By J.D. LaRock
February 3, 2003

At the 71st Winter Meeting January 23, mayors once again signaled their concern about the state of public education in America's cities and their commitment to promoting education reform with a luncheon discussion entitled "Mayoral Leadership on Education." More than 300 mayors attended the discussion, which featured a panel presentation from Conference President Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, Long Beach Mayor Beverly O'Neill, and Cleveland Mayor Jane Campbell, Chair of the Conference's Education Committee. The event — part of the Conference's Mayoral Leadership in Education initiative with the Broad Foundation — also featured remarks from Dan Katzir, Managing Director of the Broad Foundation, and Nina Rees, Deputy Undersecretary for Innovation and Improvement at the U.S. Department of Education. Jonathan Alter of Newsweek facilitated a conversation with the mayors who attended the event.

Mayor Menino began by discussing the progress the Boston schools have made since that city moved to a system of mayoral accountability for its school system in the 1990s. Noting that the success of public schools has implications for almost every aspect of a city's well-being, he spoke of the task of improving public schools as "not just something that benefits children, but a broader workforce development issue. And we're glad to be working with the Broad Foundation to develop best practices so that all mayors can improve their schools."

Gap Critical Problems

Dan Katzir spoke of "the gap between the middle class and the poor" as one of the most critical problems in American education today, and raised concerns that the current institutional structures governing school systems in many places are not always up to the task of addressing that problem. "The current management system is simply not getting the job done," said Katzir. "Superintendents are responsible for too many things, and school boards can't do it alone. We need better management, governance, and labor relations. Bold new leadership is critical to improving student achievement. And that change, that leadership, must come from mayors."

That sentiment was echoed by Mayor Campbell, who recounted the difficulties of reforming her city's public schools in the face of competing interests, such as the city's elected school board. "Our school finances were a mess," she said. "The elected school board switched superintendents all the time. At one point, we were paying three superintendents — one who had gone, one who had just been let go, and the one they brought on." She said the situation improved, however, after the Ohio Legislature passed a law giving Cleveland's mayor the authority to appoint school board members. "Our attendance has gone up. We have more work to do, but we-ve reduced the high school dropout rate from 3 out of 4 students to 2 out of 3. The issue is, are you going to have seven elected officials going in seven different directions, or one?"

At the same time, Mayor O'Neill offered an example of how mayors can also improve the quality of their school systems by working within the governance structures they inherit. "Involvement can take many different forms," she said, "And in Long Beach, we have promoted a model that involves not control, but conversations, cooperation, and collaboration" with different education stakeholders. These "collaborative conversations," she said, in conjunction with a progressive school board and a risk-taking superintendent, have promoted a number of reforms in Long Beach over the past several years. These include the adoption of a school uniform policy, the implementation of new reading, writing and promotion standards for students in various grades, and the establishment of single-sex schools and community service requirements for students.

Implementation of New Law

Deputy Undersecretary Rees began her presentation with an issue many mayors are concerned about: the implementation of the federal No Child Left Behind Act in local school districts. She stressed the law's focus on having school districts use reading strategies grounded in "scientifically-based research," and characterized the law as "something that we hope will give you much more access to information about how students are progressing. No Child Left Behind is a tool to see where your children are today, and to help you develop a roadmap to where you want them to go." The U.S. Department's Office of Innovation and Improvement, she said, could be useful to mayors in implementing the Act because of its expertise in leveraging grant programs, and helping school districts and cities make better strategic investments.

In the larger discussion facilitated by Mr. Alter, Conference members expressed a variety of challenges mayors still face in addressing their school systems — many of which concerned issues of school governance. Like Mayor Campbell, Mayor Menino criticized the previous school governance system in Boston, in which "the School Committee changed superintendents every two years, and school board members often had political ambitions unrelated to education." Menino also spoke of the need to engage the various unions involved in education in the reform process, and said recent changes to the school custodian's contract in Boston were among the most significant of his accomplishments in education. "We took the keys to the school away from them, and gave them to the principals so they could open and close the buildings. We also contracted out services," he said, to reduce unnecessary costs and redirect resources to students and classrooms.

Mayor Daley closed the discussion on a broader note, once again reflecting the concern that improving public education in the nation's cities is vital to their long-term viability. "What we're seeing across the country is -public education sprawl,-" said Daley. "People are leaving cities in search of good schools. That's why we need to improve them."