The Education Mayor: Improving America's Schools

9. Mayorally Governed School Districts as Laboratories of Democracy

187 C H A P TE R NINE Mayorally Governed School Districts as Laboratories of Democracy Our founding fathers set up the states as laboratories of democracy. That was a phrase used by James Madison and by other founders. And in so many ways, they are. I used to say when I was a governor I was much more proud of being the second state to do something than to be the first state to do something, because if we were the second state to do something it meant we were paying attention to the laboratories and we weren’t embarrassed to take somebody else’s good idea if it would help our people. I think today, more than any other single group of people, the mayors embody that spirit. —President Bill Clinton (White House 1998) FROM MAYORS WHO ARE IMPROVING STUDENT PERFORmance to those maintaining fiscal discipline and raising the profile of public education in their cities, the last decade has witnessed the rise of new-style mayors who are changing the face of urban education in the United States. The question for the future is: How will other cities learn from this first wave of mayoral control? On the basis of successes such as Boston and Chicago, and failures such as Detroit and Washington, how can mayors best help their city schools? As the last chapter illustrated, most U.S. mayors still find themselves isolated from their cities’ school systems. In this chapter we review the major findings of our study and discuss the implications of these findings for the future of the relationship between mayors and schools. As we have done throughout the book, we ground ourselves in the empirical results of our analysis. We do not advocate generally for all mayors to assume control of their cities’ schools. Indeed, our results show that 188 CHAPTER NINE under certain conditions mayors may not find themselves in a favorable position to assume leadership. What we do argue for is the careful consideration of the available empirical evidence in determining the path of urban governance and education reform. We believe the findings of our study can inform policy debates. We have considered the relationship between mayoral control and student achievement, financial, staffing, and public confidence outcomes. Summarizing the crossdistrict and multiyear analysis of achievement, we find: • Even after factoring in strong structural forces such as poverty and a persistent racial achievement gap, moving from an old style of governance regime to a new, integrated governance framework will lead to statistically significant, positive gains in reading and mathematics, relative to other districts in the state (chapter 4). • Mayor-led integrated governance is attempting to raise up the lowestperforming schools in the district, while at the same time avoiding a “brain drain” by improving schools at the top of the distribution as well (chapter five). • In the case of Chicago, mayoral control provided a common structure for systemwide change. It facilitated curricular and instructional coherence by holding all schools to common standards of student achievement. At all levels, it focused district and school actors on a common goal and gave them the mechanisms to intervene and improve instruction (chapter six). • New-style mayors are becoming more strategic in prioritizing their resource allocation and management. The data suggest that mayorcontrolled districts focus on fiscal discipline by containing labor costs and reducing their bureaucratic spending (chapter seven). • Mayors in integrated governance systems are more likely to stress accountability and outcome-based performance goals for the city’s school districts. They are also more likely to advocate for a stronger city role in managing the school system (chapter eight). Having done our best in the first eight chapters to lay out the theory behind and evidence in support of mayor-led integrated governance, in this final chapter we discuss the factors that may mediate the success or failure of mayoral control. The chapter is organized into three sections. We first identify several prerequisites that must be in place before mayoral control can become a possibility . If these prerequisites are not met, mayoral control will not be an attractive policy option. Second, we discuss the importance of timing and partnership in determining mayors’ likelihood of success. Finally, we conclude Mayorally Governed Districts as Laboratories 189 with suggestions for future lines of research and final thoughts on the future of mayors and schools in the United States. THE CONTEXT FOR SUCCESSFUL MAYORAL CONTROL We...