Mayoral Control of Schools
Pat Garofalo writes about the case for mayoral control of school systems. The basic idea here is that administration of a city’s schools should, like administration of a city’s police, be the responsibility of the city’s mayor. Obviously, that’s still working within the framework of state and federal law and subject to legislation enacted by a city council and so forth. But the point is that you won’t have a special additional elected body specifically dedicated to the schools.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg talks about this in a hot new interview with the Wonk Room:
I think this is part of a larger issue about getting democracy right in the United States. There was an assumption, at one time, that you could make government more democratic and accountable by, in essence, multiplying the number of elected officials.
In retrospect, I think this was based on flawed logic and faulty assumptions that forgot to account for the fact that people have a limited amount of time they’re realistically going to spend monitoring public officials. If you live in New York City you’re voting for the President of the United States, two United States Senators, one member of congress, the Governor, the state Attorney-General, the state Lieutenant Governor, the state Comptroller, a mayor, a District Attorney, a city Comptroller, a Borough President, and a city council member in addition to a variety of state and local judges. And that’s entirely typical for the United States. Add a school board member into the mix and the situation gets even more out of control.
The result of this sort of process is the absence of meaningful accountability rather than its presence. The result is that special interests—the people with strong self-interested motives to pay attention—wind up exerting wildly disproportionate influence.
Needless to say, special interests get a lot of influence one way or another. But when it comes to a President or a Governor or a Mayor it is realistic to expect the broad mass of people to form a meaningful opinion and register it at the polls. When you keep multiplying offices and diffusing responsibility, you play into the hands of folks looking to game the system and make it hard for voters to understand what’s happening. I think part of the answer is that states should probably adopt unicameral legislatures and consider cutting down on the number of independently elected statewide officials. But cutting down on the quantity and influence of hyper-local electeds and putting responsibility in the hands of visible figures like the mayor and city council is crucial.
27 Responses to “Mayoral Control of Schools”
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April 21st, 2009 at 5:22 pm
And don’t forget State Senator and State Representative. Consolidation under the guise of accountability might pass in a city like New York, though I would be hesitant to assume smaller big cities, namely in the South, would be at all interested in bringing the school board into the mayor’s office, for their modus operandi has been to de-politicize education under the auspice of more testing and standards — the likes of which would be very hard to accomplish in a mayoral office.
April 21st, 2009 at 5:22 pm
The obvious problem with this is with smaller towns. My school district includes five towns, each with their own mayor. So which mayor gets to control the schools? We could divide the school districts, but then some districts would have no high school. So, many high school students would be attending school in another district in which their parents have no voice.
As for voting for too many officials, well, you never had to vote for the Moffat Tunnel Commissioners. Aside from getting into land scandals, I have no idea what those guys did. But I was supposed to vote for them anyway. Fortunately, they got into enough scandals that the commission was disbanded.
April 21st, 2009 at 5:27 pm
Or just have people directly vote on what policies they want, instead of forcing them to pick a representative who may or may not follow through on their promises.
April 21st, 2009 at 5:38 pm
On the flip side, Matt, why should the person running your police be the same person who’s running your water and sewer system, and why should that person be the same person who’s running your schools, etc., etc.? What’s the connection between these various services? And if your argument about consolidating power is correct, then why not just have it all run out of Albany? Or DC? Obviously, there’s going to be some set of middle-ground solutions for which it’s just not possible to say that one is objectively preferable to the other, and that includes mayor control of the schools.
Besides, the Times had a great op-ed a couple of weeks ago demonstrating that Bloomberg’s claimed educational success is all based on utterly cooked numbers. He’s not doing any worse than before, but the case that he’s doing any better is pretty much nonexistent.
April 21st, 2009 at 5:48 pm
anonymous says: Or just have people directly vote on what policies they want, instead of forcing them to pick a representative who may or may not follow through on their promises.
That works so wonderfully well, especially when you can barely get 50% of voters to turn out for a presidential election. Most local elections get under 30%, so you end up with the most extreme folks driving the bus.
April 21st, 2009 at 5:56 pm
To take this argument to it’s logical conclusion, why not just elect an all-powerful king every 12 years. With those stakes, I’m sure turnout would be near total.
April 21st, 2009 at 6:03 pm
“Or just have people directly vote on what policies they want, instead of forcing them to pick a representative who may or may not follow through on their promises.”
This must be why California is a veritable democratic paradise.
April 21st, 2009 at 6:14 pm
The flipside of Matt’s point is that when a single local elected executive is responsible for EVERYTHING, it’s pretty hard to hold him or her accountable for any specific thing. If you like what Bloomberg’s doing with, say, public safety and housing but don’t like his education policies, how do you hold him accountable? You can’t cast half a vote. On the other hand, a school board subject to being voted out of office can be held accountable.
I don’t think single executive responsibility is an issue for standard municipal services like water, sewer, paving the roads, even public safety. In these areas, what matters most [though not exclusively] is simple managerial competence and that tends to be consistent across these various services. Therefore, there’s not a particularly compelling need to make accountability determinations by specific service.
Education, on the other hand, is much more ideological and subject to wider policy differences. For that reason [and others, such as trying to keep political meddling to a minimum], it has historically been treated differently. Given the increasing level of de facto state and federal control, however, this is gradually becoming less and less important. Increasingly local boards are left with the responsibility of fiddling at the margins of real educational issues. Local control is become more and more illusory. In some states, it’s an excuse to deflect blame from the state level — where the real policy is set — onto hapless local volunteers.
April 21st, 2009 at 6:15 pm
Isn’t this analysis backwards? I thought the whole point of school boards was to insulate the mayor from any political accountability for the school system. After all, someone’s always unhappy with the school system, so it gives every challenger an opening.
I also thought the research showed that the most important thing was that the governance system changed, not that it went to any one specific system.
April 21st, 2009 at 6:19 pm
“But cutting down on the quantity and influence of hyper-local electeds and putting responsibility in the hands of visible figures like the mayor and city council is crucial.”
Has Bloomberg done such a spectacular job running New York City that you want to thrown another enormous responsiblity on his plate?
April 21st, 2009 at 6:22 pm
“I think part of the answer is that states should probably adopt unicameral legislatures and consider cutting down on the number of independently elected statewide officials.”
How about you just cut to the chase and endorse a return to the machine politics of yesteryear?
Mike
April 21st, 2009 at 6:30 pm
NYC has mayoral control of schools, and they’re run by Joel Klein, a former prosecutor. Ask any NYC Teaching Fellow – hell, make that any NYC teacher – how well that system has worked out.
April 21st, 2009 at 7:29 pm
How about you just cut to the chase and endorse a return to the machine politics of yesteryear?
YOu realize, of course, that one of the problems with big-city elected schoolboards is that board members use their position to create their own little patronage machines, right?
April 21st, 2009 at 7:31 pm
I’m with you part of the way, MY.
In Michigan last year, we voted for President/VP, Senator, U.S. Representative, State Representative, members of the State Board of Education, Regents of the U of M, Trustees of MSU, and Governors of Wayne State U. In Oakland County, we voted for a County Executive, Prosecutor, Sheriff, Clerk, Treasurer, Drain Commissioner (?!), and County Commissioners. Then there were the various state, county, and local judges. In the off-year elections we also vote for Governor/LG, Attorney General, Secretary of State, and State Senators.
Now, WTF are we doing voting for the governing officials of the universities? Those are known in Michigan as the ultimate party-line positions – people vote for them based on how they identify at a point in time (unless one of the parties comes up with a famous name to grab some votes). How in the hell am I supposed to judge whether so-and-so has done a good job as a U of M regent? I think I’d also get rid of separate voting for Sheriff, Clerk, Treasurer, and Drain Commissioner. I kind of like having separate mandates for Prosecutor and AG (AG and Governor have been from different parties more often than not over the past 30 years, and it’s been a useful check, I think – imagine if the U.S. AG had been elected independently of GWB).
As far as schools go, you’d have to completely realign the school districts. Just in my area, there are Birmingham Public Schools, Bloomfield Hills Schools, and Pontiac Schools. Of the three cities with those names, only Pontiac is completely contained within its respective district, and Bloomfield Township (where I live) is divided among the three districts. Similar situations exist throughout Oakland County and the rest of the Detroit area.
In any event, here in the suburbs, where the big issue is whether or not the wingnuts can take over the schools and start teaching creationism (not really an issue here in the last 10 years, but still), I’d be opposed to making a vote for City Commissioner or Township Supervisor equivalent to a vote for the local Board of Education.
April 21st, 2009 at 11:25 pm
Well, it’s not too hard to see where this one is going. “Reform” here means breaking the teachers unions and using cheap “aides” to run mechanized rote-learning programs.
The other kind of reform that is possible is to empower parents and teachers, but in order to do that you don’t need to gather power into the office of the mayor- you need to distribute power into the neighborhoods, families, and classrooms.
Another tip-off is the exaggerated concern about the “special interests”. Matt isn’t talking here about the textbook publishers and computer sellers- a mayor who doesn’t know anything about education isn’t going to tangle with those “experts”. And he isn’t talking about the real estate industry that wants to keep school taxes low- no mayor is going to try to trim the horns of the real estate barons.
No, when Matt is talking about “special interests” he’s referring to teachers and parents. Transfer the powers of the school board to the mayor’s office and those “special interests” will have just as much influence as the rest of us in an election- which is to say, none.
When you get to the basics of the situation, big-city schools have problems because the “powers-that-be” have no intention of letting billion-dollar skyscrapers be taxed enough to pay for good schools. Not rocket science.
So Obama’s education guy wants to make sure those skyscrapers roam tax-free, and is willing to trash out the teachers and parents to do it.
All part of how the Republicans eventually will get back into office.
April 21st, 2009 at 11:28 pm
Or, just extend the DC voucher program, which will allow for lots of different solutions to be tried instead of killing a cheap, effective program. Wait… you guys want to control everyone’s lives. I keep forgetting that.
April 21st, 2009 at 11:33 pm
New York is sui generis. Most school districts track with county lines while cites are typically only a fraction of county land area and some counties having multiple cities. In most places, it’d make more sense to put the school system under the County Commission (which could choose to keep the school board around as an apolitical appointive body).
As for the City of New York, read the charter— its one city cobbled together from several counties-
“An act to unite into one municipality under the corporate name of the City of New York, the various communities lying in and about New York harbor, including the City and County of New York, the City of Brooklyn and the County of Kings, the County of Richmond, and part of the County of Queens, and to provide for the government thereof.”
http://www.nyc.gov/html/nyc100/html/classroom/hist_info/100aniv.html
April 22nd, 2009 at 6:25 am
I think you’re overlooking something, Matt. We live in a pretty grossly inequitable political system. One of the few ways that people with political aspirations can get their foot on the ladder is where there are lots of elected positions. If you eliminate them, you’ll only have political dynasts, celebrities, and the wealthy holding public office.
April 22nd, 2009 at 8:10 am
Isn’t the real argument that we should get rid of all local school boards and run schools from a much larger level – regional, state, or federal. Other countries don’t have the ridiculousness of local school boards. You see it here in Massachusetts – all sorts of horror stories of school boards trying to build a school and getting horribly ripped off because no one has any experience with a large commercial building project.
National curriculum, state construction and teacher contracting, local add-ons.
April 22nd, 2009 at 9:39 am
I’m a former teacher. At one point I worked under a principal who was also the mayor of our town. He was more interested in getting reelected than supporting the teachers, to the detriment of all.
Putting that much control in the hands of someone, one person, with political ambitions is a bad idea.
April 22nd, 2009 at 10:01 am
It appears to me what we are seeking is a system that locates accountability better and more efficiently. As you stated, just seven major cities have full mayoral control of education. There has been nation wide trend to shift more centralized control to a chief elected official e.g., President, Governors and Mayors. This places a greater interest in these central figures making it more difficult to remove them for poor performance or abuses of power in any single sector of their concentrated power. When you keep multiplying areas of responsibility under a single figure you diffuse accountability in any one area and increase opportunities for patronage. Sure this my make for a more stable system, and mitigate against dead-locked disputes, but it also insulates these figures from accountability and removal from office.
East Chicago has had a Strong Mayor system with all of its abuses clearly expressed since the beginning of time. With an unemployment rate hovering above 20%, today 28% of its households, or nearly 40% of the electorate, receive a paycheck from the Mayor. This single fact makes it impossible to remove the Mayor from office using the electoral process – too many workers with their jobs on-the-line will not risk voting against the Mayor no matter how tyrannical his behavior is perceived.
Thus, the only other alternative for removal would be for prosecution of abuses. And yet, with a justice system so fully politicized as we have in the U.S., the Federal prosecutors office has become a barter system between up-stream political agents. At the local level the Federal prosecutors have been relegated to identifying and informing chief executives of discontent in their communities by bringing whistle blower information to the chief and advising the chief on how to proceed. Unless you have a reach into the oval office this alternative is also not realistic.
Based on East Chicago as an example, it appears to me that locating accountability in a strong executive is not the way to go.
Although I generally agree with you about the difficulty for citizens to actually participate in the democratic process in any meaningful and informed way, I think the actual loss of accountability in any single area and the potential for abuses of power far outweigh information overload on the part of the citizen. Granted America lacks a good education system and thus a well informed citizenry, but to propose that America needs structural changes that concentrates more power in a few leaders as the answer is beyond me.
April 22nd, 2009 at 10:13 am
Under mayoral control in New York City, the administrative structure of the Department of Education has changed at least three times in seven-ish years. While there are fewer elected officials under the current “Tweed” structure, there do not seem to be fewer officials in DOE administrative positions, and educational consulting firms have arguably taken on a para-governmental administrative role. Does this restructuring represent the presence or the absence of meaningful accountability for Mayor Bloomberg?
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:16 am
Ironically, in his larger interest of “getting democracy right” Matt wants to do away with the one office that is directly accountable on his long laundry list of people we vote for. He does this by setting up a straw man, the idea that making more offices elected instead of appointed was a mistake, and then proposing that making more offices appointed would be more democratic.
In reality, it doesn’t take a lot of effort to decide who you vote for in most elections- it’s a two-party system. For a lot of other positions, if you’re having trouble deciding, it means it doesn’t matter, for one reason or another, who you vote for.
School boards are different. They govern a taxing district that may cross a variety of jurisdictional and geographical lines, implementing policy for minors who can’t vote at all. If Matt really wants to “get democracy right” he should be working to extend the franchise to children.
But it’s not really about getting democracy right. To the shame of the Democratic Party, it’s about cutting the school budgets because nobody has the guts to cut the war budget.
In contrast, during the Roosevelt years the country built two aircraft carriers, 2500 hospitals, and 45,000 schools.
Would children do any better if they had the vote? It’s hard to see how they could do any worse.
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:47 am
One of the few ways that people with political aspirations can get their foot on the ladder is where there are lots of elected positions.
Ah, but the problem with school boards is that many aspiring politicians view a seat on the school board as a stepping stone and a starting point from which to build their political machines and patronage operations.
Mayoral control isn’t so much an issue for small-town school systems, where there are only a few schools and direct accountability for who does what, but rather a solution for large, unified school districts where voters have less recourse from their school board with respect to the situation in their local school. Since the school board in that case has little accountability and ends up serving more as a springboard for ambitious politicians, it simply adds little value compared to mayoral control. I’m not saying mayoral control solves a lot of the problems caused by large, unified school districts, but the school board, in that case, becomes redundant.
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:42 pm
Serial catowner,
Don’t disagree with anything you said except that Roosevelt built a hell of a lot more than 2 aircraft carriers, 36 Essex Class fast attack carriers alone plus another 130 or so escort and light carriers.
April 22nd, 2009 at 3:45 pm
The system in place before Mayoral control in NYC was a nightmare. The mayor appointed two members of a board, and each of the five Borough heads appointed one member. There was constant jockeying for control of the board, and the schools chancellors never could hold onto the job for more than a couple of years. Terrible.
April 23rd, 2009 at 7:20 am
Tyro: there might be something to what you’re saying with respect to schools. I’d honestly have to analyze the real propensity of this sort of thing on school boards. I was responding to Matt’s more general point about the proliferation of public offices.