Guest Post: Diane Ravitch on Mayoral Control

Betsy Gotbaum has reached out to experts around the city and asked for their opinions on the future of mayoral control in New York City. Our first guest post in this series comes from Diane Ravitch.

Diane Ravitch is a historian of education. She is Research Professor of Education at New York University
and the author of many books. Her first book, Great School New York City The Wars: 1805-1973, was a history of the New York City public schools.

Mayoral Control of the Public Schools: Should It Be Renewed?
By Diane Ravitch

In June 2009, only eight months from now, the law handing control of the New York City public schools will sunset. If the State Legislature does nothing, the old Board of Education will be re-established. As time goes by, the Legislature will be under increasing pressure either to renew the law—handing total control of the system over to the next mayor, whoever he or she may be—or to revise the current governance structure.

Many claims have been made for the success of the current system of mayoral control, but consider the following facts.

*First, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (tests administered by the federal government) reported last fall that students in New York City made no significant gains from 2003 (when the Bloomberg-Klein reforms were implemented) through 2007. The federal tests found no gains in 4th grade reading, 8th grade reading, or 8th grade mathematics for black students, white students, Hispanic students, or lower-income students. Only in 4th grade math did New York City children make significant gains, but these were thrown into question because of the unusually high proportion of students (25%) who were given accommodations, more than in any other city and twice as much as NYC had previously claimed. The NAEP tests are considered the gold standard of the testing industry.

*Second, the education budget has soared since the mayor took control, from $12.5 Billion to $21 Billion. At the same time, New York City public schools continue to have the largest classes of any district in the state. Of course, salaries for teachers and principals are up. But only a careful accounting can explain how costs went up so rapidly while achievement remained stagnant. That accounting has not occurred.

Advocates of the current governance system would have us believe that mayoral control is the best way to reform urban education. But in other cities, mayoral control has proven to be irrelevant to achievement gains. Cleveland and Chicago have mayoral control, and their schools perform near the bottom of the NAEP charts.

Charlotte, North Carolina, and Austin,Texas, are the highest-performing cities on NAEP, and they do not have mayoral control of their public schools.Most people are under the impression that mayoral control of the public schools is a new idea in New York City. In fact, this is not true. In an essay that I wrote for the Gotbaum Commission on the history of school governance, I showed that New York City public schools were controlled by the mayor from 1873 to 1969. During that period, the mayor of the City of New York appointed every single member of the central Board of Education. (http://pubadvocate.nyc.gov/advocacy/schools/ravitch.html)

However, from 1969 to 2002, the Legislature established a decentralized school system, with 32 community school districts and 32 community school boards. The central board during that time consisted of seven members, five appointed by the borough presidents and only two appointed by the mayor.

Prior to 1969, the mayor appointed the school board, which served a set term and did not serve at the pleasure of the mayor. This central board was an independent agency, whose members appointed the City Superintedent and who were expected to be watchdogs for the public.

In the current arrangement, the mayor has total control over the schools. What is unusual about the current system of mayoral control is that there are no checks and balances. The mayor has unchecked control of the public schools, their budget, their policies, their appointments, their curriculum, their programs. If he gets an idea, he doesn’t need anyone’s approval to do whatever he wants. The mayor’s Department of Education has no checks and balances. Decisions are made behind closed doors and announced as final without any public discussion or review.

A hallmark of this administration has been its award of huge no-bid contracts on a scale never seen before in the public school system. Comptroller William Thompson has reported that the Department of Education has to date awarded over $340 million in no-bid contracts. This is simply unprecedented. In the allegedly bad old days of the Board of Education that was disbanded in 2002, no-bid contracts had to be explained and defended by public officials in public hearings. That is no longer the case. The DOE can award such contracts to any group that catches their fancy.

A public agency that can act precipitously without public review and without any checks and balances lacks accountability. A public agency that can award hundreds of millions of dollars in no-bid contracts without any public review lacks accountability.

As someone who has studied and written about the New York City public school system for more than four decades, it is my hope that the State Legislature will seek to accomplish three goals when it takes up the matter of governance.

*First, it should restore an independent Board of Education, one that operates with the maximum amount of transparency and accountability, where public discussion and public participation is the norm, not the exception. The members of that board should be appointed by the Mayor, or by some combination of the Mayor, the Borough Presidents and the City Council.

*Second, it should create some institutional mechanism in which parents can be involved in what happens to their children. I am not a fan of elected local school boards, as history has shown in this city that too few people vote and locally elected school boards sometimes became too political (and sometimes corrupt) in their award of contracts and their hiring practices. There should be a way to involve parents by building on community education councils and parent associations, giving parents a voice in the school system, without creating agencies that might misuse public funds.

*Third, the Legislature should create a professional, independent agency to audit test scores and graduation rates. At present, no one can feel any confidence about either test scores or graduation rates because there are so many self-interested public officials claiming credit for “historic gains” that turn out to be illusory on closer examination.

These goals are intertwined. When the school system is controlled by one elected official, there is a temptation to “hype” the scores, as we have seen in the past few years. The best way to assure accurate information about whether the school system is making progress is to establish an independent auditing agency—one whose reputation does not rest on whether scores go up or down--to verify what is happening in the schools.

The citizens of New York City have been very fortunate to have Betsy Gotbaum as our watchdog during this era of unlimited, unchecked mayoral control of the public schools. In light of the fact that there is no Board of Education and that parents have no voice, the citizens of this city needed an advocate, and Gotbaum has ably played that role.

But the Public Advocate’s oversight is not enough. We need a school system that is run by education professionals, that encourages open discussion and public review, that is accountable to parents and the public on a regular basis—not just once every four years—and whose results are transparent and accurate.

Making those changes will be a major challenge for the State Legislature in 2009.

Comments

[Whistleblower66]

The no-bid scam is not only happening in NYC DOE. It is a state-wide problem that affects both state and federal taxpayers.

The State legislature and Inspector General's Office have been unwilling to investigate the massive amounts of no-bid contracts and fraud. See story below.

I am a concerned taxpaying citizen with a small family business. NYS is not following procurement law and is allowing no-bid contracts from preferred vendors (either paybacks, kickbacks or vendors that the state has an obligation to fund i.e. charities, foster care, healthcare, universities) without any oversight. The state agencies are bypassing the bid process and no-bid contracts are being awarded at supracompetitive prices of multiple times market price. We have contacted the NYS inspector general's office and NYS comptroller's office about this problem.

The NYS Inspector General's Office replied that contracts reimbursed by Federal money (including contracts paid for by Social Security money, Medicare and Medicaid) were not required to be put out for bid and no price comparisons need to be made. These contracts are being awarded to "preferred" vendors at multiple times competitive rates and are being reimbursed by taxpayer money including money coming from Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The Inspector General's statement runs counter to NYS procurement law and Federal law including OMB 87 which governs the provisions states must follow when receiving federal funds. The Small Business Advocacy Task force addressed this problem in 1987 saying that Federal and State involvement in private enterprise where the government manipulates markets is a serious problem. We are a small business, we pay taxes and the State is blocking off markets for their own benefit, charging supracompetitive prices and undermining ours and other small businesses.

After trying to destroy small business, NYS then asks us to subsidize these no-bid contracts at inflated prices. We find this situation very disturbing as a small business and taxpayer. We want an investigation into these procurement processes.

[John617]

Very nice site!