Destroying democracy for private gain: Mayoral control in nyc

[Hannah Bell]

part of a larger essay by diane ravitch: why public schools need democratic governance


NEW YORK EXPERIENCE
In 2002, the state legislature turned over control of the school system to
the city’s newly elected mayor, Michael Bloomberg. The legislation continued a central board, but abolished the city’s 32 local school boards. The central board, however, consisted only of appointees who serve at the pleasure of the person who appointed them...On a rare occasion,
when two of his appointees planned to vote against his plan to end social promotion for 3rd
graders, he fired them and replaced them on the same day. This central board...was reduced to
a rubber stamp...The board exists to do whatever the mayor and chancellor want, not to exercise independent judgment...

When mayoral control of the schools came up for reauthorization before the New York state legislature in 2009, the mayor waged a heavily financed campaign to maintain his complete control of the school system. His advocacy group received millions of dollars from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, and other foundations... When Citizens Union, a respected
civic organization, was considering the possibility of issuing a statement on behalf of fixed
terms, it received a personal letter from U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, opposing fixed
terms for any appointees and insisting that the mayor could be effective only if he had complete
control.

Because New York City no longer has an independent board of education, it no longer has democratic
control of its public education system. There is no forum in which parents and other members of
the public can ask questions and get timely answers. Major decisions about the school system are made in private, behind closed doors, with no public review and no public discussion...there are no checks or balances, no questioning of executive authority. A contract was awarded for nearly $16 million to the business consulting firm of Alvarez & Marsal to review operations and cut spending. This firm rearranged the city’s complex school bus routes and stranded thousands of young children on one of the coldest days of the year without any means of getting to school. Some of the chaos they created might have been averted had there been public review and discussion of their plans. No one was held accountable...they were not chastised, and their contract was not terminated.

Similarly, the Department of Education imposed a grading system on every school in the city. In the
name of accountability, each school is given a single letter grade from A to F, not a report card. The grade depends mainly on improvement, not on performance. Some outstanding schools, where more than 90% of the students meet state standards, got an F because they didn’t make progress, while some really low-performing schools, even persistently dangerous ones, got an A because they saw a one-year gain in their scores. This approach was imposed without public discussion or review. The result was a very bad policy that stigmatizes some very good schools and helps none....In the absence of an independent board, there is no transparency of budget. There is no public forum in which questions are asked and answered about how the public’s money is spent. Consequently, the number and size of no-bid contracts for consultants and vendors have soared into the hundreds of millions of dollars, with no public review or oversight. THE EDUCATION BUDGET HAS GROWN FROM $12 BILLION ANNUALLY TO NEARLY $22 BILLION.

http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/k_v91/docs/k1003rav.pdf

[Yuugal]

1. K&R