Mayoral Takeover of Schools? Wrong Question.
This week’s Friday Face-Off in the D&C pits Alex Zapesochny against Jerri Kaiser over the question of whether the Mayor should attempt to assume control of the City School District.
OK, nobody’s happy about the superintendent selection process. We haven’t had a well-liked superintendent since…. when? Too, the board is remote, and the bureaucracy is immense and intractable. The City School District is an easy target.
Despite that, the entire premise of this face-off is fundamentally flawed. It assumes that if we could just find the right person, the magical perfect administrator, that person would be able to turn the schools around. This kind of “silver bullet” thinking has got to stop.
To his credit, Zapesochny admits: “It is true that many of the ills exhibited by city schools are attributable to outside issues, such as poverty and family breakdown.” That is the understatement of the year. I suppose I should applaud both contributors for not falling back on that most reprehensible of conservative strategies: blaming poor school performance on parent’s lack of “personal responsibility”.
The truth is that the poor performance in our city schools is almost exclusively due to residential segregation and concentration of poverty. This situation is the result of long-term systemic problems; it is deeply entrenched in our law and our society. Until we have the courage to address those root causes nothing will change. No single person, and no board of directors, will be able change the situation. We’ll just be re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. This issue is much, much bigger than just an administrative problem.
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that administrative incompetence is the cause of poor outcomes in the RCSD, and that it is possible to have the mayor assume control.
Does anyone really think that the Mayor would have time to personally manage the School District? Of course not. He would simply appoint a manager. Once examined, the dream of mayoral control quickly proves to be a reality of mayoral appointment.
Why not just have an elected superintendent? It seems that would solve many of the accountability problems that people are complaining about. I understand that having an appointed superintendent is supposed to insulate the superintendent from political pressure, but in my estimation it goes too far.
Back to the real issue: segregation. What can possibly be done?
Some well-meaning folks are calling for the functional equivalent of a county-wide school district. I think it’s a terrible idea. First, it’s a political non-starter. There’s so much passion against unified schools that they will never happen. Second, it repeats the mistake of a previous generation’s liberalism: forcing integration down the throats of cautious white parents. My liberal parents fought that battle, and their tactical successes (busing, Brown) turned out to be a strategic blunders. People packed up and left in droves rather than send their children to racially mixed schools, leaving a partially abandoned city behind. Monroe County’s schools aren’t any better integrated than they were fifty years ago, and the city has suffered greatly for it.
Progressives, this is THE question of our times; not just for Rochester but for all of the Rust Belt, and much of the nation. How can we separate residence from schooling, and provide a quality education for ALL American children?
Who among us or among our leaders has the vision and courage to offer a solution?
Make the city safer. Like Clinton said “It’s the economy, stupid.” It really is. With jobs comes stability and the need to resort to violence as a means of sustaining oneself evaporates. No kid wakes up one day and says “Hey, I want to go out and deal drugs and shoot people.” I believe the crime is born out of desperation and that has a ripple effect. You have “white flight” from the city and businesses fail b/c of lack of frequenting by more consumers, etc. The tax base is then eroded. Schools become violent places to be and more people move out and quality teachers can’t wait to move to the suburbs.
Well, that would be great if it would work. Look to NYC as an example, though: it’s the safest city in the US, and the schools are still very segregated and perform poorly. Affluent white children go to school either at suburban schools, elite private schools, or one of the city’s three test entry public (high) schools - Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Tech, and Bronx Science.
Public safety is of course important, but I think you’re kidding yourself if you believe that school segregation is the result of street crime.
Didn’t a lot of people move out of the cities during the race riots?
Yes, Rochester’s was in 1964 (there is an excellent PBS documentary about this, you can get it at the library.) The library also has a good collection of original source documents.
Mortgage redlining, FHA mortgage restrictions that precluded purchasing older buildings, expressways, school desegregation, etc - these all drove sprawl.
While it’s important to understand what happened, let’s not focus on the tragedies of the past. Instead we, as progressives, should look to the promise of the future.
I think in this case there is a link between school segregation and suburban fears about city crime. In NYC, everyone who can afford to live in nice, non-rent-controlled apartment can afford private schools. That’s not the case here.
Here, I think these things are linked. I’m not saying one is the key to the other, but there are connections.
I agree, but I think that for families, the fear is largely about in-school violence. Speaking as someone who was repeatedly beaten in the city schools, I think those fears are well-founded.
Great comment about NYC schools. Why don’t we take the grading system we currently have to evaluate teachers in NYC and rank the teachers as we do now. Instead of assigning them to the most affluent schools without a thought, how about offering them a 35% pay increase to teach in a high need area? The DOE is offering fellowships to professionals who are willing to leave their jobs in the corporate world to teach in a high need area- this includes paying for the fellows’ Masters Degrees (which is not cheap). Why not try to attract the best teachers, as identified by the current grading system, to the neediest schools? Money talks.
Getting people to move back to the parts of the city that _are_ safe — which is most of the city — would be a good start. That’s why I’m frustrated that projects like Ren Square don’t emphasize this.
Agreed. If we’re goin to spend $.25B, it should be on a project that makes the city more walkable and more liveable.
I’m a little dismayed that we’ve given up on families. The new housing in the city is targeted towards empty-nesters and hipsters.
RE the OP’s comment, “Why not just have an elected superintendent? It seems that would solve many of the accountability problems that people are complaining about.”
Elections? accountability? Look what that did for George Bush.
Dude had a MANDATE. Stop frontin’
“Why not just have an elected superintendent? … I understand that having an appointed superintendent is supposed to insulate the superintendent from political pressure”
Doesn’t the city school board (an elected body) appoint the superintendent? If so, are we not basically papering over the fact that the superintendent is subject to political pressure? Maybe not from the Mayor, but political pressure nonetheless. Just want to understand the logic of the process better.
One question I have is why are school districts funded with property taxes? I know city schools receive state aid, but this does create an inequity upfront. From my understanding, other nations rely more heavily on progressive income taxes.
Regarding concentration of poverty, this is such a tough issue in my mind. How do you get good jobs back into the city, when the local city population is less educated?
I was really just tossing that idea out there. It’s arguable whether it’s better to have the sup beholden to the board or beholden to the voters.
As to the property tax question, that’s a subject for a different post. (I agree that it’s both unfair and a drag on the local economy)
Thanks for the awesome feedback on both of my comments Itchy!
Excellent post. Not that I can answer your fundamental question.
As a resident of NYC, we need to give the best teachers an incentive to teach at the highest need schools. There is an accurate grading system of teachers in place already. Instead of simply allowing the best teachers to go to the best schools (i.e., elite schools in elite neighborhoods), offer a 35% raise to the best teachers who are willing to teach in an impoverished neighborhood for, say, 3 years. They could always decline and teach at Bronx Science, Stuyvesant, or anywhere else. The bottom line is this…pay more for the best to do the toughest jobs and we will see progress.