Mayoral Control of the Los

Mayoral Control of the Los Angeles Public Schools

An Analysis of the Rationale in Support and Against Mayoral Control of the Los Angeles Public Schools

Despite the fact that an independently-elected school board is responsible for the governance of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), both of the candidates currently running for mayor of Los Angeles have argued that the mayor should be given significant authority over the city's schools. In recent years, the mayors of a number of large cities, including Chicago and New York, have asserted varying degrees of control over the schools in their cities in an effort to improve educational quality. Mayoral control can range from the mayor publicly supporting a slate of school board candidates to having the power to appoint several board members to having budgetary authority over the schools and the power to appoint the chief administrative officer. To determine the rationale in favor and against such initiatives, this paper will investigate the reasons why a new mayor of Los Angeles might want to press for this change, what proponents and critics see as the advantages and disadvantages of mayoral control, including its political feasibility, what conditions would be necessary for such a plan to be implemented successfully in LAUSD, and the likely effect of greater mayoral control on how the school district is managed and on teachers and their students. A summary of the research and salient findings will be presented in the conclusion.

Review and Discussion

Background and Overview.

America's public schools are suffering from a wide range of problems, including overcrowded classrooms, stagnated or dropping standardized test scores, a lack of adequate teacher training protocols as well as, of course, a fundamental crisis with funding (Darling-Hammond, 1994; Cassell, 2001). It is little wonder, then, that policymakers at all levels have been searching desperately for a viable solution to this complex problem, and some believe they have identified a good starting place as being with increased mayoral oversight of public schools (Henig & Rich, 2000). In this regard, "During the last 15 years or so," Merl advises, "mayors - who know well the importance of education to voters and to the future of their cities- have increasingly stepped into school policy-making, eroding a century-long tradition of school district independence" (2005, n. p.). This level of independence has been the result of numerous hard-fought battles to separate the control of educational services from corrupt city officials who held little regard for their constituents (Bulkley & Kirst, 2000). In fact, during the majority of the 20th century, even the nation's most powerful mayors did not have much, if any, control over their cities' schools.

According to Bulkley and Kirst (2000), "Influential as they might have been with business, political, and community leaders, they were wary of meddling with highly autonomous local public schools that, during the years 1890-1920, were largely divorced from city government and mayoral control" (p. 538). Although the actual number of direct take-overs by major city mayors by the end of the century was limited (Chicago represented the sole major example), the trend became clear and enabling legislation was proposed in a growing number of major cities across the country such as New York, Boston, Los Angeles, and Nashville, that would provide for increased mayoral control over schools (Crowson, 1998). Reflecting, perhaps, a growing impatience with half-measures and well-intentioned but misguided reform efforts in the past, policymakers are increasingly beginning to reassess the viability of once again using the best possible mix of what is available to help solve a city's problems by placing their mayors in charge of their school systems. "Chicago, Boston, Detroit, and Cleveland," Bulkley and Kirst note, "have completed the transition to mayoral control of the schools, while smaller cities such as Oakland, California; Washington, D.C.; and New Orleans are considering doing so" (p. 538). Furthermore, even without substantial formal changes in their existing governance frameworks, mayors in New York, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia are now able to exert much more influence over school policy than their predecessors would have believed possible (Bulkley & Kirst, 2000).

Citing an article in the Los Angeles Times, these authors point out that several big-city mayors across the country have "touted mayoral control over education as the most promising way to turn around troubled school districts"; however, this shift in power structures has created some concerns for those would believe that consolidating this much authority in one individual is the wrong direction to take, no matter what the intended outcome. "Mayors increasingly make major decisions that were once the sole province of school boards," Bulkley and Kirst add, including the selection of superintendents in Boston, Chicago, and Cleveland. These authors report that Mayor Richard Daly, Jr., of Chicago took approximately 100 staff members from his office and reassigned them the school district's headquarters in order to take over all the key administrative functions; in Boston, Mayor Thomas Menino appointed Superintendent Thomas Payzant a member of his cabinet (Bulkley & Kirst, 2000). Similarly, in his essay, "Community Empowerment and the Public Schools: Can Educational Professionalism Survive," Robert L. Crowson (1998) reports that "School-community relations has finally come of age as a key component of responsible professionalism in education" (p. 56). To date, public school districts in the United States have largely managed to maintain their separation from partisan politics; however, as the 20th century drew to a close, public schools began to experience, at least in terms of the number of cities involved, either the reality or the threat of mayoral "take-overs" (Weeres & Kerchner, 1996). As noted above, one looming mayoral take-over today is occurring in the LAUSD; the respective rationales in support and in opposition to such an initiative in the City of Los Angeles are discussed further below.

Rationale in Support of Mayoral Control of Public Schools.

The trend toward increased mayoral authority in the nation's public schools represents a sea change in the relationship between education and city administrations. "At the turn of the 20th century," Viadero advises, "school reformers argued that City Hall was too corrupt and too bloated with patronage appointments to be in charge of children's education. And they succeeded, for the most part, in putting mayors at arm's length from schools" (p. 8). This distrust of big city governments was not unfounded (Wilson & Banfield, 1963).

For example, in her essay, "The Pitfalls of Political Decentralization and Proposals for Reform: The Case of New York City Public Schools," Lydia Segal (1997) points out that, "Schools provide a treasure house of everything politicians need: campaign staff, office space, supplies, and equipment. Board members do not pay for these resources. They reward campaign staff with school jobs, perks, and the use of school supplies and equipment, despite regulations" (p. 141). Today, though, the rationale in support of such initiatives focuses on improving the efficiency with which educational services can be delivered by consolidating resources and personnel, and by having one individual in charge of appointing those who are responsible for its management because of the improved accountability this approach provides, and the stakes are high for those intrepid politicians who would dare to try: "Indeed, some mayors, such as Mr. Bloomberg, Boston's Thomas M. Menino, and Chicago's Richard M. Daley, have staked their reputations on improving their city's schools" (Viadero, 2002, n. p.). Empowering a mayor with this level of oversight may represent a fundamental shift from the past, but it follows James Q. Wilson and Edward Banfield (1963) assessment that although educational reformers frequently lack an integrated political program, they do tend to agree that government should be dominated by the "best qualified," and that "good government" ideals of honesty, efficiency, and impartiality should remain paramount considerations. In this regard, in her report, "Mayors Get Mixed Grades in Running City Schools," Jean Meri (2005) suggests that the experiences of the cities that have implemented increased mayoral oversight can provide some useful guidance for those cities in search of a viable solution to a complex problem.

Citing the example of the first public schools system to adopt mayoral control, Chicago's public schools were by all accounts among the worst in the nation when Mayor Richard M. Daley received the authority to resolve the crisis - and a crisis it was: "By the time the Illinois Legislature gave Mayor Richard M. Daley control of the Chicago public schools in 1995," Merl says, "the system was by most accounts a mess. It was running a $1.8-billion deficit, schools were crumbling and student test scores were in the basement. A few years earlier, then-Education Secretary William Bennett had called Chicago schools the worst in the nation" (n. p.). Chicago in particular had invested much time and effort to reverse the trend toward big city government and a powerful mayoral office, so the Illinois legislature was clearly reaching for solutions (Simpson, 2001).

Following the receipt of his authority to appoint the school board and hire the superintendent and other top school officials, Daley reassigned 100 City Hall workers to the schools and named his chief of staff, Gery Chico, president of the school board; further, Daley helped to raise money for the schools, ended social promotion, required homework, eased labor unrest and concentrated on raising test scores in the lowest-performing schools. Although Chicago's schools remain mired in a host of convoluted social and economic problems, the overall trend has been positive since these initiatives were implemented; however, analysts suggest that it remains unclear whether these modest gains can be attributed solely to the mayoral oversight or a combination of other factors as well (Merl, 2005).

According to analyst, Kenneth K. Wong, a professor of public policy and education at Vanderbilt University, there should be no doubt, at least in the cases of Chicago and Boston -- where mayoral control has been in place the longest -- that the successes enjoyed to date can be attributed to the "right kind of mayoral takeover -- with clear authority and a highly motivated municipal leader; the key to the successful implementation of this regimen for these two cities, at least, has been the fact that "the mayors have been willing to put their political capital into reforming the schools" (Merl, 2005, n. p.). By contrast, the Detroit mayor had only been given the responsibility for reforming the city's school system without being provided the requisite concomitant authority, a combination that spelled certain doom for the approach there. "In that city [Detroit], schools did not improve under a system in which the mayor and governor appointed the board members," Wong added (Merl, 2005, n. p.). Given the enormity of the problems facing major cities' school districts, the changes for failure appear to far outnumber any chances for success for any reform effort, but that has not stopped cities from trying.

In 1991, Merl reports that voters in Boston gave their mayor the authority to replace the elected school board members with his own appointees and turned down a ballot initiative intended to resurrect an elected school board; further, Boston also finances the school system which Merl notes is a longtime practice that provides a mayor with even more power to regulate the schools. Perhaps one of the most advantageous aspects of having such levels of mayoral oversight in place is the continuity it provides to the decision-making process. A Boston public schools representative pointed out that, "Some people still think having an elected board would cure all our ills, but the continuity of leadership we've had with the mayor, the superintendent and the school committee all working together helps tremendously when you are trying to reform an entire school district all at the same time" (Merl, 2005, n. p.). The New York City mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, also inherited an ailing school system when he assumed office; in response, Bloomberg sought and obtained broader powers over the largest school system in the country in 2002. Merl reports that Bloomberg's increased authority included the ability to abolish the school board in favor of an advisory panel comprised of his appointees and the presidents of the city's five boroughs; Bloomberg was also allowed to transform the school system into a city department and the new mayor hired Joel I. Klein, a former assistant U.S. attorney general in the Clinton administration, as chancellor; Klein consolidated district offices and increased teacher training opportunities among other initiatives (Merl, 2005). The jury is still out on the effectiveness of mayoral oversight of the schools in Boston, largely because the mayor has only been in office a short period of time and the modest gains in math scores continue a trend that began before the mayor assumed office (Merl, 2005).

Rationale Opposing Mayoral Control of Public Schools.

According to Merl, "It's becoming a popular idea for the seemingly intractable problems of big urban school systems: Let the mayor take over" (2005, n. p.). As noted above, though, in some cases, mayoral oversight has provided some demonstrable improvements in academic performance, but it remains unclear whether these can be attributed solely to this shift in authority. Likewise, in some cases, such as Detroit and Oakland, the initiatives have failed entirely (Merl, 2005). According to Merl, Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown characterized his attempts with adding appointees to the seven-member elected school board a failure; in fact, the author points out that the majority of studies of such arrangements have shown they will not work for very basic reasons: "turf": "The elected board members jealously guarded their position and tended to marginalize the appointees," Brown said, "So, instead of increasing mayoral influence, it tended to polarize the board" (Merl, 2005, n. p.). In the case of Los Angeles, though, there are some profound issues involved in the imminent mayoral election. According to Merl, Mayor James K. Hahn has proposed adding at least three appointees to the seven elected officials who oversee the Los Angeles Unified School District. Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa, Hahn's challenger in the upcoming election, has called for giving the mayor "ultimate control and oversight" of the district; the City Council and Board of Education are reviewing district governance as possible alternative as well (2005).