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The New Boss ... Same as the Old Boss? |
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From EurekAlert! - Breaking News: Facing ever-declining performance in their schools, and frustrated by reports of corruption and petty politics in the school boards, mayors and legislative bodies in the United States' largest cities have in recent years dismissed the elected boards and moved to a model of appointed boards. With cities such as Boston, Chicago, and New York City in the lead, this bold move has been mostly praised in the media and by the public. In a groundbreaking new article for the American Journal of Education, education scholar Frederick Hess (American Enterprise Institute) observes that "few researchers have sought to examine [in a systematic fashion] the effects of governance reforms on achievement, reform, school improvement, or similar outcomes," thus leaving unexamined the comparative merits of the two systems. In "Looking for Leadership: Assessing the Case for Mayoral Control of Urban School Systems," Hess opens a critical discussion of the progress of this important trend, and lays the groundwork for a vitally important conversation about big city education. During the Progressive era, roughly the years 1890-1920, large cities installed elected school boards to save the education system from the politicking and patronage that marred local politics at the time. In his research, Hess also finds that to even initiate mayoral control reform, the mayor in question must have an unusually high abundance of political capital. Even the cases where the transfer to mayoral control is politically successful, Hess find that there exists little analysis of the test scores, graduation rates, and other markers of actual educational success.
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