The confetti has barely finished falling and the last of the 15,000 guests are still trickling out of Adrian Fenty’s lavish inaugural ball, but the mayor is already delivering on the cornerstone promise of his campaign: change. This isn’t your commonplace “more cops on the street” change either, although Fenty has promised that too. Instead, he has announced a comprehensive plan, the D.C. Public Education Reform Amendment Act of 2007, to revive D.C.’s struggling school system. Currently, the Board of Education governs D.C. schools. Fenty’s plan would make the Board a cabinet office under the mayor, renaming it the State Board of Education, and would make the mayor directly responsible for D.C. education. The proposal is necessary to fix the failing D.C. school system and should be passed speedily by the city council and Congress, and embraced by students, parents and teachers alike.
The District’s schools are in desperate need of resuscitation. The school system is one of the worst in the nation. The number of failing schools in D.C. by the standards of No Child Left Behind increased from 80 to 118 this year. Enrollment is down. Only 43 percent of students will graduate from high school in D.C. within five years.
Shifting control to the mayor’s office has proven to be an effective method of improving schools. Fenty is following the model of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who visited D.C. this week to discuss the plan with D.C.’s new leader. After Bloomberg took over the troubled New York City school system in 2002, the schools saw a marked improvement in standardized testing scores, they also received more state funding.
The 48 page legislation takes away some of the school board’s main responsibilities, like distributing funds to schools and managing charter schools. The plan creates a new independent construction authority with a $2.3 billion budget in charge of new building and day-to-day maintenance. This authority will be better suited to handle former Superintendent Clifford Janey’s 15-year modernization plan, which will close or consolidate 19 underenrolled schools and upgrade every other school in the capital. The bill also sets up a single authority for the District’s charter schools: the D.C. Public Charter School Board. The plan also creates the position of an education ombudsman charged with listening to parents’ concerns.
But doesn’t the takeover give too much power to the mayor? Isn’t it undemocratic, shifting power from the directly elected Board to the mayor? No, because though the Board’s responsibilities will be significantly reduced, all of the members will be directly elected when new elections take place in 2009. The Board is currently a mix between elected and appointed officers.
In fact, that Fenty has the final word on education—the bill states he is the authority over the curriculum, operations, budget, personnel and labor negotiations—makes him more accountable to D.C. voters. Fenty’s main campaign pledge was to improve D.C.’s schools, and D.C. residents are free to vote him out if he fails. So, if the schools continue faltering, at least now we have someone to blame.
