Michael W. Kirst, Consortium for Policy Research in Education, University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Education
May 2002
On May 22nd, The New York Times reported on negotiations between New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver concerning a bill to give mayors in New York's largest urban school districts new powers to run their cities' troubled school systems. That same day, in Michigan, the Detroit Free Press reported that the Republican Lt. Governor formally kicked off his campaign for Governor by "calling for a mayoral takeover of the city's public schools." It is this recent trend to entrust the city school system to hizzoner that Stanford's Michael Kirst addresses in this paper. "It is too soon," Kirst writes, "to assess whether mayor control in such cities as Chicago, Cleveland, Harrisburg, and Boston will provide more coherent governance and improved pupil performance. But there are some positive signs." It's hard to generalize, however. Kirst says that, "The striking thing about the growth of mayoral influence over schools is the distinctiveness of each city. There are no established patterns, form, function, and operation of mayoral influence are all over the map." This report will interest anyone wondering whether mayors belong in the business of running public schools. A PDF version of this report is available at http://www.cpre.org/Publications/rr49.pdf. You can order a hard copy for $5.00 from CPRE Publications, Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania, 3440 Market Street, Suite 560, Philadelphia, PA 19104-3325.
