In two months, another school year will end in New York. While students will be enjoying a summer vacation, it will be up to lawmakers in Albany to make sure those students will enjoy progressively better schools when they return.
Mayoral control – the law giving a clear line of accountability for the success of our city’s 1.1 million children – expires in June. If it does, we can expect to see six years of progress in New York City vanish.
Make no mistake: while this may seem like an issue important only to parents and students, it is in fact an issue of great importance to us all.
As early as the middle 1950s, I fought for better conditions in public schools, and it is a fight I have never given up. As Queens Borough President, I oversaw the creation of thousands of new public school seats and worked to improve conditions for our children.
The mayor and his administration should be commended for the bold initiatives they have pursued in their efforts to improve the city’s school system. Most commendable of all is the mayor’s unflagging commitment to ensuring each child receives a quality education.
However, before mayoral control was introduced the likelihood of each and every child receiving a quality education was problematic. For far too long, no one had the final say over or full responsibility for the city’s school system. When there is no accountability, there is no progress. While our schools continued to decline, the bureaucratic morass only grew.
Responsibility for improving our schools did not fall directly on anyone, and consequently our schools and our children suffered dearly.
But with the passing of the mayoral control law in 2002, accountability was restored and the bureaucracy streamlined. In place of a fragmented Board of Education, we now have a school system with clear lines of accountability and a proven ability to improve our schools. We have introduced high, consistent standards at schools across the city. Schools that continually fail to meet those standards are restructured or shut down. Although not yet perfect, school funding is more equitable and efficient, and spending for teachers and students has increased dramatically.
These changes have led to real results in the classroom. Test scores are up, the dropout rate is down significantly, and 100 percent of teachers are now certified. But the numbers don’t tell the whole story. By demanding accountability and encouraging innovation, mayoral control has prompted an array of new programs for students and teachers – ranging from new mentoring and professional development programs to flexible curricula and small, specialized schools to serve the needs of every student.
The improvements made under mayoral control bode well, not just for our schools, but for our city, whose welfare is intimately bound to our ability to successfully educate our youngest citizens. To ensure that our children are able to benefit from the many opportunities of the 21st century, it is critical that public schools graduate well-prepared students. If the progress made under mayoral control is allowed to lapse, we damage not just our children’s future, but the entire city’s future.
That is why I believe it is absolutely imperative that in June 2009 the mayoral control law be renewed.
When comparing the last six years of mayoral control to the 25 years of unwieldy bureaucracy that came before, the lesson is clear: if everyone is in charge then no one is. Without clear lines of authority and someone in charge of the success or failure of schools’ accountability – we risk losing the hard won progress of the last six years.
For the sake of our children and of our city, mayoral control should be reauthorized.
