By Theola Labbé
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 30, 2007
In a city still fighting for voting rights in Congress, the D.C. Board of Education is a potent symbol of democracy as the District's first elected government body.
But Mayor Adrian M. Fenty's schools takeover plan, approved by the D.C. Council, will dramatically reduce the board's authority. Even its name will change.
Over the past four decades, the board failed to transform its schools into the models of achievement sought by parents and city officials. Despite a succession of superintendents and numerous changes, test scores and graduation rates have remained low, buildings have crumbled and parental confidence has fallen.
If Congress approves the mayoral takeover, as expected, the school board will no longer approve the schools budget and no longer be responsible for hiring and firing the superintendent for the 55,000-student system. That person will be called chancellor and report to the mayor.
Under the plan by Fenty (D), the board will be renamed the D.C. State Board of Education. Although it will have mostly the same members, its mission will shift from setting academic standards to overseeing big-picture issues, including teacher certification and standardized testing. The job of responding to parents' concerns, which often has consumed the board's time and energy, will fall to a new ombudsman.
During its 39 years, the school board has changed in size, was ousted by the federally appointed D.C. financial control board in 1996 and then voted back into power by residents in 2000 as a panel of four appointed and five elected members.
Over the years, although there has been a steady stream of dismal reports on the academics and physical condition of D.C. schools, some board policies fostered student achievement and some well-regarded schools.
Iris Toyer, a parent activist who was on the school board, said that in the eyes of parents and students, two of the most significant accomplishments were the board's adoption of rigorous teaching and learning standards -- considered by experts as among the toughest in the country -- and the approval of a comprehensive, multiyear plan to renovate aging schools.
Last year, the board also produced a plan to eliminate 3 million square feet of excess space by closing under-enrolled schools by 2008.
"It was a thoughtful and principled approach to what is probably the board's most difficult task," said Mary Levy of the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs. Levy said that the school system previously had responded too slowly to falling student enrollment and that past school boards were afraid to tackle such a hot-button issue.
"The way the board handled it this time was in stark contrast to past decades, when school closings have been heavily politicized," Levy said.
In the early 1990s, when board members looked for a way to give parents and schools more control over decisions, they created school-based restructuring teams of parents, teachers and principals. The teams give parents a direct role in shaping school policies, allowing them to recommend cuts or additions to individual school budgets as funding changes with enrollment.
"The teams gave more power to local schools," said Erika Landberg, who was on the board from 1988 until 1996 and is with DC VOICE, a community group that emphasizes a more informed, active public voice in education.
Newly elected council member Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6), who was on the school board for five years beginning in 2002, noted as a major accomplishment a resolution he sponsored that requires students to have immunizations before starting school. The system historically had low immunization rates but now has one of the highest, he said.
The school board also passed a strict truancy policy in 2004. Working with the court system and community groups, it established a task force that was able to cut the truancy rate in elementary schools by 50 percent during the 2004-05 school year.
But Toyer said it is hard for board members to point to major progress on the most critical issues -- academic achievement, graduation rates, dilapidated buildings -- because important policies passed by the board don't quickly bear fruit.
"The test scores aren't going to go up all of a sudden," said Toyer, who has a ninth-grader at McKinley Technology High School and is chairman of Parents United for the D.C. Public Schools.
Despite its accomplishments, the board could not turn around the reputation of a school system that increasingly drew the public's anger. That reputation wasn't helped two years ago when the board waited until June to approve new reading and math textbooks for the coming school year. Many students didn't get books until December.
Concerning school facilities, which became a rallying cry for students and parents who complained about peeling paint, broken windows and unkempt restrooms, the board took a back seat. Instead, school activists pushed the council to approve $2.3 billion in modernization funds last year.
Meanwhile, as hundreds of parents transferred their children to public charter schools, many encountered yet another example of the board's weak oversight. Although the board had oversight for 16 charter schools, a 2005 report by the federal Government Accountability Office concluded that it didn't regularly review information from its charter school office and allowed problems at some of the schools "to go unresolved for too long." Last year, the board voted to relinquish its chartering authority, citing the demands of overseeing the traditional school system and charter schools.
A 2004 report by the Council of Great City Schools said the board devoted more time to "operational detail" than student achievement and did not set annual measurable goals for itself or the superintendent.
Although a takeover seems inevitable, even some supporters of Fenty's plan are concerned about the impact that reducing the board's power would have on the public. "In 1996, when the control board took over and took away power of the elected board . . . the community very much felt shut out," Landberg said. It was that feeling of isolation that led residents to form DC VOICE, she said. "Democracy is messy, but I think the public needs a point of access, and not just to make complaints, either."
Until he resigned recently and became executive director of DC VOICE, Jeff Smith was the elected board member for District 1. He said he gave up his seat because the mission of the new board would not allow him to have a direct impact on educating children.
"What I see being proposed is really a perfunctory body, almost a procedural board," Smith said. "I was elected to be an active participant in education in the city, and that's no longer part of the job description in the D.C. Board of Education."
Staff writer V. Dion Haynes and researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.
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