Get Mayors in the Schooling Game

This opinion editorial was written with David Harris, president and chief executive officer of The Mind Trust, an education nonprofit launched by Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson.

Ask any mayor what his or her top priority is for the long term health of his or her city, and much more often than not they will say improving the quality of public schools. Mayors understand that a city cannot thrive with broken, or even sub-par, public schools. In too many of the nation's urban areas students have a less than 50–50 chance of even finishing high school and educational achievement in the nation's great cities remains far too low.

Yet despite the centrality of public schools to a city's civic health, few mayors have any formal statutory authority over the public schools located in their city, as school systems in most states are run by independent local school boards. It is a paradox that vexes many mayors.

Mayors determined to reform education must either find ways of supporting school districts or take them over. Efforts to support school districts include building relationships with superintendents, advocating for resources, and publicizing successes. They tend to keep mayors out of trouble (in other words, on the front page and off the op-ed pages) with a few noteworthy exceptions, such efforts are low-impact in terms of improving outcomes for students.

Other mayors have assumed direct control over school systems, or sought control by supporting entire slates of school board candidates. But the prospects of truly reforming any large entrenched institution are not good. Stanford's Michael Kirst, who has studied mayoral takeovers extensively, concludes that "it is difficult to link these governance shifts to improved instructional practices or outcomes."

But there is a third way that gives a mayor a way to truly impact education while sidestepping the treacherous politics and problems of takeovers: Mayors can open their own public schools. Doing so does not mean walking away from other struggling public schools but it does mean providing more high quality seats for students and introducing healthy competition into the public sector.

This is not just a theory. In Indianapolis, America's 12th largest city, Mayor Bart Peterson is creating an entirely new sector of public schools. In 2001, the Indiana legislature granted the Mayor of Indianapolis the authority to issue public school charters to nonprofit entities as part of broader charter school legislation. Mayor Peterson, a Democrat who has served as mayor since 2000, enthusiastically embraced the authority and the idea of public charter schooling.

Public charter schools are independent public schools that are tuition-free, open to all children, and publicly financed. In Indianapolis the first three mayor-sponsored charter schools opened in 2002 and served 480 students. Today, 16 schools enroll nearly 3,900 students and one new charter school is scheduled to open this upcoming school year and another to open in 2008.  When fully enrolled, these 18 schools will serve 7,900 students. While Mayor Peterson is currently the only mayor in the nation with the authority to sponsor charter schools, other mayors have seen the success and are approaching their state legislatures to obtain this power.

Around the country there are other independent entities, such as public universities and special charter school boards, that can authorizer charter schools. However, mayors bring unique characteristics to charter school authorizing. Mayor Peterson has capitalized on these strengths to create a highly effective charter authorizing system, which received Harvard's Innovations in American Government Award in 2006 for its high level of rigor, transparency, and excellence.

First, a mayor is directly accountable to the community served by the school. Mayors have incentives to authorize only the best schools, and have a unique incentive to fulfill the authorizer's obligation to hold schools accountable. In Indianapolis Mayor Peterson has received more than 90 letters of intent to apply for charters but only 19 have been approved. And, one school has already been shut down for poor performance, demonstrating Mayor Peterson's personal commitment to educational excellence as well as the political pressure and scrutiny on any mayor.

Second, mayors know their communities in a way other authorizers often do not. They understand the needs, the civic resources, and the subtle aspects of history and culture that make America's cities so textured and complicated. And, a charter from a mayor bestows prestige on the recipient that is unmatched in a charter granted by another authorizer. This explains why charter schools in Indianapolis have attracted several of the community's leading groups and citizens directly into the effort to provide better public options for the city's students.

Third, schools sponsored by a mayor are subject to closer scrutiny, which motivates the schools to perform without interfering with their autonomy. An example: by publishing one school's lackluster first-year results, Mayor Peterson sparked the school to undertake wide-ranging improvement—without infringing on the school's autonomy. The following year, the school's performance surged.
Finally, mayors have unparalleled resources and a unique position from which to build a charter initiative. They have an extensive staff with expertise in everything from law and finance to public relations and legislative affairs. Mayors have access to their city's (and often the nation's) best education experts. They operate the apparatus of city government, including agencies that can help (or hinder) new public schools, from parks and libraries to permits and zoning. Mayors typically control facilities or financing for facilities.

Most importantly, they are the only elected officials accountable for the health of entire cities.  They have experience delivering and monitoring a wide range of services to their constituents, and are able to mobilize their cities' resources to create high quality educational options for youth. And, because voters hold them accountable for the quality of life in their city, mayors might as well truly be engaged with improving education. 

The results in Indianapolis make clear that the mayor as charter school authorizer model has great potential to have a direct, positive impact on student learning. Mayor-sponsored charter schools often serve the most disadvantaged student populations in Indianapolis, including high school students at risk of dropping out and students facing severe learning challenges because of poverty and inadequate early education. These students tend to start out behind their peers; for example, in Indianapolis only 26 percent of charter third-graders in mayor-sponsored schools passed the state assessment exam upon entry in 2002, compared with 44 percent in the Indianapolis Public Schools. Students in mayor-sponsored charter schools have made much stronger gains over time. On average, charter school classes improved their pass rates by 22 points between 2003 and 2005.

The larger student population has benefited as well, as the mayor's charter school initiative has served as a catalyst for local districts that have also established new innovative schools and taken other steps to offer new opportunities to the children of Indianapolis. In fact, in Indianapolis, school districts are actually organizing charter schools and applying to Mayor Peterson for charters. They understand that the mayor's rigor and quality and especially his accountability system are powerful tools.

On March 14, 2007, St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay testified before the Missouri Legislature requesting the authority to charter schools within his city. Missouri legislators would be wise to heed his request and mayors elsewhere should also seek this authority. Urban education reform remains one of the nation's most immediate social problems and mayoral authorizing offers mayors a direct way to attack the problem and help families in their communities.

Disclosure: Andrew Rotherham sits on the board of The Mind Trust.