Leonie Haimson watched five hours of a legislative hearing about mayoral control of the NYC public schools. She writes that it was “the best ever” because legislators asked tough questions and did not accept the party line from the Chancellor, who was appointed by the new mayor Eric Adams, who naturally wants mayoral control. Governor Kathy Hochul has proposed a four-year extension of mayoral control.
When Michael Bloomberg was elected in 2001, he said he would take control of the schools and fix everything. The legislature gave him what he wanted.
Mayoral control was passed by the legislature in 2002, at Bloomberg’s request.
NYC has had mayoral control for 20 years, and its problems remain critical. Thus, legislators were in no mood to hear rosy promises.
Haimson wrote:
I’ve testified at countless mayoral control hearings since it was instituted nearly 20 years ago. Yesterday’s joint Senate and Assembly hearings far surpassed any of them. You can watch the video here. Sorry to say there were very few news stories about it, because most of the education reporters were covering the Mayor’s announcement about lifting the mask mandate in schools. It was their loss, since the questioning by legislators was sharp and had a new seriousness about it, and the testimony from parent leaders was passionate and incisive.
In recent years, the opposition to Mayoral control has grown, here in the city and nationwide. As I point out in my testimony, the system has never been popular among average voters. But the evident dysfunctionality of the system and the way it allows autocracy to override the wishes of parents and the needs of children, no matter who is Mayor, is now more widely recognized. Many districts such as Detroit and Newark that once suffered under mayoral control or worse, state control, have returned to an elected school, and Chicago will soon do so.
This was the first time in my experience that influential legislators seem really intent about making improvements to the law. Sen. John Liu, chair of the NYC Education Senate committee, and Sen. Shelley Mayer, chair of the NY State Senate Education Committee, along with Assemblymembers Harvey Epstein and Jo Anne Simon, closely questioned Chancellor Banks about what changes could be made that would ensure that parents have a real voice in the system. Yet he seemed strangely unprepared for their pointed questions.
Chancellor Banks had the chutzpah to claim that the new mayor and he had brought down the COVID positivity rate. Supermen. The legislators weren’t buying it.
Another problem that both Mayor Adams and Chancellor Banks encountered is a glaring contradiction in their rhetoric . Both repeated their now-familiar refrain about how terrible our schools are, especially for Black and brown kids. But of course, if true, this failure persists after twenty years of mayoral control – the very system that they claim is necessary to solve the problem.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thanks Diane — the full blog post with much more detail is here: https://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2022/03/why-fridays-hearings-on-mayoral-control.html
I’d be fine with this if it meant true local control–i.e., if the individual districts were truly independent and could run as they see fit without city interference.
If mayoral control were effective, it would be reflected in the improvement in the schools of black and brown students. Why would any state agree to continue a failed approach, other than it represents the plan of special interests? New York should try to fix its funding system that has shortchanged the NYC schools and invest in more community schools in poor areas.
Privatization has failed to address inequities as well. If anything it has exacerbated the inequities. It has allowed private ownership to take priority over the public schools that poor students attend while it “laid waste” to the school budgets that the most vulnerable students attend. The city should be supporting evidence based plans that improve schools like smaller class sizes and community schools.
Leonie, I don’t really understand what “local” control would mean.
How would that work with citywide schools? Would wealthy districts like District 2 go back to having their own special middle and high schools that were exclusively for the students who were affluent enough to live in that district?
And who would make policy on things like specialized high schools — or would they simply cease to be and just become high schools under local control of whatever district they happen to be in?
I agree with Leonie that there are a lot of flaws and issues with Mayoral control, but I also see a lot of problems with “voter” control in Los Angeles. There is a trade off. Mayor de Blasio was far better for public schools than the LA board which was controlled by the ed reformers, but Bloomberg was not. The jury is still out on Eric Adams.
I don’t think there will be real changes in how to make schools more diverse without a citywide solution. I don’t mind going back to whatever was there previously, but I have no illusions that there wasn’t a lot of corruption and not much improvement back then, either.
Eric Adams and Governor Hochul both were funded by the charter billionaires. My expectations are low.
key point
The more direct democracy is, the more it benefits the people, and considering that it’s easier for billionaires to fund one mayoral election campaign than several school board election campaigns, it’s even more true. Los Angeles has a school board under siege, but considering where we would be today if Eli Broad’s pet L.A. Mayor Villaraigosa had achieved mayoral control, I’ll take a school board any day and twice on Sundays. I see the end of mayoral control in big cities like Chicago and New York City as a momentous step in the right direction. Netflix billionaire Reed Hastings, who wants to eliminate school boards, must be wetting his silk underpants. But not to worry, he can buy new ones.
leftcoastteacher,
I hope you are right but I just see the reality. Even under Bloomberg, he was unable to do the horrible things that the democratically-elected LA school board did. Because people WILL get out and vote for Mayor while they barely pay attention to school board elections. And it is easier for money to buy school board seats than Mayoral.
Chicago got rid of the horrendous Rahm Emanuel. Is there a chance that LA will be able to replace the school board when money is so influential in those seats?
I believe that Eric Adams is limited in how awful he can be because he will be BLAMED for how awful things are. Bloomberg was wildly unpopular by the end of his term as education became an issue. Eric Adams will definitely be friendly to charters and reformers, but he also has to be very wary of his constituents who will make him responsible.
In fact, Bloomberg’s annointed successor – also pro-reform – was expected to easily win the primary. Mayor de Blasio made public school — and charters — an issue and he won the primary and election.
I don’t object to ending Mayoral control, but I don’t see it as being some panacea and I think we might just end up with an LA, which seems far more anti-public school and pro-charter than NYC. Will be happy to be proven wrong, however. And obviously I would vote for board candidates who supported public schools.
It’s the same decades-long dilemma: which is better, local control or centralized control? Or does it depend on who gets elected as mayor and who gets elected to a school board?
The specialized high schools and their student selection processes in cities like NY are the prime outrageous example of this major problem in education. How is that even in a dense, large metro area like NYC, we can’t have enough such schools to meet the needs of all interested students?
What is the difference if Johnny and Shakara take up space in a school they do not want to attend, vs. attending an additional specialized high school set up to meet those abilities and needs?
The city could establish more specialized schools anytime it wants to.
And should. In every borough
I agree, and Adams and Banks have suggested they’re interested in doing it.
Mark,
The focus on “specialized” high schools is nonsensical. There are plenty of good high schools that aren’t “specialized” — that term is misused by folks who don’t understand the process.
NYC could set up many more VERY SELECTIVE high schools — high schools that screen students. There are already many great SELECTIVE high schools that have more applicants than specialized high schools do!
When you say “set up more specialized high schools” what you are saying is that there needs to be a lot more high schools where admissions is determined entirely by an 8th grader taking a test on a single day and their performance on that test is the ONLY thing that matters.
The problem isn’t the dearth of more high schools that admit via a single day’s test. It is that people think the SHSAT test to get admitted to a specialized high school is a test that one “passes”. It is not.
I repeat, the SHSAT is not a test that a student “passes”. It is a test that a student “outscores”.
The SHSAT is a test that is like a large college class of 200 students where the professor tells the class: look to the left and right — it doesn’t matter how well you do in this class because I am only going to give a passing grade to the 40 students who score the highest on my final and I will be failing the other 160. So it isn’t enough for you students to study hard, because if 40 students in this class are studying even harder, you will fail. You must receive one of the 40 highest grades because a student with the 41st highest grade is a failure just like the student with the 200th highest grade. No one but the 40 top students deserves to pass and the rest of you are failures if 40 students in this class score higher than you on the final.
Is that really any way to choose students for a high school? Imagine the pressure that puts on 8th graders to tell them that there is no passing score on the SHSAT, and only the students whose score is higher than 80% of the other 8th graders will pass with the rest all failing no matter how much they study.
That is why there is an arms race in test prep. The more some students study, the more other students have to study. The only possible way to pass is to have a higher score than at least 80% of the other students who are also prepping.
There could be more selective high schools and students would do just as well. A test could be one part of the admissions process, but it would be a real test that one passes, not a test like the SHSAT that one has to “outscore” because a “passing” grade is only given to the students who outscore at least 80% of the other students.
I’m reminded of watching Tom Peters walk from behind the podium in a university auditorium with a flurry of arm gestures, exclaiming, “There is no secret! All you have to do is MEET THE NEEDS OF YOUR CUSTOMERS!”
This was during a lecture 40 years ago, broadcast on PBS, describing what he learned about the “secrets” of successful businesses after many ears of research, reported in his best-selling book “In Search of Excellence”.
In another lecture Peters described being hired by a large corporation to overhaul their entire operation: manufacturing, sales, waste, employee relations, etc. After several weeks on-site studying all aspects of the business, he summarized his detailed report to the CEO. The CEO listened, took notes, then said he thought the report was a little harsh. “But Tom,” he said, “We’re no worse than any other company in these regards.”
As he described this, Peters walked around to the front of the podium, pointed to the university seal and said, “Can you imagine if your university motto was ‘We’re No Worse Than Anyone Else!” ?
Some of these schools, administrators, chiefs. board members, chancellors, czars –WHATEVER the hell they want to call themselves– ought to put those two quotes on their doors as a daily reminder when they arrive at work.
Add to that list in my last paragraph: “parents with an agenda other than education, and politicians.”
Michael Bloomberg was a Republican (2000–2007) and an Independent (2007–2013).
The evidence that most elected Republicans and the neoliberal faction in the Democratic Party support authoritarian rule is overwhelming.
While legislators and parents ALL opposed mayoral control, there were no concrete plans, only a elected parent board …. the decisions rests with Albany ….. read my views below