Big-city mayors are taking over school districts and schools, starting magnet schools and opening the door to charters,  writes RiShawn Biddle. But it’s proving hard for even the most motivated mayor to transform — or even reform — schools.
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa thinks he’s the only one who can save the kids, complains an LA blogger. But the mayor doesn’t know how he’s going to do it.
The mayor’s takeover plan for Jordan, Roosevelt, Santee and their feeder middle schools is his attempt to make good on a campaign promise.
During the last mayoral election, the city’s electorate, when polled, chose education as their most urgent concern. It was a frightening result, given the fact that LA’s mayor has absolutely no authority or responsibility over public education. One might hope that the pollsters would help people learn a little about their city’s government. Perhaps people would turn out more for school board elections. Something.
So Villaraigosa and Hahn made education an important issue. They made some promises. Villaraigosa needs to do something in order to position himself to claim that he made good on those promises.
It seems like what the mayor is doing, essentially, is setting up quasi-charter schools, like Green Dot at Locke HS, and stamping his name on it. Of course he doesn’t know how to fix schools. But if he gets some people to do it for him and give him some credit, he gets over.
Not only would he not give specifics about what will happen under his little takeover — he probably has no idea — but he said that questions about his plan were “putting the horse before the cart.” Vote for my plan, then find out what it is.
Such is the logic of politics, at least in Los Angeles.
Incidentally, 90% of parents and 70% of teachers voted for his plan — or lack of a plan.
In the context of public education “Vote for my plan, then find out what it is.” doesn’t seem all that odd. Any other issue I can think of it’d be pretty damned odd but a widely held perception, I believe, is that the public education system is in need of some serious shaking-up and not just the usual sop to the perpetual whining about “fully-funding” public education. Besides, majors nationwide are inserting themselves into municipal school districts making Mayor Villaraigosa not all that unusual.
The logic of the politics is pretty clear as far as I’m concerned: wide-spread and serious discontent with the current state of affairs. Of course that’s obvious from the number of states that’ve passed charter school law: 40 and counting.
Makes me want to run for mayor.
When a ship is sinking, you may as well try any plan you can think of because it will still sink if you do nothing.
Mayor Villaraigosa’s comments do not seem that troubling – take power away from school boards and administrations that have clearly shown themselves to be inept, and hand it out to those who are clearly invested in the schools’ success on a day-to-day basis. Bring in outside help and see if shaking up the system helps. In the end, Mayor Villaraigosa is simply leading an education revolution in LA. As to whether it will result in a good or bad system, no one knows, but it can’t get much worse.