Analysis: Mayoral attempts to take over urban school districts are misguided 

Last spring, the misguided notion of having the mayor appoint the members of the Los Angeles Unified School District governing board surfaced as a potential “reform” in the campaign for mayor of Los Angeles. The victor in that campaign, Antonio Villaraigosa, believes he should be granted control over LAUSD, and in recent months he has become more active about his desire.

According to public statements, Mayor Villaraigosa says his intervention is needed because he believes LAUSD is lagging in its reform and improvement efforts, and this failure to improve reflects an absence of leadership within the district. He is wrong on both counts. Test scores in LAUSD have risen faster than the state average and faster than other urban districts in the state. Many LAUSD programs, such as its after-school and special education programs, have been recognized nationally as exemplary. And the district has embarked on the most ambitious school construction program of any city in the nation. These are all signs that the leadership of LAUSD is taking charge and making progress.

The proposal to have an appointed rather than an elected school board violates a basic principle of representative government and ignores the fact that publicly elected school boards are a cornerstone of that system of government. It also runs against the grain of our culture of open government in California. Who could possibly argue that a hand-picked school board, serving at the pleasure of the mayor and thereby becoming a rubber stamp for mayoral decisions made behind closed doors, is better than an elected board? This idea failed miserably in Oakland, where the appointed board members were aloof and unresponsive to citizen concerns.

Further, mayoral control of school districts has not been proven to improve student achievement. At best, districts under mayoral control have seen mixed results in student scores, and the few modest gains that have been observed may be attributable to other changes that accompanied the mayoral takeover, such as increased resources or state-mandated curriculum and instructional reform.

This is not to say that mayors and city governments do not have an important role to play in helping our schools. By working with school districts, mayors have the ability to be an advocate for their schools, to use the bully pulpit to get people more engaged in improving the lives of children. Mayors have an important role as advocates for the schools in their city. They can help districts by ensuring the areas around schools are safe and free from crime, by assisting students and their parents to access needed health and other support services, and by supporting teacher recruitment efforts by addressing obstacles such as housing costs that serve as deterrents for teachers to come to urban schools.

A growing and compelling body of research shows the effect that out-of-school factors such as health, crime and poverty have on student learning. Addressing these issues is the job of municipal governments, and mayors can best help schools by working to create the kinds of cities and neighborhoods where good schools can flourish. Political grandstanding and hostile takeovers will solve nothing.

Related link:

• Read more about the issue in the spring issue of California Schools magazine.