When Bob Duffy first ran for office, he opposed mayoral control. Now he wants it badly. PHOTO BY JEFF MARINI
Rochester school board president Malik Evans will join Mayor Bob Duffy in a discussion on mayoral control on Thursday, April 1. PHOTO BY JEFF MARINI
City News is co-hosting a televised forum on mayoral control. The details are at the bottom of the following story.
School reform efforts are nothing new in Rochester. In fact, we've been reforming since 1841, when the city established free public education for Rochester children, and 1850, when segregation of girls from boys in classrooms was abolished. Over the past four decades, the city school district has created magnet schools, Major Achievement classes for high-achievers, and a racial integration plan. We have closed schools and brought in Jesse Jackson to inspire students and parents. We've experimented with unstructured open-classroom teaching, middle schools, small schools within schools.
In early 1987, a nationally publicized reform increased teachers' salaries, established mentoring for struggling teachers, and removed some seniority protection.
There have been blue-ribbon studies by business leaders and a promise of thousands of mentors for city students. A 1986 Call to Action was supposed to mobilize community efforts around education. More recently, we tried to create Rochester's own version of the Harlem Children's Zone. And in 2000, the district broke Franklin High School into several small specialty schools, including a Montessori program in an attempt to save that failing school.
The goal of almost all of those efforts was to give the city's poor, non-white students a better education: to reduce the achievement gap between whites and non-whites. But student achievement in Rochester is worse now - far worse - than before the reforms began. None of the reforms seem to have made a dent.
In fact, Franklin may epitomize Rochester's reform efforts. Franklin has been "re-formed" several times, always with the promise of great improvement. But next September, the district begins a several-year process of closing Franklin's high schools. In the eyes of the district's administration and nearly all of its board members, those programs are beyond hope.
Now Rochester is debating yet another reform, one that is as big as any it has undertaken: eliminating the elected school board and making the school district part of city government, with the superintendent reporting to the mayor. The proposal is also exceptionally controversial, more so than any previous reform efforts save school integration in the 1960's.
At the moment, the issue is in the hands of the State Legislature. Since school districts in New York State are creatures of the state, the legislature has to approve any changes in the laws governing them - including the elimination of the school board. When Mayor Bob Duffy announced his interest in mayoral control in January, he expected that Albany would have a bill by early February.
There's still no bill, however. Drafting a bill has proved more complicated than Duffy or members of the Assembly had anticipated. Adding to the complexity: Governor David Paterson's distractions and the state's budget problems.
When Bob Duffy ran for mayor, he was opposed to mayoral control. Now, he's pushing hard for it. He insists that it will lead to better student achievement and to better accountability. He, like other district critics, complains that the state requires the city to give more than a $100 million, but gives it no authority over how the money is spent. And, Duffy notes, the district is able to negotiate with its unions - and hire staff and provide raises - but doesn't have to go to taxpayers to raise money.
Duffy's push received some reinforcement in December when an audit by the state comptroller said that the school board hadn't provided enough oversight over the superintendent and his staff. And Duffy believes that by combining two government entities he can bring more focus and cohesiveness to meeting the needs of Rochester's children.
At a forum sponsored by the Rochester Business Journal last week, Duffy cited the district's low student achievement and its 46 percent graduation rate, and urged that he be given a five-year chance to change that.
"We are hemorrhaging children," he said.
But critics say that mayoral control hasn't improved achievement in cities that have it, that it reduces input and access by parents and the general public, that it puts too much power in the hands of one person, and that eliminating the school board takes away the public's right to vote - a concern that is especially important to the African-American community.
His critics also say that while Duffy links students' poor achievement and the dropout rate to the city's crime rate, he himself has responsibility for such things as job creation, economic development, neighborhood improvement, and crime prevention, all of which impact students' lives.
Does mayoral control work? The record is mixed, complex, and often contradictory.
At the RBJ forum, Dennis Walcott, deputy mayor for educational and community development in New York City, said New York has seen "measurable increases" in achievement and graduation rates since adopting mayoral control in 2002. But what's the cause? Mayoral control? Or a court-ordered increase in state funding?
Kenneth Wong - who chairs the education department at Brown University and who has studied the effects of mayoral control extensively - says his research shows that achievement is higher in cities with mayoral control than in those without. Wong's statements are so compelling that he's a popular, frequently cited source among mayoral-control supporters.
His comments at the RBJ forum, for instance, included this one: "After two years of mayoral control, you would expect a significant impact on achievement."
If there were widespread agreement on that, there'd probably be little to debate. But other research indicates exactly the opposite. The book "When Mayors Take Charge," edited by Hunter College public-policy professor Joseph Viteritti, contains case studies of several cities that have adopted mayoral control, including New York. In some cities, achievement has improved under mayoral control. In others, it has not.
Teachers union president Adam Urbanski offered his own data at the RBJ forum: "The two highest-achieving districts in the US are Charlotte and Austin. They do not have mayoral control. The two lowest are Chicago and Cleveland. They do have mayoral control."
Joseph Viteritti's conclusion: "Making a direct connection between structure and results is difficult, perhaps impossible."
What is not in dispute is that Rochester's test scores and graduation rate are abysmal. And even many of the students who graduate find it hard to do college-level work.
There seems to be growing agreement that the root of this is concentrated poverty. Many Rochester students enter school lagging in language skills and burdened with multiple problems: physical and emotional health problems, poor self discipline, poor parenting, neighborhoods and often families in which violence is a fact of life.
Teachers, Urbanski said at the RBJ forum, have children for 19 percent of their day. Parents, peers, and neighborhoods are the influence for the other 81 percent.
"Unless we believe children are schizophrenic," Urbanski said, "the 19 percent can't overcome the influence of the 81."
That raises two questions. One: if this system isn't working, is mayoral control the only or the best option? One of mayoral-control's opponents is Bill Cala, who led the Rochester district as interim superintendent before Jean-Claude Brizard was hired. In a lengthy opinion piece sent to this newspaper, Cala charged that mayoral-control supporters have exaggerated and distorted its success. And he wondered whether the real goal of mayoral control is "breaking unions and creating a lower paid work force with fewer benefits."
Cala cited research indicating that mayoral control limits minority participation and representation. And he offered several alternatives to mayoral control, including selecting "better school board candidates," eliminating political party affiliation for school board candidates, and instituting term limits.
But, he said, the ultimate answer is a metropolitan school district.
RTA's Urbanski agrees.
"If we really want a solution," Urbanski told the RBJ audience, "give all children access to middle-class schools."
Only the most naďve observer of Rochester-area politics believes that the public would agree to a metropolitan school district, however. There has been a push for that for decades, through citizen activism and court actions (and countless articles and opinion pieces in this newspaper). Resistance hasn't lessened.
The second question, then, is whether despite the concentrated poverty, Rochester's schools can do a better job. Current school board leaders insist that they can - and that under Superintendent Jean-Claude Brizard, we're beginning to see progress. The graduation rate, for instance, climbed steadily between 2006 and 2008.
But the rate is still at only 46 percent. And test scores, traditionally, have bobbled, up one year, down the next; up for several years in a low-performing school, then back down.
At the RBJ forum, Margaret Raymond, director of the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University, insisted that "thousands" of high-poverty schools in the US are successfully educating their students.
Even here, however, there are no clear-cut data. You can cite individual schools that are successful, Urbanski retorted, but they're exceptions.
"I'm not talking about the exception to the norm," he said. "I'm talking about making the exception the norm."
"Show me a district where there's concentration of poverty that has done well," he said.
Brizard who was a regional superintendent under mayoral control in New York City, hasn't taken a stand on the issue in Rochester. But he has been outspoken on the need for teachers and principals to do a better job, regardless of which system they operate under.
Like many superintendents before him, Brizard insists that it's hard to get some poorly performing teachers and principals to improve - and hard to remove them because of tenure protection, union pressure, and teacher and principal resistance. Local union leaders disagree. Union contracts simply ensure that employees have the right to due process, protecting them from arbitrary punishment or dismissal, those leaders say.
Mayor Duffy doesn't specifically single out the district's unions when he talks about why he wants mayoral control. He insists that he respects the unions and recognizes the need for unions to represent employees. If Rochester gets mayoral control, the city will "still have to honor and negotiate labor contracts," he said on WXXI's 1370 Connection in January.
"Those systems don't change," he said. "They're part of the law."
But Duffy also says frequently that the current system "is not focused on children and student achievement but on special interests and adult concerns."
The kind of mayoral control Rochester gets is as important as whether we gets it at all.
In the plan under discussion in Albany, the elected school board would be replaced by a nine-member citizens' board who would advise the superintendent on school policy. Whether the mayor would appoint all nine or City Council would appoint some of them hasn't been decided.
Duffy wants to appoint all nine; Assembly member Joe Morelle has favored having City Council appoint at least some of them. Presumably that would provide more citizen input and would provider a stronger check on the mayor's power.
Experts such as Wong argue that the mayor must appoint at least the majority of the board. Otherwise, they say, the mayor has little more control than he has now.
But critics say that puts too much power in the hands of one person. And, they say, it dramatically reduces public input and access.
That has been one of the biggest complaints in New York City, where mayoral control first went into effect in 2002. Parents and teachers charged that Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein ran roughshod over their requests and concerns, almost completely shut them out of participation in district affairs, and fired two advisory board members who objected to a Bloomberg proposal. When the State Legislature reauthorized mayoral control last August, in fact, many of the revisions to the original legislation were aimed at providing more input and access for the public, particularly for parents.
Viteritti says that any form of mayoral control should ensure plenty of checks and balances - providing at least some City Council oversight, for instance.
Viteritti also notes another potential source of imbalance: the business community. Business leaders here, as in other cities, have been pushing for mayoral control. And they often accuse district officials of not using sound business methods. But relying too heavily on "the business model for public schools can undermine democratic norms and leave ordinary people on the sidelines of school politics," Viteritti writes in "When Mayors Take Charge."
"The centralization of power and authority at city hall can remove decision making from community-based institutions, including schools themselves, where parents tend to have better access," Viteritti writes. "Unlike business leaders, parents do not have the political clout that is needed to get a call through to the mayor's office."
Another key issue: whether the community supports the change to mayoral control.
Research suggests that "even the best-designed and most effectively managed policy initiatives may founder if they fail to engage the participation and political support of recipients and other stakeholders," Viteritti writes.
On this issue, as on the issue of other cities' experience, Rochester has dueling data. A January poll of parents of district students indicated strong opposition to mayoral control. That poll was sponsored by the Rochester Teachers Association and 14 other unions and organizations opposed to mayoral control, but it was conducted by an independent, non-partisan research firm, BRX Global Research Services.
A poll released this week, however - sponsored by the non-partisan Center for Governmental Research and opinion-research firm Metrix Matrix and conducted by Metrix Matrix - indicated quite the opposite. In a broader survey of city residents - parents and non-parents - 62 percent of respondents said they support mayoral control. Only 23 percent said they oppose it. Thirty-three percent hadn't made up their mind.
In the CGR survey, the support for mayoral control held up through all demographic groups: white and black, parents and non-parents.
The majority of respondents also said they have more faith in the mayor's ability to increase the district's graduation rate than they do in the school board's.
That support doesn't negate Viteritti's concern about the need for "political support of recipients and other stakeholders," however. Unions representing the district's principals, administrators, and non-teaching employees are adamantly opposed to mayoral control and have been marching and picketing against it. Their opposition isn't likely to evaporate if the State Legislature passes mayoral control legislation.
The risks of change: Many supporters of mayoral control base their opinion more on their unhappiness with the current system's record - on the sense that mayoral control couldn't make things worse - than on hard evidence that mayoral control will improve things.
But the change creates tension and intense division in the community. And if mayoral control doesn't produce strong improvement in student achievement, things certainly could get worse.
Among the Rochesterians worried about a change to mayoral control is former Mayor Bill Johnson, who has made education improvement a cornerstone of his public service, both as mayor and, before that, as head of Rochester's Urban League.
Johnson has been an outspoken critic of the school district. Despite his concerns about the district and its performance, however, Johnson, like Urbanski, Cala, and many others, believes that concentrated poverty is at the heart of the district's challenges. And he says he isn't convinced that mayoral control is what the city and the district need.
Johnson worries about the concentration of power in the hands of one person, and he notes the problems that power has created in New York. He also draws distinctions between Rochester's mayor and two mayors who are moving forcefully to change their school districts: Michael Bloomberg in New York and Richard Daley in Chicago. Duffy, he says, doesn't have the power that Bloomberg and Daley have built for themselves. And it takes power, he says, to resist criticism and pressure and bring about change.
"Duffy doesn't have the killer instinct," he says. When a city gets mayoral control, "it isn't just that you get the right to do it, it's do you have the will to do it," he says. "Sometimes it's not pretty."
He also charges that there's been too little transparency in Duffy's push for mayoral control - too little public discussion of the specifics of a plan for Rochester.
Duffy has asked for a five-year trial period. If achievement doesn't improve under his control, he says, he'll agree that we should go back to the old system. But Johnson questions how that can happen. For mayoral control to have any chance of success, the district's administrative operations will have to be incorporated into the city's. If the new system doesn't work, asks Johnson, "how do you rebuild the system that has been completely deconstructed?"
Johnson and others note that the Duffy administration faces major financial problems. Is he confident that he can get more money from the state to expand the increased services he has promised for children and their families? Or does he plan to use some of the school district's money to pay for them?
And Johnson says he worries about what might happen after Duffy leaves office.
"Nobody is bound to maintain the programs of his predecessor," he says. "There's no clearer example of that than the fast ferry," referring to Duffy's rapid move to shut down the initiative that was a hallmark of Johnson's administration.
Viteritti's book includes examples of mayors who weren't nearly as passionate as the predecessor who brought about mayoral control. Some of them ignored the schools, when mayoral strength and focus was a principal reason for the reform.
"How do you bind Duffy's successor?" Johnson asks.
"This is the Achilles' heel of the contemporary movement for mayoral control," writes Columbia University's Jeffrey Henig in "When Mayors Take Charge," "and at this point, not enough is known to confidently judge whether this vulnerability will prove to be a tragic one."
"Mayoral control has been launched largely in response to short-term alignments and particular personalities," writes Henig. "This runs counter to an important tradition in American political thought, which conceives of governance institutions at least in part as a tool for reducing dependence on individuals."
"The citizens of the District of Columbia and a majority of members within Congress currently are encouraged by the style and energy of Adrian Fenty," writes Henig. "But it takes no stretch of the imagination to predict how Congress would have reacted to a proposal to give control of the District of Columbia's schools to Marion Barry."
"For struggling and complex urban school systems, what matters are vision, capacity, and sustained political support," writes Henig.
Johnson seems to leave some room to be persuaded. But his skepticism is clear.
So is his concern.
"I can't think of a more critical decision this community has," he says.
So if there are risks, and there's no conclusive proof that mayoral control consistently leads to improvement, is there any reason to embrace it?
In some cities, there seems to have been real improvement.
"Mayoral control in Boston," Viteritti writes, "has engendered continuity in leadership and a new focus on learning."
And Viteritti points to a possibility that Duffy has mentioned: integrating school and municipal services. Particularly in large cities, "where disadvantaged students are especially dependent on support services to be ready for school," he writes, that kind of service integration is more essential than in more affluent suburbs.
But perhaps most important: "Structure is not a solution; it is an enabler," writes Viteritti. "It creates possibilities for the kind of bold leadership needed to turn around failing school districts."
Viteritti cautions that any mayoral-control system should contain plenty of checks and balances and should "create opportunities for democratic engagement and participation."
That said, New York's school system, he writes, "has undergone more change in the past seven years under the Bloomberg-Klein administration than over any similar time frame in its entire history."
"Most informed observers," he writes, "whether or not they agree with the administration's changes, believe that this would not have been possible under the previous governance arrangement in New York."
TV forum will discuss mayoral control
WXXI, City Newspaper, and WDKX radio are sponsoring a televised forum on mayoral control from 8 to 10 p.m. on Thursday, April 1.
The panelists: Mayor Bob Duffy, school board President Malik Evans, and Joseph Viteritti, public-policy professor at Hunter College and editor of "When Mayors Take Charge," a study of the experience of mayoral control in several US cities.
Journalists participating in the program: WXXI's Bob Smith, City's education writer Tim Louis Macaluso, and WDKX morning-show host Liz Medhin.
Video of the forum will be posted on City Newspaper's website within a few days.
Comments for "Power, Duffy, and the schools" (20)
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julzb said on Mar. 31, 2010 at 11:46am
This s a great Great Summary article of the issues and this helps Residents to finally be informed fully of the debate. But more needs to be said and asked.
How about Mayoral support instead of control
The rational we’ve heard is graduation rates and finances but “the hundred pound gorilla in the room” is conditions on the ground. We haven’t heard what is happening in children’s lives causing them to fail and how the system is failing them. “Savage Inequalities” by Johnathan Kozal discuss the large discrepancies between public suburban and city schools. The book reflects conditions similar to what Rochester is experiencing. We cannot be ostriches to the fact that inner city schools have far more challenges than the surrounding suburbs. Our mayor should focus on changing the conditions of the city so as to prevent or improve the conditions under which our children are exposed and learn.
Mayoral control will remove the representation of the community and its ability to have a voice in how the schools are run. The real problem is the significant flight of educated people from the city. If the children you are serving are constantly being exposed to a world where they witness drugs, violence, and incarcerated parents this has a profound effect on their ability to succeed. Parents also have to take responsibility for raising their children but working multiple low wedge jobs makes it harder. This is not something new; it is well known and understood but missing in this discussion. In order to reverse this, it is my opinion that the Mayor must provide a support structure to help children learn in a safe environment.
The Mayor and city councils priorities must be centered on solutions like increasing multi-income housing and parks and prevention of violent crime, thefts and drug dealings happening on the streets around schools. Teachers have their cars broken into, stolen and stripped on a regular basis while they work. How can we attract teachers when they are subject to these conditions? How can we expect to open schools from 3pm to 8pm when this type of environment exists? The system is broken because the solution revolves around more staff, security and additional barriers like metal detectors and keycard access. The tactics to keep crime out of the building increase while the surrounding area deteriorates. We are moving to a militarized system of education where going to school feels more like a prison sentence than a learning environment. Perhaps a start would be to reduce the number of guns on the city streets by offering incentive programs to collect guns. Place special focus around the schools that are failing the most, improve the perimeter of school safe zones. If we do not get to the heart of the issue there will be no end to the cycle, no matter who is in control.
We must ask a simple question as to why the surrounding towns are able to successfully operate with a school board in place whereas the perception being presented by the mayor is that the city school board cannot. The mayor is implying that graduation rates are directly related to school boards. I argue that this is not the case, that fundamental socioeconomics at play here. There are schools within the RCSD that have good graduation rates and there are schools failing pulling the overall average down. The real issue is not the school board or ineffective teachers; it all has to do with the child’s support at home. There is a class and cultural issue at play here and Mayoral control alone will not solve.
Why not include the mayor in partnership with the school board by allowing him a seat at the table. Full control and privatization is extreme but a seat at the school board would be fitting no matter who the Mayor is in the future. To the district I would ask; How about “smaller schools by design”? The Harlem Children’s Zone, directed by Geoffrey Canada has been very successful model with a slogan “From Cradle to College to Community Building”. The slogan can be interpreted as the mission statement and it clearly has a goal of continued success. The RCSD can explore more radical solutions that make the whole child successful. Starting with a mandatory program for parents on raising children “Baby College” could be an idea to start with. We need well established health care and social work facilities in the schools. The goal is to keep track of children from birth to college so they then become productive members of society and good role models. The RCSD could be broken into four smaller districts and mirror those in surrounding suburbs like Spencerport and Pittsford. The city is already divided up in four areas and needs more focus on making these areas child centered school zones and not allow students to attend schools out of there zone. Students seem to school hop and this makes them hard to keep track of.
How short are our memories and have we not learned our lessons. When the charter schools came into town, especially the Charter School of Science and Technology, they promised much like the Mayor is. The school had uniforms, bussing, good curriculum, excellent professional development and more technology. It had privatization and corporate money to create a “State of the Art School”. Well, the school failed for many reasons after five years. One might blame the principal who failed a discipline but why did the five principals after him not fix things from the top? The Charter School’s, Edison Project Corporate Board similar to the one Duffy wants to place, failed. The answer is simple, it was the caliber of child they were serving. I witnessed children who didn’t care that the school was brand new when they punched holes in the walls and they didn’t care about technology when they stripped them and stole parts. Parents didn’t adhere to there signed contracts to support their child the lack of parental involvement was painfully evident. What will be in the Mayor’s plan to answer the question of how do you lead a horse to water and make them drink?
I have a choice, fortunately where I can send my kids to school and this is where socioeconomics comes into play. Many of our citizens within the city schools do not have the opportunity to move but they do have the choice for a free equal education which could improve their lives if they embrace it. It is not a “white” thing to learn, you have to be a well rounded person to achieve. The Mayor doesn’t have to control the schools in order to bridge the gap between the city, colleges, and business to create partnerships that lift up our most in need.
richard said on Mar. 31, 2010 at 11:49am
"Current school board leaders insist that they can - and that under Superintendent Jean-Claude Brizard, we're beginning to see progress. The graduation rate, for instance, climbed steadily between 2006 and 2008."
Are these people Insane? The superintendent told everyone he was lowering graduation standards to state bare min. standards. They consider it a success when lower standards cause more to achieve? He also lowered behavioral standards. Now we see that -even with lower standards - less students are graduating. This superintendent has been a disaster.
Josh K said on Mar. 31, 2010 at 2:59pm
Mayoral control does nothing to solve the biggest problem among Rochester students: structural poverty. As the former interim superintendent said in his guest editorial a few weeks back, the formative years before a child even reaches kindergarten are probably more important than the following 13 years.
Rochester needs good paying jobs INSIDE the city. Not Walmarts or other low paying service sector jobs, but the higher paying manufacturing and other skilled trades jobs that this city was built on. We need to stop plowing under suburban wetlands in Brighton and Henrietta and start redeveloping the empty lots in the city. We need a real transit system that can get lower income workers to and from these jobs at low cost to them. We need a master plan for getting this city back on track.
Until the Mayor does something positive to reduce the systemic poverty in the city, students will continue to fail and no tweaking of the hierarchy of the school district is going to fix that.
rehab said on Mar. 31, 2010 at 7:09pm
I taught in many districts including the RCSD The disparages are very evident. You need a teacher on your panel with hands on experience. This Data head Margaret Raymond is clueless and so removed from the real issues. She is focused only on teachers not the whole child. NYS teacher programs in colleges are state of the art and our teachers are better prepared then any other teachers in the country. You have a job in a heart beat in any other state. I know this from my colleagues experiences. I also know that many of my peers have left our jobs in the city when we all came to having children of our own because of reasons such as the job stress is high, the pay-it cost 75% of your pay to have 2 children in day care and over and over our experience teaches us that children over and over are more successful with a stay at home parent for (at least) the first 5 years of the child's life.
Good Teacher retention would improve if child care for our own children became a benefit offered to teachers or if we were allowed longer maternity leave time. In most fields/jobs with a masters degree requirement the pay is comparable. Teachers pay is so low that many are forced to make the choice to stay home. I also think that if Jobs improved in the city allowing at least one Mother or Father to stay home with their children parent involvement would increase, creating more whole children as example role models to others. The Parent training is essential for a community who is clueless about what is and is not appropriate for children during the stages of growth from infancy to Kindergarten and on. The beginning of the changes have to happen at the youngest of ages. I feel strongly that these changes can happen with the currant structure. Politics and egos really play a part to get anything done and the City's Mayors have been injecting more politics with Johnson and Duffy on an already stressful situation. Many of my teacher friends feel the currant Superintendent is accountable and so are the Principals. But very little asking is done from administrations and political figures of teacher input, those of us entrenched in the issues. We have plenty of quality ideas that would work if tried.
Think about it if most homes have parents working 2 minimum wadge jobs maybe one parent is in prison, drug addict or the grandparents are raising the children; who is around to watch what is happening in neighborhoods and to watch the children when they get home. I have found that while I have been home I have become the eyes and ears of the neighborhood which people depend on. I am also the Mama hawk on the street watching all the children playing. Many parents never come out of their houses to watch there kids on the street, especially those tired from a long work day. Increasing after school programs around sports and the Art would be very valuable to these children stuck in these types of home lives. It is proven that children involved in sports after school do better and stay out of trouble. The City of Rochester needs little league fields and Play Grounds. This is something the mayor could create with business partners. Create Jobs at the ball parks and after school child centered programs/businesses to maintain them. Mayor the work is something you could be doing now, easy solution. I want to know why are your hands tied and you can't attempt these simple changes. We need more open government and to know more what you are doing to create Jobs. People don't want bigger government they want a voice and to be the solution.
Drama said on Mar. 31, 2010 at 11:02pm
In the 1960's Blacks gained civil rights, in Rochester Whites built expressways to work in the city then leave as fast as they can to suburban sprawl. Creating Lots of DSS housing and a segrigated city and news media who love Black on Black beeds it leads stories. Maybe an all white Board of educated, rich people can use their own money to fix the problem they created. At least the Mayor cares and is trying. The voter turn out was as bad as the number who cared to fill out the survey 26%. Something sad about the fact that people just don't care anymore, lost faith in government. If people sit on the side lines and don't shape their world then you get what you get and someone like Duffy will swopes in to do it. People are either sick of the drama around the RCSD and have come to the conclusion their voice doesn't matter anyway or they are more illiterate then we thought and they don't read their mail.
Haggard Maggie said on Mar. 31, 2010 at 11:19pm
As I City School teacher, I know first hand the challenges students and teachers face... it's the elephant in the room that people see but don't want to admit to... The problem is poverty and children born of teens, and now being raised by 20 somethings, many of them whom did not have a good experience in school or have not finished school themselves. If you want real change, start in the elementary schools, don't look at test schools, they are deceiving...believe me every day it's like a battle zone to get students to stay on task, focus and try to learn. Most of my day, in the second grade, is spent redirecting behavior, trying to get students to focus on learning instead of fighting and threatening, and swearing at each other, or at me. I have several students whom were passed to me not knowing how to read, because we are only allowed to keep a certain number back... or if they are retained, if they don't continue to achieve, they are passed on due to the fact you can only keep a child back once in elementary school. Then Brizard tells us we have too many black students in special education. Has he looked at our student makeup? Has he come in to see what many elementary teachers deal with? We need a teacher and para in every room, or two teachers in every room, so while one is dealing with the constant discipline problems, the other one can actually teach. It's overwhelming what teacher face in the elementary schools, most of the students have so many needs that aren't being met at home, the teacher is now the surrogate parent and teaching is one of the last things done during the school day. Revamp the elementary schools, so that no child is left behind, and not just on paper.
Brad said on Apr. 01, 2010 at 1:36am
Dear Rochester,
Get over your love affair with Cala. He was the interim superintendant. But he didn't want the job full-time because he had one of the easiest superintendant gigs in history in Fairport. RCSD would have, you know, hard. Actions speak louder than words. Anyone can sit around and tell you that they have all the answers. His letter to City Newspaper was good, but he still fundamentally believes that "the suburbs" have all the answers. They don't. Those teachers play by the same rules as the city. They administrators hire the same teachers who all got degrees at the same schools and all learned the same things as city teachers. They all teach the same things in similar ways, with a few outliers here and there. They're all protected by the same union. This city vs. suburb debate is a complete red-herring. The only difference between city education and suburban education is the percentage of students in any given school with anti-social personality and behavioral problems. You can't fix social problems by moving to the suburbs. Education just might be our biggest social problem. But when the problem is "concentrated poverty," the answer is not "move to the 'burbs." Rather, it's "think harder." At least Brizzard wants to try to reform the city district from within and actually make it better. When the next best idea is "blow it up," I have to ask - did you really need to get a PhD to come up with that brilliant plan? I mean, there is merit to the idea of a county-wide school district. I would love to see that. But Cala's idea wasn't just one county district - it was, "Disband the City schools because they're bad and send everyone to suburban schools, which are good." The city = bad, suburbs = good mentality is grounded solidly in the 20th century. If espousing outdated views is something you're proud of, then, I guess, keep doing it. Meanwhile, people with better ideas, better degrees, and more intelligence will try harder than tired cliches.
realist said on Apr. 01, 2010 at 8:23am
It's the PARENT(s), i.e., the kids who had these kids. Many of these people are one and the same as the thugs and thugettes that create our "gangsta" urban culture. No system can compensate for the life these kids have outside of school.
For political reasons, neither teachers, administrators, nor politicians can emphasize this truth. Such is the current zeitgeist. Sigh...
Julie Abdella, Henrietta said on Apr. 01, 2010 at 2:21pm
How about mayoral support instead of control?
We’ve heard about graduation rates and finances, but what about “the hundred pound gorilla in the room”? “Savage Inequalities” by Jonathan Kozol discusses the discrepancies between public suburban and urban schools similar to what Rochester is experiencing. We can’t deny that city schools have far more challenges than the suburbs. Focus on improving the conditions to which our children are exposed.
Mayoral control will remove the representation of the community and its ability to have a voice in how the schools are run. The real problem is the significant flight of educated people from the city. If the children you are serving are exposed to drugs, violence, and incarcerated parents it has a profound effect on their ability to succeed. Parents also have to take responsibility, but working multiple low wage jobs makes it harder.
The mayor’s priorities must be centered on solutions like increasing multi-income housing, parks, and crime prevention of crime. Teachers have their cars broken into, stolen and stripped on a regular basis while they work. How can we attract teachers when they are subject to these conditions?
We are moving to a militarized system of education where going to school feels more like a prison sentence than a learning environment. Place special focus around the schools that are failing the most. If we do not get to the heart of the issue there will be no end to the cycle, no matter who is in control.
Why are the suburbs able to successfully operate with a school board in place, whereas the perception being presented by the mayor is that the city school board cannot? The mayor is implying that graduation rates are directly related to school boards. But fundamental socioeconomics are at play here. There are schools within the district that have good graduation rates while failing schools pull the average down. The real issue is not the school board or ineffective teachers; it all has to do with the child’s environment. There is a class and cultural issue at play here that Mayoral control alone will not solve.
Why not include the mayor in partnership with the school board by allowing him a seat at the table? Full control and privatization is extreme but a seat at the school board would be fitting no matter who the Mayor is in the future. How about “smaller schools by design”? The Harlem Children’s Zone, directed by Geoffrey Canada is a successful model with a slogan “From Cradle to College to Community Building.” Let’s start with a mandatory program for parents on raising children “Baby College” like they do in Harlem. Manage children’s mental health and create child-centered school zones that limit school hopping to avoid discipline issues.
When the charter schools came into town, especially the Charter School of Science and Technology, they promised much like the mayor is. They had uniforms, bussing, good curriculum, excellent professional development and technology. It had privatization and corporate money to create a “State of the Art School”. The school failed for many reasons after five years. One might blame the principal but why did the five principals after him not fix things from the top? The charter’s corporate board similar to the one Duffy wants to place, failed. The answer is simple; it is the high number of at risk children.
Fortunately, I can send my kids to a suburban school but many of our citizens within the city do not have the opportunity to move. Isn’t it more along the line of “we are products of our environment” rather than where we are educated? The mayor doesn’t have to control the schools in order to bridge the gap between the city, colleges, and business to create partnerships that lift up our most in need.
Clayton Adams said on Apr. 01, 2010 at 3:46pm
Jeff Marini: Nice cover shot of Mayor Duffy.
realist said on Apr. 01, 2010 at 4:20pm
Henrietta: " “Savage Inequalities” by Jonathan Kozol discusses the discrepancies between public suburban and urban schools similar to what Rochester is experiencing."
This is no longer true. There are plenty of materials and much costly equipment in the city schools.
volunteer said on Apr. 01, 2010 at 8:39pm
Usually I use my real name, but this time I will employ a pseudonym. I want to reinforce what "Haggard Maggie" said earlier in comments. When volunteering at some city elementary schools this year, these are incidents I have witnessed: A 5th grade boy was in the gym and refused to leave. Despite the efforts of a teacher and a vice-principal, no one could get him out. The school had to wait 45 minutes until his father showed up to remove him. While reading to a 2nd grade class, a boy was standing next to a little girl repeatedly throwing crayons at her. Finally the teacher had to put her body in between them and he kept throwing crayons at her. The next week, while waiting to read to the same class. I was talking to a little boy in the hall. A teacher came up and told me that earlier he had thrown a trash can and broken a table. I asked him why he did that and he told me he was furious. He told me that he can't control himself and his mother can't control him either. He is 8 years old. Then I went to another school to tutor a 6th grader in reading. As we sat down to read, a huge fight broke out down the hall between 2 girls. The boy's teacher rushed out to help and I closed the door and prevented students from rushing out to see. These are daily ocurrences in City ELEMENTARY schools. What consequences did most of these children face? Almost none. Maybe a day or 2 in the in-school suspension room. So, how is Mayoral Control going to fix this, especially when Duffy says he will give "free reign" to Brizzard? Since Brizzard's no suspension rule went into effect , the schools have gotten completely out of control and when the District reported a HUGE drop in behavioral incidents last year, that was a FLAT -OUT LIE!
AverageSchmuck said on Apr. 02, 2010 at 11:21am
It doesn't matter who is "in charge" of the district. It's just another shell game...Duffy "cleans" up the streets from teenage criminals? Right, send them into the schools to be student criminals. These students then do the utmost to get kicked back out! But guess what? They won't be kicked out until they get "in-school suspended" an incredible number of times. Sometimes upwards of 10 incidents or more. Meanwhile, they wreak havoc upon the educational process wasting other students chance to learn.
Obviously, holding the parent(s) accountable to raise their own children socially is ridiculous and will never happen to any political appointee. Until we have an alternative institution that can educate the stubborn teenagers (using negative re-inforcement) and that they fear ending up in, no solution will be found.
Josh Lofton may not have succeeded graduating many students, but what it did was allow more students to graduate (that wanted to) in our other city schools. The needs of the many...
julzb said on Apr. 02, 2010 at 4:39pm
Have you been to Brockport and seen their State of the Art electronic classrooms similar to what you would find in a college. They along with Gates-Chili have beautiful lunch facilities. Brighton has spectacular Parent involvement that should be a model for the whole state.
We have seen improvements to East High school with sports facilities outside in the past few years, but didn't they just have a gun in the school and kids are scared to come to school now. The mayor needs to focus on the deterioration of businesses, homes, presents of gangs and missing neighborhood parks. Try getting some of these kids fathers out of Jail for Marijuana position and lessen that charge. Take down some boarded up homes/businesses and build some new suburban Ryan home streets, with a park, in areas like Hudson Ave., Norton St., Culver Rd. Have the mind set of what would draw young families. Many love what the City is doing in the South Wedge, and Corn hill areas, keep that going.
People in Henrietta have the same issue of newly weds and nearly deads living there and the brain drain that is leaving the state of NY. For 2 reasons high Taxes and JOBS!!!!! I have 8 teacher friends who are living in North Carolina and Virginia because they had to go there to get a teaching JOB! Our friends who aren’t teachers are leaving in high numbers as well to North Carolina. The mayor should take a look at what they are doing and use his political will to mirror what that is. We have 9 colleges here putting out an enormous number of teachers and some areas are flooded in teaching and some areas like Special Ed have high burn out rates and require a special kind of loving teacher. We need to look at this whole issue as problem solvers and use common sense. The environmental issues are in his control and he can also create the enthusiasm to get the city motivated and involved by promoting volunteerism and civic duty. Put some praise in programs that work and ask your citizens to sign up to help. Have a sign in event with all kinds of organizations that help children already that all are in desperate need of volunteers to step up. Volunteerism isn’t just one day a year with the United Way. Businesses could build it into their work week or have incentive programs. Creative out of the box thinking from the city and county is sometimes required to make change while keeping the currant system. Maybe a new Mayor or County Executive might bring those ideas or why wait for them we should be bringing them and they should listen and implement them.
Idea said on Apr. 02, 2010 at 5:46pm
The Obama administration is pushing privatization of our schools through the "charter" system. the funds are being promised if you are wiling to give up your public school system and go to often corporate run charters. We can not look to Washington to fix anything, they are just continuing the corporations of our country as seen through health care, increasing war, Haiti relief and and our prison industrial complex. The idea that Obama and Washington care about the people is a joke. The rich are getting richer off everyone else getting poorer, but nothing is changing except the wealth structure.
We need to rise up and take charge of needed change in the city, have a Forum for change and a war on poverty. What we are feeling here is being felt in other cities but be need our our unique solutions.
Check out www.democracynow.org/2010/4/2/us_social_forum_to_be_held
ADRIENNE MAREE BROWN: As you heard the poet say, it’s all about the grassroots globalization movement and one of the things that is in that theme is “another Detroit is happening.” It was very important for us coming out of Atlanta to actually identify a city where there was already models of alternative visions for how we can be in the U.S. and solution oriented, but uplifting people’s democratic processes. And Detroit has been divested from for about 30 years now and a long time ago I think they stopped relying on the government to come through with good solutions for the city. And as you heard from me and from Shea, you know, when the government is left in charge of anything the start making a huge mess of it. And yet there are all these communities, you know, Grace Lee Boggs has been here for years, Detroit Summer has been working for years, the Boggs Center, Michigan Welfare Rights. There is all these organizations who have been practicing new models. There is 800 community gardens growing up in Detroit in all these spaces that otherwise would be called abandoned lots. There are peace zones for life where people are saying we can’t count on the police to take care of this in a nonviolent way, we’re going to come up with a nonviolent way to do it. It’s a new model, I think, for what a city can look like and it’s a city in touch with the earth, that is in touch with its people and that is really led by community. I just moved to Detroit in September because I got so excited about what’s happening here and I wanted to be a part of it. When it looked like U.S. Social Forum was able to come here, we already had a model from the Allied Media Conference. We had a model of what a national conference could look like here that was both about folks coming together and learning from each other but also learning from the place that they’re in and the Allied Media Conference has done an amazing job of that for a couple of years.
Skibabe said on Apr. 02, 2010 at 6:26pm
I think it is interesting how this push for change in the schools is coming from 3 democrats Joe, David and Duffy and sounds like they were asked to be the sales men they are for the Obama administration. I am starting to question Obama as a democrat myself, War escalation, protection of corporations and Banks, Insurance and Pharmaceutical Corps who wrote the Health care bill and will benefit the most from it, Now we are hearing Drill Baby Dill and Privatization of Schools. This isn't the America I voted for. We can't let government take over our schools we have to stand up and fight Mayoral Control. We the people remember are in charge. Don't be fooled and blindly follow Obama anymore, you have to question and fight for what you want and what is right.
Skibabe said on Apr. 02, 2010 at 6:58pm
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/2/mass_closures_of_detroit_schools_promotion
watch, the push to privatize is being pushed by other forces. This sounds failure of what we are being sold on.
Which is more of a government take over what we have now or this?
Brad said on Apr. 03, 2010 at 2:15am
"We can't let government take over our schools...."
You're kidding, right? Who do you think is currently in charge of public education, if not the government?
Also, this notion that privatizing education is some kind of problem is laughable. Private education has existed for quite some time in this country, and it still exists. This is not like privatizing Social Security, which, by definition, is "social." Education is nothing of the sort. It can be public or private without being substantively affected. Much like healthcare reform, all the government needs to do with regards to education is ensure access. I would argue that, based on the piss-poor track record of American urban public education, the government has spectacularly failed to ensure equal protection of the law for all of its citizens. It's a national shame.
Consider this: there are people out there who actually get upset because Major League Baseball has constructed its divisions unequally. That is, if your favorite club plays in the National League Central Divisino, they only have a 1-in-6 chance of winning the division. Meanwhile, the teams in the AL West have a 1-in-4 chance of winning the division, and everyone else has 1-in-5 odds (based purely on the number of teams in each division). People get riled up about this inequity. Meanwhile, if you happen to born into a "City School District" in America, you have about 50/50 odds of graduating high school. For suburbs its probably more like 75%. Yet, people generally don't complain about this substantive inequity. They don't afford public education the same degree of critical thought as Major League freaking Baseball. And I love baseball...but come on, America. Do better. Actually, is our lack of critical thought about public education actually proof that we have failed to adequately educate most of our population?
Time for School said on Apr. 04, 2010 at 1:41am
Read The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America by Jonathan Kozol and Learning Gap: Why Our Schools Are Failing and What We Can Learn from Japanese and Chinese Education by Harold W. Stevenson.
The Privatization of the Public schools is basically creating charter schools with corporate programs like the Edison Project inc. who were responsible for the Charter School of Technology that closed here. They use Public money and run the school like a privet one where they can hire non-union teachers and some without teaching degrees, bring in their own curriculum and yes even religious curriculum. Some have for profit models which give the schools just the bear minimum required with hopes to invest and profit of the money not spent. Some schools like the KIPP school have been successful because of fun/active curriculum and good management. Some of these schools you have to be careful because they are models to just rob us the tax payers, like the Edison Project Inc. They open and close schools all over the country failing everywhere but some how they talk some cities into allowing them to step in. Rochester doesn't seem all that bad to me when you compare it to Detroit. If you drive out to Medina NY, where the Poverty has 90% of children on school lunch and after Fisher Price left, they had so much poverty that the school district is entirely funded by the State and guess what they have a very high drop out rate too. Like 60% I heard. Some of this is due to the fact that kids have to work to help the family. Lets face it some kids don't test well, pesticides or pollution cause learning disabilities, the State Regants only system isn't allowing hands on students whoare vocationally gifted to thrive. All the fun leaves a school enviornment too when you cut Music, the Arts and Sports. It is a bore and been given much more stress then ever. My Kindergartner hates school. It is all reading and writing and testing. No play, no fun just drilling and stressful. Teaching to the test and testing kids to death isn't right. George Bush came up with No Child left behind I think, not sure but he was an idiot.
The facts are that people like to live in a suburban setting more then the Urban setting so lets do some development to make the city more child centered and have more parks and track homes. People say they are willing to move and pay higher taxes because it gets them better schools. The state has money for some things but not others and with the legislature that is in Albany education isn't tops. Maggy Brooks and her unfair plan said to all of us that the elderly she cares more about then education and the future.
I would like to see the corporate minded types get into politics more and try to bring better paying jobs here like a Google, but they wont because the pay for elected office is so low compared to what they could be making. Smart people just don't go into office. Most people have given up. I am surprised this comment section isn't on fire. The fact is no one cares if it doesn't affect them. This needs to change, people need to speak up and care. Even if a good idea might come from out side the city.
I saw some generalizations about Race in the comments from others, you know some people want to help their brother/sister, show compassion and feel strongly that we all suffer when the least of us suffer. The is Human nature. You make your world what it is and is showing up all pissed and disgruntled and never holding a door open for another person well sometimes you get that back. Some of us give of ourselves because we see we are the solution to the change we want to see. Some believe in Karma and some don't see color at all that equality is the great equalizer. You have to give to get. I think if we are counting how many of what skin color are where and when is counter productive. Stereotypes do exist we have to own them but also be willing to change on all sides. We need to be open to the idea that we want to be a better society. We are Americans, we are blessed and we can do better then we are. We have to be grateful for the gifts we get and show we are grateful.
Maybe we need a city wide field trip to Nepal or India to see what a great nation we have and that Thuggery is an insult to aspire too. We have a prison system that needs to change too. I think that is the reform that might help more then Mayoral Control.
So what next Duffy, what have you learned?
RCSD Teach said on Apr. 05, 2010 at 9:16am
Brizzard has his own agenda. He's not trying to fix the schools. He's trying to get a good name for himself. Our past superintendents have gone on to do bigger and better things and he's hoping for the same.
The suspension policy doesn't work, but administrators have been told what to classify as a suspension and what not to, even though it does not coincide with the law. This will make it appear as though the suspension rate went down, but in reality we're just covering up suspensions.
Franklin is not closing because it is beyond hope. Brizzard needs the building to bring in schools that will bring him money, plus it looks good for him that he's closing schools and bringing reform. Administrators were told this time that there are schools that are worse than Franklin. If there are schools that are worse then why not reform them?! It's clear that Brizzard's agenda is not the students, it's completely selfish!
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