When it comes to the District of Columbia’s public schools, the entrenched troubles are all-too-clear: Student performance is below par virtually across the board. Facilities from the classroom to the playground continue to crumble. Teachers lack basic resources to take their lessons to the next level. And multiple levels of bureaucracy have formed painfully slow, sometimes well-meaning plans for improvement.
Never before has the clamor for progress been so loud, and the impending overhaul in the District’s power structure has heralded countless promises to deliver.
“People are looking to the mayor’s office to fix it,” said Ward 4 D.C. Council Member Adrian Fenty, the Democratic nominee for mayor.
After his convincing primary victory, Fenty has wasted little time wading into controversy.
Though he still must win the Nov. 7 general election, the presumptive chief executive met with Superintendent Clifford Janey and the D.C. Board of Education last month. The closed-door meeting was described by participants as cordial, even encouraging, but Fenty took leave wondering whether the educational powers that be share his sense of urgency to improve the system.
They said yes, absolutely. He said, not so much.
“Maybe under the current structure there’s not the sense of urgency that you get when you talk to the parents about it,” Fenty said after the meeting.
Virtually every public statement Fenty has made since crushing his opponents in the primary suggests he will move to take over the schools. In early October, he described the system as “broken, and it’s been chronicled repeatedly.”
“At the end of the day, it’s the superintendent and the board who are responsible for the day-to-day operations, that’s where the problems, most of the problems, are,” Fenty told reporters Oct. 3. “I thinkat the end of the day, having one person instead of the board makes a lot of sense, and that’s one reason we’re strongly considering it.”
Mayor Anthony Williams failed to take control in 2004 after a nasty battle with the council and school board. Williams said last week he would support Fenty “on whatever he wants to do.” On a controversial schools takeover, Williams said, “I would certainly not discourage him to do that.”
Janey, hired in August 2004, has introduced more challenging learning standards, modified curricula and requirements for Advanced Placement classes in all schools. He has closed a handful of the system’s 144 schools and proposes to shutter more. He has introduced a 15-year, $2.3 billion facilities master plan to renovate roughly 100 schools and build 20 more.
But still, most public and charter schools are failing to meet benchmarks, and the majority of the city’s 58,000 students have failed to reach reading and math standards.
There are plenty of people who believe Janey deserves more time to make a difference, including the school board members who hired him. They speak of building “accountability” from within the existing system. They fear handing the mayor unprecedented power.
Referring to Fenty, Board Member JoAnne Ginsberg said the board “does share his sense of urgency,” that “we need to make the changes we need to make in order to increase student achievement immediately.”
D.C. Council Member Vincent Gray certainly hasn’t committed to Fenty’s design either.
But the superintendent is running out of time to convince the presumptive mayor. Fenty, with his staff, is now analyzing multiple school models and standards for a post-general election decision.
“We’re going to put that together over the next couple months,” Fenty said, “leading up to the decision whether or not we’re going to have the mayor run the school system.”
Under his favored model, patterned after one employed by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a chancellor would take charge of an executive agency, perhaps a Department of Education, and the District’s Board of Education would be relegated to an advisory role.
“The New York model is extremely streamlined,” Fenty said. “The superintendent reports to the mayor and that’s the end of bureaucracy, which is very attractive to regular people who just want to have someone in charge of the school system, and have someone who’s accountable and hold others accountable.”
Bloomberg is welcoming all imitators. Late last month, he stood with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who was recently given substantial power over the school system by the California Legislature.
“I think it is courageous for you to stand up and say, ‘Hold me accountable, hold me responsible,’ ” Bloomberg told Villaraigosa during a news conference in Los Angeles. “That’s exactly what we need in this country.”
Perhaps Fenty will be the next chief executive to stand with Bloomberg. But doing so will require an amendment to the District’s charter, approval of council and the backing of Congress — no easy task.
But first, Fenty said, he wants to lead the D.C. Council on a field trip to New York to see the Big Apple’s education system firsthand.
“I think sometimes just looking at it in person is just very helpful,” Fenty said.
