Before educational legend Gerald Bracey passed away last month, he had almost completed his annual “Bracey Report,” which has looked at public education in America annually for 18 years.  Thanks to his wife and staff, the final report came out today, with some interesting comments (as usual) and observations on education in America.  What BoardBuzz found to be worthy of mentioning follows below. 

Bracey outlines the report with three assumptions, “high-quality schools can eliminate the achievement gap between whites and minorities, mayoral control of public schools is an improvement over the more common elected board governance systems, and higher standards will improve the performance of public schools.”

You can guess which one BoardBuzz found to be the most interesting, and Bracey, et al, have some compelling evidence to back up the notion that mayoral control may not be the silver bullet that the Department of Education thinks it is.  He looks carefully a the two most known and longest held mayoral control districts, Chicago and New York.  They represent two of the top three student enrollment populations in the country and have strong mayors who are unashamed of how they handle the school district (one telling quote from Mayor Bloomberg in New York, “mayoral control means mayoral control, thank you very much. They are my representatives, and they are going to vote for things I believe in.”).  Mayor Bloomberg, who was recently re-elected after changing the term limit law in New York, also lobbied state legistlators to change the law regarding mayoral control of schools, which passed overwhelmingly by the New York State Senate.  In both districts, the results for the students achievement improvements are weak.  States have lowered the standards for passing rates in some subjects, and the results from NAEP have shown stagnation, despite the changes from the top down.  Bracey questions the validity of this governance model in his final paragraphs on the topic:

Kirst’s comments lead to another concern about mayoral control: mayors don’t last forever. The current crop of mayors running the schools wanted control.  Their successors might not evince such motivation. At the moment, both cities are in the hands of people holding the position l’etat c’est moi [I am the state].  That is not a condition that will likely last forever, but the end definitely is not in sight.

Theoretically, of course, mayoral control need not look like those discussed here, but it is disturbing that the two most visible models appear to be simultaneously undemocratic and ineffectual.  Benjamin Barber once referred to public schools as “workshops of our democracy.”  It does not seem that they are furthering democratic goals in New York and Chicago—nor improving achievement.

But don’t take our word for it.  Take a look at the entire report and make your own decisions.  You can find it here, and it will likely draw the attention of many eduwonks like us.