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I want to thank the Manhattan Institute, not only for hosting this important event and giving me the opportunity to make opening remarks, but also for its enormous contributions to public-policy discourse. No one agrees with everything that emanates from the Institute. In fact, I’ve found that, at least in the area of education, even its own fellows don't always agree with one another. But no one can deny that the Institute is a powerful source for innovative and thought-provoking analysis on the key issues affecting our City.
The question that brings us together today is whether mayoral control—or, as I like to call it, mayoral authority and accountability—over public education should be reauthorized in Albany when the current law sunsets in June 2009. In answering that question, I want to start with two assertions that I expect are shared by everyone in this room:
1. K-12 education in this City and throughout urban areas in America has long failed to deliver adequate results. Many, far too many, children, especially those who come to school with the greatest challenges, are not receiving the education they need and deserve. The debate over the past half century on this issue has been noisy and often polarized, but the simple, if tragic, truth is that more than 50 years after Brown v. Board and 25 years after A Nation at Risk, we have an enormous racial and ethnic achievement gap that is now being exacerbated by the growing achievement gap separating this country from our global competitors.
2. Fixing education requires bold and strong leadership. Truly significant change is never easy and it certainly doesn’t happen quickly but, absent transformative leadership, we can expect that school reform will continue to be dominated by incremental, crowd-pleasing proposals—almost all of which require more money. We know from experience these proposals won’t have anywhere near the necessary impact.
If you accept those two fundamental points, then the next question is, “What governance structure is most likely to get us the leadership we need to do the transformative work that we know we must be done?”
I submit that the answer to that question is strong mayoral authority and accountability, essentially the system we’ve had here in New York City since 2002 when Mayor Bloomberg was courageous enough to go to Albany and work with our Legislature and Governor to get it done. Let me be clear: I’m not arguing that mayoral authority guarantees success, only that it is a necessary prerequisite to it.
Why do I say that? For two reasons:
1. By definition, any other form of governance will be weaker, less stable, and less accountable—all things that undermine the possibility of strong leadership. Indeed, from what we've seen across this country and from our own awful experience in this city with school boards and divided authority, we know that traditional school board school governance has not gotten the job done. Matt Miller had it exactly right in last month’s Atlantic Magazine when he wrote an article entitled “First, Kill All the School Boards.”
2. Our experience in New York City over the past five-plus years demonstrates that, with Mayoral authority and accountability, we have been able to take major, potentially game-changing actions in public education – changes that would not have happened in the absence of such authority. You don’t have to agree with any particular program that I’ll discuss in a bit, but it’s clear that initiatives of this magnitude (or of greater magnitude) are going to be necessary to get the job done. And, while there is a long way to go before we have the school system we all want, the results over the last five-plus years reflect significant progress.
So let me return to my first point: Meaningful school reform takes strong and bold leadership, and no one has a better shot at that than the mayor. He or she is obviously the most important elected official in the City, has the most political capital to expend, has the loudest bully pulpit, and has the most authority over the budget. Make no mistake there are powerful, well-financed and politically sophisticated interests that will oppose almost any significant reform, precisely because that reform undermines an aspect of the status quo that one or another interest group supports.
It’s much easier for special interests to block change when governmental authority is divided. Those groups can readily pick off individual members of a board, leading to the politics of paralysis that has characterized school reform throughout our nation.
Moreover, in a world of divided authority, decisions are often based on the topic of the day or on micro-political considerations—like who gets into which school, or which school gets additional funding for which project—rather than on the big picture of how to transform a broken and inequitable educational service-delivery system. Individuals—whether they’re members of a school board or members of a Legislature—must address local concerns as well as the problems of individual constituents. That’s their job as well as an important part of their political-survival strategy. The mayor, on the other hand, is accountable to all New Yorkers and is responsible for looking out for the best interest, short-term and long-term, of the City.
Let’s be frank. By definition, reformers are in the business of ruffling feathers. So the person responsible for reform will face resistance, angry rallies, vocal criticism, and unflattering newspaper stories. Withstanding these assaults isn’t fun, but it’s essential. Take a hard issue like closing down a failing school or changing long-standing work rules in a union contact. These decisions look very different in a world of constituent and interest-driven politics than they do in a world of mayoral authority. In short, mayoral authority means we don’t ignore the needs of the “voiceless” just because they’re not screaming.
Meaningful change also requires stability and continuity in governance, something that the mayor also has the best chance of providing. You know the mayor will be there for four years and often for eight. And having a chancellor who reports to and is accountable to the mayor means you get both alignment and continuity. Before me, we turned over Chancellors every couple of years or so, which is ridiculous if we want to achieve real change. And while people enjoy the public wrangling between mayors and chancellors, the fact is that a chancellor who is aligned with the mayor has a far better chance of getting his policies implemented and also getting the necessary funding for them. The record of this administration, including the huge infusion of additional city funds, is strong testament to this reality.
Lastly, entrusting the mayor with responsibility over education brings essential accountability to a system that abhors accountability. By contrast, divided authority leads to finger-pointing and buck-passing, things we saw a lot of in this City before 2002.
Accountability goes far beyond running for re-election, I should add.
Accountability means standing before the City when things get screwed up—as invariably happens during any major reform effort—and it means listening to protesters when they show up on the steps of City Hall and engaging critics at town hall meetings. It also means that your mayoralty and your legacy will be judged on what you do or don’t do in a particular area. Believe me, these are powerful forces that shape the behavior of any mayor and the way he deals with the people he appoints to run an agency. That’s something I’ve learned from personal experience.
Nor do mayoral authority and accountability mean there are no checks and balances, as some polemicists like to argue. We are regulated by the governor and legislature in Albany, by our State Education Department, by the City Council, by the panel for educational policy, and even the Federal Government. We are also carefully watched by the city and state comptrollers and the public advocate, all of whom are actively in touch with citizens’ groups, stakeholders, and the public at large. This, too, I’ve learned from experience.
Now let’s look at some specifics over the past five years, first some initiatives that wouldn’t have happened without mayoral authority and accountability—initiatives, I predict, that will continue to bear fruit long after we are gone—and, second, at the outcomes resulting from our work.
- Charter Schools. We started with 17. Today we have 80. This is close to a 500% increase and translates into good options for families that, in the past, had no choices.
- New small secondary schools. We have created more than 200 new small schools. These schools are giving high quality choices to our high school students—and helping us double or triple the graduation rate on some high-school campuses.
- Elimination of social promotion. It's easier to push kids ahead, even if they're not ready. We ended this harmful tradition—first in the third grade, then in fifth and seventh, and, starting in the coming school year, in the eighth grade. Today, fewer students are scoring at the lowest levels on their math and English exams and more students are entering new grades prepared for the work they’ll need to do.
- Union contract reforms. We have eliminated seniority and excessing transfers and established an open market for teacher hiring. We have restored meaningful teacher work during what was a "self-directed" teacher period under so-called Circular 6-R. We have added 150 extra minutes a week so that struggling students can learn in classes of no more than 10. And we have created substantial pay differentials for principals and teachers to motivate the best people to take on the hardest jobs and to reward success. Together, these contract reforms have begun to reshape what we can ask of—and expect from—our teachers and principals.
- Accountability. We now grade schools A-F. This accountability system increases transparency and is reinforced by meaningful consequences, including school closures for underperforming schools, as well as monetary rewards for high performing schools.
- School-based decision-making. We have moved from a top-down administrative structure to a structure that empowers school-based decision-making. Schools now have more authority to decide how to allocate their resources and also have accepted accountability for their own results. They literally sign performance contracts with us. schools can also now select the support organization that they believe is most likely to help them and their students succeed. Nine of the 14 options are run by private groups, including universities and not-for-profit organizations.
- Fair Student Funding. When we started, schools had little control over their budgets and some schools received dramatically more money than others to do the same job for the same students. Today, schools have significant decision-making power over their budgets and money follows students through Fair Student Funding.
- More rigorous tenure review. We no longer give teachers what amounts to lifetime job security just because they’ve put in the requisite time. Instead, through a careful tenure review process, we’re now making it clear that only teachers who are up to the task belong in our classrooms, teaching our students.
Finally, let me turn to the results. And let's look at all the numbers, not just a pre-selected few, as some observers prefer to do. Let's also make true apples-to-apples comparisons. So when, for example, a change in State regulation doubles or triples the number of non-English fluent students taking the State English test and, by that fact alone, depresses overall scores—as happened to us last year—you make appropriate adjustments to reflect the difference in who took the test.
[See PowerPoint presentation.]
In conclusion, let me emphasize that the conversation we are having today is one of the most important conversations facing us as a City. There are things we’ve learned since 2002, things we could no doubt have done better with the benefit of hindsight. But over the next year, as we move toward June 2009, we have a duty to make sure our City continues to have the tools it needs to further transform education for the benefit of our children. I look forward to working with you—and others across our City—and I firmly believe that, together, we’ll reach the right decision.