Testimony of Randi Weingarten before the City Council Education Committee Hearing on School Governance: March 3, 2008
Mar 3, 2008 3:55 PM
I spoke last month to the City Council’s Working Group on School Governance, so my apologies if I repeat myself. Since then, events have only confirmed some of the points I made then.
I want to commend the Council for taking your bully pulpit responsibility seriously, so you can add your voice to the debate on school governance and try to come to closure well in advance of the mayoral control statutory sunset. I’m also pleased that this meeting is open to the public, and early enough in the process, too. All too often what government asks the public to do is react. Better that we’re brought in at a formative stage of policy development.
You’ve asked me to testify on the UFT’s thinking about school governance. You’re grappling with such practical options as whether or not to return to a citywide school board system and who will supervise the chancellor and determine his or her duties. You’re looking at the advisability of community districts… about the best ways to operate individual schools… and about a host of the other questions.
All good questions, but that level of detail is something I hesitate to comment on now. Why? First of all, there has been no comprehensive independent analysis of what has or has not worked under the current governance system. The mayor and chancellor – and it is clearly in their interest to do so – often talk about how much has been achieved. But no independent arbiter has looked at the data or has put together a number of policy questions that ask:
What is a school governance system attempting to accomplish and did this one do that?
What was done right or wrong in the last seven years? What can be done better?
Is it a keep it/end it question or is there room for modification?
The UFT is still thinking through the answers to these questions in order to reach its own position on school governance. We are coming to the end of a much-needed union-wide discussion, which brought in other school stakeholders, most particularly parents and community leaders. Meetings were held in all five boroughs, the last one in Queens. All were well attended, and we got a lot of excellent feedback.
We have heard over and over from parents and educators who care about their schools and their communities that a permanent forum for the public to question policies before they are adopted must be re-established. The elimination of all public boards has left people without such a forum. The PEP and CECs have been rendered powerless. Decisions made by SLTs can be overruled by principals. As Paula Washington, a teacher of more than 20 years at LaGuardia HS, put it, ‘We have this rigid top-down structure, with no avenues for bottom-up communication.” People are demanding more checks and balances on administrators. And repeatedly in every single borough we have heard calls for a requirement that the chancellor and others put in charge of the nation’s largest public school system be experienced educators.
The second reason I can’t be too specific is that we’ve established a nonpartisan taskforce on school governance to answer the questions I just posed. The taskforce is doing that as I speak, and I don’t want to presume on its conclusions.
But I can offer at least five principles that have emerged from the task force discussions. There is almost universal agreement on these elements, and let me note that these hold true regardless of whether the schools continue to be operated under the aegis of a mayoral agency or an independent board or even multiple boards.
First, any governance structure needs to support the basic mission of schooling – that is to educate children and to provide the conditions necessary so employees can do their jobs.
Second, accountability is important; not just to the mayor, but to the public, and it needs to be bottom up, not just top down. That means there has to be transparency and checks and balances, so all stakeholders, from the Council and teachers to parents and community leaders, understand what is going on in the schools and have ways to be involved and influence it.
Third, there needs to be meaningful public involvement in decision-making. This can’t be rule by technocrats, no matter how good-natured or well-intentioned. Input from stakeholders is critical.
Fourth, there needs to be a democratic vehicle that supports public involvement. Whether mayor control is continued in some form, or we revert to an independent board or local boards, public involvement has to have a broad electoral component. Electing the mayor once or twice isn’t enough.
Fifth, there needs to be a clear line of communications to solve problems. A common complaint we heard from parents is that they can’t get information. The solution for them is not to call 311 or speak to a school’s parent coordinator. If parents don’t have access to decision makers, problems won’t get solved. Frequently we have that problem as well, but the union has means to try to force solutions.
I expect the union’s taskforce will report out a number of other rock-bottom principles once it completes its work, and I will be happy to forward them to you. But for now, consider these five a framework for ensuring that a governance system meets the needs of the city’s children, parents, community leaders and teachers.
Now some things we didn’t need a taskforce to re-invent.
Even the City has learned from watching and enduring the DOE’s several reorganizations that school reform is tough. Getting results requires a number of key components. It requires qualified teachers and decent working conditions that foster real progress. It requires engaged parents and collaboration among teachers and principals. It requires an accountability system that’s fair and accurate.
Ironically, the issue has never been primarily one of mayoral control. Mayors have run the schools for much of the last century, and it’s a political fiction to think they did not. For example, since the Fiscal Crisis of the mid-1970s, mayors have had absolute control over collective bargaining and every other school fiscal decision. Mayor Giuliani and his predecessors pretended they were not in control in order to dodge blame, but the buck stopped at City Hall then, as now. In fact, as education historian Diane Ravitch reminds us, for most of the city school system’s history, the mayor appointed each and every member of the central school board; and when he didn’t, he virtually appointed the Schools Chancellor.
What did change, and what we applauded at the time, was Mayor’s Bloomberg’s agreement in 2001 to unambiguously say he would be accountable. The then battered and under-financed school system needed the resources, stability and continuity the mayor was promising.
Indeed, the mayor’s taking responsibility did move education to a higher priority in our city. Far more city funding was devoted to the schools, including to salaries that have attracted the most qualified teaching force in recent memory, even though attrition is still a big problem. It is clear that mayoral control has achieved some important gains for our school system.
At the same time, the last few years have shown limitations, too, namely, as our borough hearings revealed, the lack of transparency, checks and balances, and public deliberation is stymieing good schooling.
As Diane Ravitch and I wrote in a New York Times op ed back in March of 2004, headlined ‘Public Schools, Minus the Public,’ “We certainly commend Mayor Bloomberg for his willingness to take responsibility for improving the public schools. In recent days, however, many of us have realized that the legislation went too far by consolidating all power in the hands of one elected official.”
We agreed that the mayor should have a larger role in running the school system than in the recent past, but we also said, “He should not have unchecked power to hire personnel, make contracts and set policy,” and we called for “a mid-course correction by the Legislature to restore transparency, public engagement and accountability to the school system.” I stand by that statement.
Now, isn’t it axiomatic that any good school governance system needs checks and balances and a continuing voice by parents and teachers? Neither the military nor the corporate model is appropriate for schools. A mayor has to do more than say he is accountable; he or she has to preside over a system that operates rationally, transparently and consultatively. This present system does not do that reliably and consistently. And if a mayor falls down on the job, there has to be better redress than waiting until the next election to boot the mayor out of office—particularly since mayors are elected based on multiple issues and not simply on education policy. Accountability can’t happen just once every four years, on Election Day.
A lack of checks and balances means that decisions—major and minor—are done without consultation, much less any real public discussion and debate. That means no real accountability, certainly not more than existed under the old Board of Education.
It also means that there is no one on a daily basis who serves as the champion of children, of all children who attend our public schools, though I must add that this City Council and its oversight hearings on schools, school safety and budgeting have done a lot to champion children’s needs.
It means that those who have been the traditional advocates for children—parents, community figures and, indeed, the union—are frozen out of any meaningful, institutionalized involvement. Even the School Leadership Teams, which were meant to give equal voice to teachers, parents and administrators at the school level, have withered on the vine in many schools. Any improvements in school governance should start by reinvigorating these valuable tools for parent and community involvement.
When the state revised the education law, it maintained the American tradition of allowing for public input through a school board of public representatives, in this case the Panel on Education Policy, but the way the law was implemented quickly dispelled any hope for a true public voice. The PEP can and must be the voice of the community that it was meant to be.
We have seen the result of such unilateral decision-making in the current budget cuts. Promises were made when it was easy to do so, but it’s in times like these when commitments are tested. When decisions were made to make only negligible reductions in central spending and to send the lion’s share out to the schools, who was there to speak for the children?
Incidentally, it’s because parents and teachers and many civic officials care so passionately about education that the city sees so many protests over not only the lack of voice but over policy issues, too. Thankfully the U.S. Constitution still enables us to use the town square, which we will do later this month both in Albany and New York City as part of the Keep the Promises coalition.
Or take the three top-down school reorganizations that the city has undertaken in the last seven years. Where was the analysis of what worked and didn’t work with the empowerment zone? Where was the analysis of what worked and didn’t work in the regions? To date we’ve had no systematic public accounting about the dismantling of the regional structure, other than, “We ended it because it was so successful.” And where is the analysis of whether the current scheme, a fully decentralized system of 1,500 schools -- each essentially standing alone and reporting to a computer system -- will work to help all kids achieve?
What is success anyway? In the aftermath of NCLB, this administration and many others have fallen back on default measures like scores on standardized math and English tests. But polls show that parents and, indeed, most informed people, yearn for a broader vision for our youngsters, one that includes literacy and numeracy, but also the ability to think critically, to appreciate the arts, to cultivate sound values and to be good citizens. We have a responsibility to educate the whole child, and that is what our current ad campaign is all about.
Each of the city’s three school reorganizations could have and should have provided the opportunity to spur citywide discussions on just what constitutes success. Instead there’s been silence. That discussion, I hope you’ll agree, must be a part of your deliberation, too.
The mayor famously said, “Judge me on the results.” The question is, Which results? We don’t have an independent source of data, let alone a nonpartisan public body to analyze the data.
The City Charter mandates an Independent Budget Office to oversee the city’s budget and requires that the process be transparent. There’s no comparable Independent School Oversight Office to act as a check and balance against Education Department claims or gauge its successes or even guarantee that we’re all talking the same language. Although I support the Research Partnership for NYC Schools -- established with the support of the Business Partnership – I do not believe it can serve that role.
Last year, the City Council took a noteworthy step to establish a check on the Education Department when it passed, over the mayor’s veto, the city Whistleblower Law. That law protects workers reporting abuses by individual managers, but it doesn’t – and can’t -- ameliorate systemic problems, abuses not the fault of individual supervisors but of a system that does not critically evaluate itself all the time. In the absence of any direct oversight of principals, there has been a huge increase in the number of complaints to the Special Commissioner of Investigation – in fact, SCI recently reported the agency received 2818 complaints in 2007 -- the highest in the agency’s history.
So, as presently constituted, the current system allows little real opportunity for democratic participation by stakeholders. That’s not just a bad thing for democracy, it also impedes our ability to educate the city’s children.
For me, personally, the question is: How do we create a law that institutionalizes checks and balances so that other stakeholders have voice and roles? And equally important: How do we create a law that fosters collaboration and a sense of common cause in the quest to increase opportunity for students?
Education is the community’s investment in its own future, and school governance needs to derive from the community’s commonly set policies and goals. The politicians and administrators who run the schools are elected or appointed to implement that agenda, and they must see themselves as the PARTNERS of those who have a stake in the schools, not as their better-informed saviors.
Why partners? Research shows that schools with a collaborative environment work better for kids. While some of our schools do foster collegial relationships among teachers and administrators, in too many schools, teachers are colleagues in name only. That’s too bad because according to a summary from the federal government’s education research clearinghouse, teachers who work together see significant improvements in student achievement, behavior and attitudes. Schools, after all, are communities, and we build on each other’s work.
Teachers and other educators, parents and community-based organizations have valuable contributions to make, and should be respected. We need to hear the voices of those who are most concerned with helping children learn and graduate and fulfill their dreams, not just those who are distracted by organizational charts and hierarchical structures.
Finally, I end where I began – at the first principle: governance must support a school system’s mission, and this is educating kids. Therefore, we need to return our attention to what the evidence tells us matters most: smaller classes, an orderly and safe environment, highly qualified teachers with the professional latitude to tailor their instruction to the needs of their students; expanded pre-K and career and technical opportunities. Attention to structure and assessment without an idea of how they aid or harm instruction is a fool’s errand.
This point was made by the American Enterprise Institute’s Frederick Hess, who concluded in a study of mayoral control that “mayoral control can do no more than offer a heightened opportunity for effective leadership.” Part of that leadership, I want to add, involves knowing how to listen.
We can take advantage of the 2009 reassessment to get governance right. But it won’t come out right unless we do it together, parents and taxpayers, educators and elected officials, as equal partners in our city’s most important enterprise – the education of future generations of New Yorkers.
