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AEP Online |
D.C.'s Fenty Latest to Seek School ControlIn response to repeated requests during his campaign last year, Washington, DC's new mayor, Adrian Fenty, has made it a priority to right the city's struggling school system, where roughly four in five schools are not meeting NCLB achievement goals and just 43 percent of students graduate from high school in five years. However, according to the Associated Press, his plan to address this issue - assuming control of the school system himself - has stirred an argument currently under review in Los Angeles, Seattle, and Albuquerque, New Mexico. "Mayors have a lot on their plate. It's a wonder that some of these mayors think they also have the time to take over public schools," Anne Bryant, executive director of the National School Boards Association, told the Associated Press. Other critics of mayoral control argue that it makes school systems less democratic, that the absence of a school board silences the voice of the community. Supporters make the case that turnarounds can occur more quickly when the various voices of committees are cut out of the equation. This argument is supported by a recent study showing modest but statistically significant progress in reading and math for elementary and middle school students in schools whose districts were under mayoral control from 1999-2003. The study was conducted by school governance expert Ken Wong at Brown University.
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"Mayors
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