Urban school governance is a moving target, in part because it’s pretty clear that there’s no best way to handle it and in part because no change in a city’s arrangements ever works as well as its promoters hoped. This inevitably leads to a down-the-road push to change it again or change it back or…well, do something different because we’re not getting the results we need and a lot of people are unhappy.
This short issue brief from analysts at the Pew Charitable Trusts is meant to help the powers that be in their home town of Philadelphia consider the governance options ahead by examining those presently in use in fifteen urban districts.
It seems to have been prompted by the fact that Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf and former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter are pushing for an end to the fifteen-year-old state takeover of the School District of Philadelphia and a return to some form of local control. It’s not clear that new Mayor Jim Kenney has staked out a position on this issue yet, but citizens indicated in a (non-binding) referendum vote last year that they generally agree with Messrs. Wolf and Nutter.
The most interesting factoid in the paper is that Philadelphia has never had a locally elected local school board. Prior to 2001, its board was appointed by judges or the mayor. Since then, the school system has been ruled by a five-member “School Reform Commission,” with three members designated by the governor and two by the mayor.
So another change may be in the offing for the perennially troubled public school system of the City of Brotherly Love. But what form should it take?
The Pew paper doesn’t even try to settle that question. Indeed, it states bluntly (and I think accurately) that while “State takeovers of local districts have, at least in some cases, cured financial ills created through mismanagement…there is no indication that any particular system for governing urban school districts is superior to another in improving long-term academic performance.” The authors did, however, find “broad agreement on at least one conclusion: Governance systems that produce uncertainty, distrust, and ambiguous accountability can impede districts’ progress on any front.”
Along the way, we find here a useful summary of the current governance arrangements of fifteen other urban districts—plus descriptions of which districts do and don’t have taxing authority and the different forms that state involvement and interventions have taken.
Note, though, that this paper really only addresses state-district relations and the formal structures of traditional districts. It doesn’t even get close to some of today’s most interesting governance innovations, such as the “portfolio” arrangements emerging in a number of cities (including a version in Philadelphia itself), the “parallel system” of traditional and charter schools (such as we see in Washington), or the “recovery district” model found in New Orleans (with versions operative in Memphis and Detroit, too). For insight on the latter, be sure to check out Fordham’s own analysis, written by veteran reformer Nelson Smith—especially since some Pennsylvania lawmakers are eager to try out a version of this in their state, too.
SOURCE: “Governing Urban Schools in the Future: What’s facing Philadelphia and Pennsylvania,” the Pew Charitable Trusts (January 2016).
