A Tale of Two Cities: Viewing the Urban Education Crisis through the Dual lens of the Boston School District and the KCMO School District
I want to make the argument that the public policy issue of our time is the crisis of the urban education system. Los Angeles Mayor, Antonio R. Villaraigosa summed up this dire need for education reform when he said: “We face the great challenges of education. I’ll say it here and now: Reforming our public schools is the central policy issue of our time. We all know that this is the one way we can give more of our people a meaningful shot at a better life.” [i] A recent study released by Collin Powell’s organization, America’s Promise Alliance reports that high school graduation rates are at all time lows. Seventeen of the nation’s 50 largest cities had high school graduation rates lower than 50 percent. [ii] An international study conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development looked at the math, science, and reading levels in 15 yr olds in 31 developed countries. Despite being the wealthiest nation, the US ranked 15th in reading, 19th in math, and 14th in science. [iii] As these brief statistics display, America’s urban core school districts are in very poor shape.
The complex situation facing urban districts is compounded by the education apartheid taking place within the school system. The racial divide in urban districts is staggering. The following statistics represent the academic year 2002-2003. In Chicago, 87 of students were black or Hispanic; less than 10 percent of children in the schools were white. In Washington, D.C., 94 percent of children were black or Hispanic; less than 5 percent were white. In St. Louis, 82 percent of the student population were black or Hispanic; in Philadelphia and Cleveland, 79 percent; in Los Angeles, 84 percent, in Detroit, 96 percent; in Baltimore, 89 percent. In New York City, nearly three quarters of the students were black or Hispanic. [iv]
When a child cannot expect a quality education because the color of his skin or his parent’s income level, then we cannot afford to read the preamble to our constitution or the declaration of independence contently. We cannot rest on our laurels or lecture to developing nations when we are still not meeting the most basic of needs to a sizable portion of our society. “Even these, as stark as they are, cannot begin to convey how deeply isolated children in the poorest and most segregated sections of these cities have become.
In the typically colossal high schools of the Bronx, for instance, more than 90 percent of students (in most cases, more than 95 percent) are black or Hispanic.” [v]
So what kind of picture do Boston and KC paint to understand this dilemma?
The city of Boston district contains 145 schools and 57,000 students, 73 percent of whom are in or near poverty and 76 percent of whom are African American or Latino. Raymond Flynn was mayor of Boston in the late eighties and early nineties and led the charge for the mayor’s office to gain formal authority over the school district. Strong support from the business community fueled his efforts and in 1991, a petition submitted by the mayor and city council allowing the mayor to appoint the committee was approved by the governor and Massachusetts Legislature. Voters reaffirmed mayoral control in 1996. Flynn’s appointed the members of the school board, mostly close allies of his in the business community. Thomas Menino came to power as mayor in 1993 and continued to lead the efforts on education reform in Boston, Massachusetts. He tapped former San Diego superintendent Thomas Payzant to be the superintendent. Flynn organized the change in structure to bring in more professional superintendents who would stay out of the political theater and battles that previous superintendents had been embroiled within. “Payzant’s approach was much more within the framework of traditional educational reform and his primary focus reflected a professional educational model involving higher standards and capacity building.” [vi]
Payzant went about achieving higher standards in part through focusing on educational reform one step at a time. His first thrust was aimed at literacy and for this he developed a team of coaches, literacy tutors. This team later went on to expand to cover math subjects as well. Payzant reported directly to Menino and was not forced to engage in the political theater of special interest groups or the school board. While those elements remained present, the superintendent was freed up in many ways to simply focus on the task of improving the school system. The harmonious relationship between Payzant and Menino as well as Payzant’s effective methodology resulted in drastic improvements for the district. “Over the next decade Payzant would create new programs only when needed and only for a specific purpose. This is a stark contrast to the modus operandi of many urban superintendents, who roll out new initiatives nearly every year, stretching district resources (and credibility) along the way.” [vii]
Payzant urged teachers to use formative evaluation methods including testing data to track their progress. He slowly but surely brought the incoherent curriculum’s into a more unified curriculum. Payzant’ insistence on professional education kept Menino and the administration in Boston from having to intervene; they each afforded the other the necessary freedoms to execute their duties properly. ‘Payzant…came to the city committed to using student-achievement standards to leverage reform citywide; he had a comprehensive plan for achieving that goal; and he was in Boston long enough to have the plan take root. Thanks in part to his relationship with Mayor Menino, Payzant’s longevity was rare by the standards of big-city school systems, where only one in seven superintendents last longer than five years. [viii] Payzant’s tenure lasted eleven years which as Toch points out was a large part of his success in that it afforded his strategies the necessary time to take root. This was able to happen because of the restructuring of power that Mayor’s Flynn and Menino achieved. Without this structure of authority, Payzant’s efforts would have most likely been tangled in school board politics and special interest pressures.
Over the last ten years, the Boston school district has won award after award further demonstrating the efficacy of the political arrangement to provide an avenue for academic excellence. In 2006, Boston won the distinguished Broad Prize for Urban Education as the best city school district in the nation, earning $1 million in college scholarships for BPS graduates. In 2004, the Boston School Committee, appointed by Mayor Thomas M. Menino, earned the first Award for School Board Excellence from the National School Boards Association, citing the board’s key role in adopting policies to support standards-based reform and consistently balancing the district’s operating budget. Former Superintendent Thomas W. Payzant won the prestigious Richard R. Green Award in Urban Excellence as the nation’s best city schools superintendent, Massachusetts Superintendent of the Year, and a Governing magazine Public Official of the Year. On the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in Mathematics – also known as the “Nation’s Report Card” – Boston 4th and 8th grade students’ performance have outpaced their peers in all ten other participating cities. [ix] The Boston school district Office of Communication claims that the transformation of the Boston Public School system came through four key components: challenging curriculum, staff development and leadership training, stronger partnerships, and more school choice. Challenges and problems are still prevalent in the Boston school district, but as these awards allude to, Boston has seen improved performance largely as a result of power restructuring.
So where does the Kansas City, Missouri school district stand with regards to progress and achievement? Unfortunately, the KCMSD has not seen the advancements that the Boston District has over the last two decades. The Kansas City Missouri School District is plagued with both a history of poor leadership and challenging demographic dynamics. KCMSD is by no means alone in the situation it finds itself as nearly every other major urban core city school districts faces this situation and similar challenges, but as the story of Boston demonstrates, successful reform efforts are taking place. The KCMO school district’s 26,000 students face problems of race, segregation, poor funding and inadequate leadership. Some of the most overt problems facing the district are: Lack of college preparation and placement, poor academic performance, lack of diversity, lack of qualified teachers, poor attendance and graduation rates(graduation: 64.4% in district vs. 85.1% in Missouri),provisional accreditation, negative stigma, and lack of community support. Serious financial challenges also plague the district. KCMSD’s poverty rate is 2-1/2 to 3-1/2 times that of other metro districts while the cost of educating low-income is approximately 110% greater. [x] Although courts have upheld KCMSD as proof that increased spending does not improve outcomes, this takes the spending out of context. Adjusted for relative need, KCMSD at a 24% spending deficit by 2000. KCMSD must consider alternative funding sources or cut expenses. The issue of segregation is also a variable in both the history of education dysfunction as well as the current situation. Over $2 billion has been spent over 12 years on desegregation. [xi] The desegregation “Experiment” considered a failure, less of a concern than school safety and standardized test scores
The arguably forced resignation of Superintendent Anthony Amato marks the rollover of the 23rd superintendent in the last 39 years. The district is currently without a Superintendent at the helm. The district lost state accreditation in 1999 after failing to meet any of the benchmarks set out by the state- the State Board of Education voted unanimously to strip the district of their accreditation. The district earned its accreditation back on provisional status in 2002 – the status it currently holds today. The state system uses a 14 point accreditation system where the KC district has recently moved from 3 to 5 out of 14 points. The KCMO school district is still led by the same governance structure it has been for the past three or four decades. A large, cumbersome board without the ability to produce the necessary environment for educational achievement in the district. The recent elections for school board members were all uncontested with a majority of the seats going to write in candidates who did not even do the work of gathering the 500 signatures necessary to get your name on the ballot with the KC Board of Elections. With this level of dysfunction in the KCMSD, it is no wonder that the school’s perform as poorly as they do.
Unfortunately, in Kansas City, an apathy born of disgust has settled like a fog over the most crucial stakeholders while the few who still have the “audacity to hope” lack the resources to address this problem alone. Meanwhile, children go to schools where the few teachers willing to teach in the district spend their own meager salaries on supplies for the classrooms.
Kansas City is at crossroads having followed the joint national trends of massive inner city infrastructure failure in the 90’s and the urban revitalization movement of the last decade.
Genuine excitement about development has begun to stimulate markets and curb the declining rate of population. However, for Kansas City to go forward as a great city, we must confront the infrastructure failure in our urban core neighborhoods. This can only be accomplished by the city’s leadership directly addressing these issues and calling all sectors of our society together to confront the problems and there is no issue more central that that of urban education system. Obviously a dysfunctional district manned by an incapable board and a revolving door of superintendents is not going to provide actual results to the urban education crisis. .
The juxtaposition of Boston and KC in terms of their school districts is definitely A Tale of Two Cities. So much so that the opening lines of that novel provide an appropriate context of understanding the differences: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness…” [xii] The difference I argue, between these two cities is leadership and while Kansas City cannot reproduce the leaders of Boston, what they can do is the same thing many other cities across America have been doing and that is examine their methodology and replicate it.
The Mayoral takeover movement has played been a centerpiece in the reform efforts of Boston’s public school system. This policy approach, while no means a panacea, provides ample opportunity for a more effective governance structure to achieve an atmosphere of harmonious educational achievement. Mayoral takeover over school districts is a policy reform that essentially means that mayors are given control over the school system and allowed to appoint the school board members as well as chief administrators. The mayoral takeover movement began in Boston in 1992, followed by Chicago in 1995, Cleveland in 1998 and New York in 2002. In the past couple of years, these cities were joined by Los Angeles, Washington DC, and Albuquerque, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Detroit.
Mayoral Reform has generally followed three paths of legislation: 1. State legislation that grant authority to the mayor to replace an elected board with an appointed board (such as Chicago) 2. State legislation that calls for a citywide referendum on whether to grant the mayor the authority to appoint the school board (such as Boston and Cleveland). 3. Voter approval of changes in a charter that allow the mayor to appoint school board members (such as Oakland) [xiii] The move to put the mayor at the helm of schools is a move for greater public accountability. Current education policy places a high value on accountability while school boards maintain a focus on compliancy.
By assuming power, the office of mayor creates a single, fixed point of responsibility for the city to hold accountable as well as have access to. “Reformers in Boston and Chicago were particularly concerned with the issue of accountability. The primary goal in both cases was to establish clearer lines of political authority and responsibility, making the city’s mayor ultimately responsible for the progress of public schools.” [xiv] As Kirst mentions, creating clear lines of responsibility is a major advantage for mayoral control of school systems.
But, as the Show Me Institute’s Policy Review points out: “Governance reform is not a strategy to directly improve schooling. Instead it seeks to provide effective leadership for improvement efforts.” [xv] This is an important point in addressing mayoral takeover policy. The transfer of authority to the mayor’s office will have little or no impact if it is not met with the high level of leadership necessary to begin to bring positive reform to education. Voter apathy in school board elections provide little if any public accountability which enables special interest groups to manipulate the school system outside the public eye. The mayor’s office does not promise freedom from politics and special interest groups; it does, however, provide a more transparent context for citizens to hold school government accountable.
The logical outcome of greater accountability over public leadership in school performance is a substantial improvement in efficiency. The city of Chicago took over the school district largely with this end in mind, particularly to improve the fiscal organization and operation of the school system. The Reform era of city government brought with it the notion of providing excellent city services and using performance audits and other instruments of measurement to insure these services. In many ways, the transition of school district authority to local government can be seen as a late onset outworking of the Reform movement.
The Tale of Two Cities between Boston, MA and Kansas City, MO is an unfinished story. Though Boston has enjoyed success, they still have much work to do in getting their district on par with suburban school districts. Kansas City’s fate is by no means decided, there remains much that can be done to improve the failing district. Leader’s across the spectrum need to champion education in Kansas City, fighting for funding, researching paths of success in other urban contexts and engaging the community in supporting viable solutions. Without this, the Kansas City School District faces a grim future indeed. But, both of these cities contain the seeds of hope necessary to confront the behemoth of urban education in America.
[i] Villaraigosa, Antonio R., New Mayor’s Conference, Institute of Politics, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, November 30th, 2005.
[ii] Swanson, Christopher. “Cities in Crisis.” Report published by America’s Promise Alliance. April 1st, 2008
[iii] OECD/PISA. Outcomes of Learning: Results from the 2000 Program for International Student Assessment of 15-Year-Olds in Reading, Mathematics, and Science Literacy.
[iv] Kozol, Jonathan. “Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s Educational Apartheid.” Harpers v. 311 n1864 Sept. 1st. 2005.
[v] Kozol, Jonathan. “Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s Educational Apartheid.” Harpers v. 311 n1864 Sept. 1st. 2005.
[vi] Kirst, Michael. “Mayoral Takeover: The Different Directions Taken in Different Cities.” Stanford Press, April 2001.
[vii] Russo, Alexander. “The Bostonian”. Education Next. Summer 2006 vol. 6 no. 3
[viii] Toch, Thomas. “The Maestro of Urban School Reform.” Education Governance. May 11 2007.
[ix] All facts taken from Boston Public School Communication Dept: www.boston.k12.ma.us/dept/structure_com.asp
[x]All KCMSD facts obtained through the Kansas City Missouri School Communication Office: www2.kcmsd.net/Pages/NewsRoom.aspx
[xi] Ciotti, Paul. “Desegregation Efforts”. CATO Institute. September 1998.
[xii] Dickens, Chalres. A Tale of Two Cities . New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1992.
[xiii] Facts from Wong, Kenneth & Shen, Frances. “When Mayors Lead Urban Schools” Paper prepared for:School Board Politics Conference Program on Education Policy and Governance Harvard University October 15-17, 2003
[xiv] Kirst, Michael. “Mayoral Takeover: The Different Directions Taken in Different Cities.” Stanford Press, April 2001.
[xv] Hess, Frederick. “Looking for Leadership.” Policy Briefing. February 6th, 2007. Vol. 7
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