Mayors Rule The Schools

By RON STODGHILL II

The reforms came abruptly, grabbing attention like fingernails scratching a chalkboard. As Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer stepped into his new role as czar of the city's public schools last week, he began the dirty work of dismantling one of the nation's most ineffectual public bureaucracies. Armed with a new state law giving him authority over the city's 265 public schools, Archer swiftly demoted the city's elected school-board members to unpaid advisers and stripped them of such perks as corporate credit cards, cell phones, pagers and even office keys. He suspended all new employment contracts. And he turned the current schools superintendent into the equivalent of a high-paid temp as he and his new seven-member reform board began scouting for a replacement.

A former state supreme court justice, Archer is known for long deliberation before he acts. Not much studying was required here: only half of Detroit's high school students graduate, most basic supplies--from textbooks to toilet paper--somehow have trouble making it into schools, and teachers routinely walk out on strike. While Archer has succeeded in reducing crime and luring Big Business since taking over as mayor in 1994, he says the city's decades-long flight of middle-class residents can't be reversed unless the city's schools get better. "Any mayor in the country will tell you that the No. 1 issue facing cities isn't crime or jobs anymore, it's public education," Archer says. "Mayors have every reason to take on the responsibility."

Indeed, many big-city mayors have bemoaned that while they can fight crime and fill potholes around a school, they wield little influence over what happens inside. That responsibility has rested in the hands of superintendents, school boards and unions, whose often fractious interests result in personal fiefdoms and byzantine politics that keep bickering high and student achievement low. But Archer's ascension is the latest in a wave of public school takeovers, from Chicago and Cleveland, Ohio, to Buffalo, N.Y., and New Orleans. Mayors in these and other cities have all gained--or are in the process of gaining--control of public schools and are adopting aggressive reforms through handpicked boards and superintendents.

While these mayors can't yet proclaim victory, the health of public education in many cities has been so lousy for so long that even modest progress gets hailed as a breakthrough. In most takeovers, city hall has delivered a fiscal and academic accountability that pulls budgets out of the red while improving, albeit modestly, overall student achievement. "Principals, teachers and administrators were there for life and couldn't be removed or forced to change," says Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. "We have shaken things up when necessary."

Indeed, Chicago represents a role model for success in mayoral school takeovers. Its public school system, branded the worst in the nation in 1987 by U.S. Secretary of Education William J. Bennett, had physically dilapidated schools and churned out students ill-prepared for the work force or college. By the mid-'90s, students were testing some 70% below the national average in reading and math, and nearly 6% were chronically truant. And kids could always plan for a few extra days of summer vacation as teacher strife over pay would invariably grind into a strike.

Chicago's school-reform movement has been gaining momentum for more than a decade. The late Mayor Harold Washington began planting the seeds of reform in the mid-1980s, but it wasn't until 1988 that the Illinois legislature passed a school-reform act that parceled authority to newly elected boards for each public school and granted them power to hire and fire principals. Even that reform movement didn't gain significant traction until 1995, when state Republicans turned control over to Daley. "Everybody knew things had to change, but they felt powerless to do anything about it," Daley says.

Few can deny that Chicago's 559 public schools are enjoying a slow but steady revival under Daley's leadership. Taking cues from his appointed schools' chief Paul Vallas, a veteran budget aide, and lawyer Gery Chico, who heads a new body called the Chicago School Reform Board of Trustees, the mayor has succeeded in pushing up test scores virtually across the spectrum. The district has added 632 classrooms, finally taking teachers out of lunchrooms and auditoriums. Some $2 billion has been spent on capital improvements, and for the first time in recent memory there's labor peace. "My people were used to a confrontational style," says Thomas Reece, president of the Chicago Teachers Union. "But we've gotten a positive jolt because everybody wants [reform] to happen."

Daley's detractors, however, complain that his reformers are obsessed with boosting test scores rather than individual student development. Teachers, the critics say, are pushed to spend too much time preparing students for standardized tests. "You're not going to cut it in this world if all you can do is take multiple-choice tests," says Julie Woestehoff, executive director of Parents United for Responsible Education, an advocacy group that opposes Daley's takeover. "There's no real education going on here."

Still, Chicago's experience has inspired other mayors frustrated with their city's public schools. Even mayors with little hope of gaining full authority over schools have begun to push aggressively for greater influence. Philadelphia Mayor Edward Rendell has put his political muscle behind the city's reform-oriented superintendent, and Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan has stirred controversy by backing his own slate of school-board candidates. "The school board's attitude toward me is, 'Stay out of our business,'" says Riordan. "But we know who the people will hold accountable if the system continues to fail"--the mayor.

For Detroit's Archer, who is already facing a recall campaign by critics who claim he is awarding the city's most valuable business contracts to whites, remaking Detroit's schools is a potential land mine. In a city that is 76% black and where a majority of voters are Democrats, even a reluctant alliance with a white Republican Governor and majority-white legislature has made Archer's motives suspect. Some critics consider the takeover a violation of the rights of voters, who elected the school-board members Archer is stripping of their power and their pagers.

But under the school-board system overthrown in Detroit, board members were elected in geographic districts, and no elected official was accountable for getting results citywide. Now that's changed. Archer is the man. And he knows that failing to clean up Detroit's schools would cripple his larger revitalization plan for the city and perhaps his political future overall.

For his part, Archer says he wants to put politics aside and learning back into the classroom. "I'm not sure if we're too late or right on time," he says. "But I plan to...do everything humanly possible to ensure that teachers have the textbooks they've requested and anything that needs to be replaced, repainted or repaired inside our schools before teachers and students return in September." These may seem modest initial goals. But perhaps, as in Chicago four years ago, any progress at all will be welcomed by Detroit's students and parents alike.

--With reporting by Nichole Christian/Detroit

With reporting by Nichole Christian/Detroit