Dadey Cu Ad Letter

THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION WASHINGTON

      June 8, 2009

Mr. Dick Dadey Executive Director, Citizens Union 299 Broadway, Suite 700 New York, NY 10007 Dear Mr. Dadey, Many thanks to you and to the Board of Citizens Union for your thoughtful deliberation of the questions currently under debate in Albany on governance of New York City schools. With 1.1 million students, the New York City public school system is the largest in the country: its success or failure is of national import, and the groundbreaking reforms New York City has implemented under mayoral control are helping to guide the way, nationally, on how to make urban education work for our children. As former CEO of Chicago’s public schools, I know just how hard it is to bring change to a large urban school district. And as President Obama’s Secretary of Education, I can tell you that both the change and the resulting progress that has occurred in New York City schools over the last seven years is truly remarkable. Given that, I have real concerns that what seem like minor tweaks to the decision-making structure could turn back the clock and halt progress, with profoundly negative consequences for New York City’s students. With that in mind, I wanted to strongly urge you against recommending “fixed terms” for the Panel for Educational Policy—a change to the current governance structure that would make it impossible for the mayor to remove Panel members who do not share his or her policy vision. Fixed terms could create the real possibility that the Panel and the mayor could diverge on important policy questions, bringing back to New York City the blame games, finger-pointing and excuse-making that ended when the New York State Legislature enacted mayoral control in 2002. With some calling for an end to the mayoral majority on the Panel, I understand the appeal of fixed terms as a compromise position. Both proposals, however, ultimately allow for the same thing: the opportunity to stop—not just to inform, or debate, or bring sunshine to, but stop—an educational policy decision made by the mayor. If we believe that a system of mayoral control is the only chance we have of implementing real change in a school system like New York’s—and I believe this strongly—any kind of separate, unaccountable decision-making body, even if it will probably agree with the mayor most of the time, is a step in the wrong direction. Proponents of fixed terms commonly cite Mayor Bloomberg’s removal of Panel members in order to win approval for his plan to end social promotion. Messy public relations, indeed, but just think if the mayor had been unable to do so: students would have continued to fall through the cracks, the Mayor would have been able to blame the Panel for continued failures in the system, the Panel would have blamed back, and the dynamic would have been indistinguishable from the old New York City Board of Education. Fixed terms would have produced precisely the wrong outcome.

The Panel’s critical role is to create a moment of reflection in the decision-making process when voices can be heard and mayoral policies can be better informed and shaped. With careful, process-oriented legislative changes—an enhanced opportunity for parents to weigh in, for example—it can perform this role more fully. But for mayoral control to work and to avoid putting at risk the progress New York City has made, final decision-making must rest with the mayor in substance as well as in name. Thank you again for your consideration. Sincerely, Arne Duncan U.S. Secretary of Education