DC Schools Takeover: Probably a Good Thing

It looks like DC mayor Adrian Fenty will be allowed to take over the city schools. As my colleague Sara Mead has written (when she's not busy in her day job as conventional wisdom-busting provocateur), all mayoral takeovers aren't created equal--they can be done well, or badly. But specifics aside for the moment, I think this is a good idea, for a couple of reasons.

First, mayoral takeover creates a whole new kind of accountability. Critics of school-focused accountability systems like NCLB rightly note that the people writing the laws are never subject to the kind of tough accountability measures they impose on educators. And for various reasons--low voter turnout, fractured responsibility--people seem to get re-elected to urban school boards on a regular basis even when the schools are a dismally run as they have been here.

Mayoral takeover is different. Mayor Fenty is tying his political fortunes to school improvement in a deliberately high-profile way. That means that the smart people whose job it is to get him re-elected in 2010 won't be sleeping well the night before the 2009 test scores are released. Those kinds of incentives and pressures can be a good thing in a lot of ways.

Second, when mayors assume responsibility for the schools, they send an important message, both to the general public and the educators and students within the system: "Our schools are not a lost cause." Urban education and urban students have long been written off as irredeemable, victims of greater forces perhaps, but beyond saving in the end. That kind of attitude can infect the culture of a school system and become self-sustaining. Mayoral takeover send a very different signal: someone with a lot to lose is willing to take a risk on an uncertain but vitally important proposition. That's a good thing too.