Dear Commons Community,

Valerie Strauss has an excellent piece in The Washington Post on the departure of Cathie Black and what it means for education policymakers who have pushed for mayoral control of the public schools.  She comments that  “mayoral control of public schools and non-traditional school leaders are hardly the answer to the ills of urban education as some policymakers have portrayed them.”  Besides the “debacle” of Cathie Black, she also comments on the mediocre results of Black’s predecessor Joel Klein (NYS admitted dumbing down standardized test) and Michelle Rhee (widespread cheating on test scores) as evidence that mayoral control has not worked.  She concludes by quoting Diane Ravitch,  an outspoken critic of mayoral control an our colleague at New York University, that “the only thing that the mayoral model of school reform offers is zero accountability with all decision making vested in the office of the mayor.”

Tony