environment where stable top leadership can focus 0n the management of schools, allows for reforms to move forward quickly, and ensures that other government agencies are coordinating their roles with the efforts of the school system.

Giving the Mayor responsibility for the school system is not the only step needed to reform our system, but it is the first step needed. It is critical and essential. With the education of 55,000 children at stake, we cannot afford to study this much longer, and we cannot afford t0 be fearful of change. To be clear, the situation of our school system demands change.

In summary, we ask the Council to declare a state of emergency for our schools and to take action on the Mayor's legislation early this year. The Federal City Council strongly supports the legislation. We support the Mayor's leadership on this issue and your decision to make this the Council's first order of major business this year.

We ask that you seize this opportunity to put your energy into improving the education of our children. Your leadership will determine whether we succeed or fail in turning our school system around and improving the lives of children served in our public schools. While there are many parts to this bill, we believe it is important that the Council act on the bill in a comprehensive manner and settle the governance and leadership issue first.

Thank you again for this opportunity to testify before you. I am available to take any questions you might have.