The Philly struggle involves the biggest privatization effort ever. But it is hardly the first state takeover. Ordered in New Jersey, Maryland, Illinois and elsewhere, state control has shaken up school bureaucracies and old power bases--though rarely producing dramatic improvement in student academic scores.
Still, a nationwide drumbeat of demand for radically improved big-city schools continues, prompted by abysmal academic scores and truly alarming high-school dropout rates. Outsiders' impatience has also been fed by the turmoil of turnstile superintendency--appointed school chiefs brought down every year or so by ferocious infighting with teacher unions, meddlesome school boards, ever-more-assertive ethnic and racial groups, and disgruntled parents.
Two politically potent camps--mayors and top business leaders--have led the charge for reform. The mayors want better schools to hold and attract middle-class families. Businesses want quality school systems capable of educating future workers and conveying a stable image of the local economy.
So in Boston, Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland, mayors (with strong business backing) actually seized full control of the school boards. Even more cities started hiring superintendents with radically broader backgrounds than typical educators.
In Seattle, there was former Army Gen. John Stanford, who provided rare inspirational leadership and worked with Joseph Olchefske, his hand-picked financial officer and successor, to abolish race-based busing and allow students to pick the schools of their choosing--as close to systemwide charter schools as any major district.
Chicago's Mayor Richard M. Daley, empowered by the Illinois Legislature, selected Paul Vallas, former city budget director, and then Arne Duncan, a former professional basketball player and nonprofit administrator, to run the schools. Harold Levy, a former corporate attorney at Citibank, became New York City's chief school officer. Los Angeles staged a remarkable coup in recruiting Roy Romer, a former governor of Colorado. Alan Bersin, selected as San Diego's superintendent, had won fame as a U.S. attorney dealing with border issues.
This new breed demanded businesslike accountability, shook up ranks of underperforming principals, focused on student achievement scores, demanded improved results from all levels of their bureaucracies.
Are they getting results? Not to the degree they'd hoped, says Michael Usdan, former president of the Washington-based Institute for Educational Leadership and co-author, with Larry Cuban, of a forthcoming book focused on cities that have tried new governance approaches. Test scores for elementary students have begun to creep up--but not dramatically--in the reform cities. High-school achievement scores have scarcely budged.
What has been delivered has been stability--essential school supplies, orderliness, building repairs. All these are surely a prelude to kids learning better. Schools no longer sit in splendid isolation from city governments. There's less chaos of school boards and superintendents in constant conflict. Mayors like Boston's Thomas Menino are running political interference for their school chiefs--even though a new-era superintendent like San Diego's Bersin, having clashed with unions, is perennially just one school board vote away from being ousted. The key problem, reports Usdan: the new school chiefs, pushed by state governments, have focused so heavily on improved scores that they've barely scratched the surface of creating true community-based schools that integrate after-hours services such as health, mental health, recreation, library and continuing education for the ``whole kid'' and his family.
Without that integration, school outcomes may never improve much. Kids spend just a few of their waking hours in schools. Inner city neighborhoods are too often desolate and gang-ridden. Poor families rarely get counseling on how to create a home atmosphere conducive to children learning.
Usdan's analysis suggests that mayors and impatient governors like Schweiker need to acknowledge how tough the job is--that except for a few dozen ``hero'' schools around the country, schools alone have proven insufficient to overcome the big negative odds so many city kids face.
A full range of integrated community supports would be expensive. But not impossible: governors and mayors have the power to direct that all sorts of agencies focus on backing up schools. Breaking up big, impersonal middle and high schools could help too. The secret lies in combining high standards with personal attention to kids and families in troubled neighborhoods. It's a tall order, but not an impossible one.
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