A Case Study for Washington's New Mayor
BOSTON -- Tomorrow Adrian Fenty will become the fifth person elected mayor of modern Washington, D.C. The next day he will turn his attention to school reform. And if schools remain his top priority every day for the next 5,000 or so days -- and if he takes control of the school board, appoints a superintendent, visits two or three schools every week, wins reelection three times and grows a modest potbelly -- he will have more or less caught up to Thomas Menino, mayor of this city since 1993.
Okay, forget the potbelly, unimaginable for the District's kinetic, marathoning mayor-to-be. But the rest of the comparison may be useful. As Fenty studies whether and how to take over Washington's schools, Boston provides a highly instructive model -- mostly for what it has, but also for what it has not, accomplished since its elected school board was abolished almost 15 years ago.
  |
Unlike New York City, with its million-plus pupils, Boston resembles Washington in number of students (58,000 vs. 65,000), schools (145 vs. 167), poverty, diversity and fractious history. Between 1972 and 1995 Boston chewed through 11 superintendents -- about one every two years -- and its schools, not surprisingly, were a mess.
Then in 1992, by order of the Massachusetts legislature, Boston's 13-member elected school board gave way to a seven-member board appointed by the mayor, on the condition that Boston voters be given a chance to reverse the decision in a referendum four years later. Menino, relentlessly untelegenic and phenomenally successful as a politician, became mayor in 1993; in 1996 he led the campaign that persuaded Boston voters, overwhelmingly, not to return to an elected system.
This fall Boston won the Broad Prize for Urban Education, awarded annually to the city school system that has made the most progress overall and in reducing achievement gaps among ethnic and income groups. Test scores have risen, and more students are going on to college.
In separate conversations last week, Menino and Thomas Payzant, who retired as superintendent last spring after an almost unimaginable decade-plus, agreed on several of the essential ingredients for school reform: stability of leadership, commitment from the top and a smooth relationship between mayor and schools CEO. "Education is the most important thing you do in your city," Menino told me. "Jobs, opportunity, public safety -- if you don't have education, you don't have any of that."
There are obvious political risks, he said, since most city schools don't work very well. But he said his commitment has aided him politically; grandparents especially applaud, he said. (Menino went to parochial school, but his five school-age grandchildren attend Boston public schools.)
During the referendum campaign to retain his control of the schools, Menino was accused of being anti-democracy and racially insensitive (he's white, as is Payzant; five of his seven board members today are not). He responded, in 1996 and since: "We're not taking away anyone's rights, we're giving everyone the right to have an education."
Elected school board members, he said, care most about their next election and the special interests that will fund their campaigns. "And they don't want to be there," he said. "They want to be state senator, or mayor."
Payzant said that he's worked well with both kinds of boards but that elected board members tend to change superintendents too often simply because it's the one noticeable thing they can do, "once they learn they can't change the schools overnight."
But here's the sobering note: Even after 13 years of consistent commitment from the top, of smooth cooperation among mayor and superintendent and advisory board, of emphasis on teaching skills -- after 13 years, in other words, of conditions as close to ideal as any city is likely to find -- only 16 percent of Boston's fourth-graders test proficient or better in reading, and only 22 percent do so in math.
That's a lot better than it was (the math score leapt 10 points between 2003 and 2005), and a lot better than in Washington (11 percent in reading, 10 percent in math). But it's low enough to cause some critics to say that Menino and Payzant were too methodical, too stability-oriented, not revolutionary enough -- and others to say that the job of big-city schools is simply impossible.
Menino dismisses the first with characteristic directness. "Give me a break," he says. "You can't just blow up the place, because you have to put it together again."
As to the second, Payzant says there's a legitimate discussion to be had about the need for universal preschool and other reforms beyond the schools' control.
"But I've never gotten into the debate about how much can schools do, because you've got to keep people focused and moving and not give them excuses by saying, 'I wish we had better kids,' " he said.
"The good news is there can be significant improvement," Payzant added. "It can be done."
