Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
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Making school change from the top
Dayton school board President Gail Littlejohn is the star of a story in the May issue of Governing Magazine about using school boards as levers for change.
Dayton is a rare example of school board-driven reform at a time when mayoral control and appointed school boards are in vogue. In fact, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa today is arguing before the state legislature to take over LA’s schools.
The Governing Magazine story brings up some interesting questions about school board-driven reform here in Dayton, such as:
- Can Littlejohn’s formula for taking over and redirecting the school board be replicated in other cities?
- If it can be, why haven’t we seen many other examples of this kind of school board-driven reform?
- How much academic improvement have Littlejohn and her allies actually accomplished in their time leading the district?
Even if you’re not from Dayton, you may find the story interesting of how one motivated person set out to singlehandedly improve public education here.
First a quick recap. As the story states, Littlejohn was a lawyer and an accomplished executive with Lexis-Nexis and its parent company before retiring and stepping up her community work. That’s when she began to learn about the troubles in the Dayton school district, which in 2001 was among the very worst performing in Ohio.
She decided to do something about it. Littlejohn recruited three other professional women to run with her for school board. Then she did something even more bold — she walked into the offices of some of the city’s most powerful business leaders and asked them for money. Big money.
And she got it. Some big shots gave Littlejohn as much as $10,000, more than all candidates spent combined in most of the prior school board races. In a field of nine candidates, Littlejohn’s team raised more than $200,000 and out spent the rest by a combined 20-1 and won all four open seats — a majority on the board.
In consultation with former Houston school board President Don McAdams the board began instituting wide ranging reforms — reorganizing the business operations, launching a school construction program, standardizing curriculum and instruction with a special emphasis on support for math and reading and creating more program options at the high school level.
So back to the questions:
- Is Littlejohn’s formula replicable? I don’t see why not. I know city politics are rough and bigger cities have larger boards and more complicated ward systems that make it harder for a slate of candidates to garner a majority. But the bottom line lesson from Dayton is this — when you out spend your opponents 20-1, you’re going to win most elections. If any city’s business community really wants school board change, it ought to have the resources to follow the Littlejohn plan.
- Why don’t we see others try this? Before Littlejohn’s team ran here, the conventional wisdom was that nothing could be done to change the Dayton school board. School board elections, the thinking went, were too provincial and the stakeholders, like unions and political parties, were too entrenched to overcome. All that was proved wrong, but I think a similar conventional wisdom in other cities discourages would be reformers from running.
- Has the Littlejohn board really made things better? This question was underplayed in the magazine piece. The story makes a big deal out of Littlejohn’s shock in 2001 to learn Dayton schools ranked last out of 611 school districts in Ohio. But it fails to mention that five years later, Dayton is still last. Even so, no one is disputing that test scores have gone up steadily under this school board. Even critics acknowledge things have gotten better. On the business side of the fence, the district is more professionally run than in the past and the construction program is now in full swing after a slow start, with new schools set to open this fall.
The question is whether all that is enough.
Dayton modeled much of its reform plan after what McAdams did in Houston. In that much-acclaimed reform, Houston’s scores improved strongly, gaining national attention. That success helped propel George W. Bush into the White House, made former Houston superintendent Rod Paige into the U.S. Secretary of Education and provided some of the framework for the No Child Left Behind law.
But later, Houston’s success was challenged by critics, who said some of the gains resulted from statistical shell games or even outright cheating.
A friend who lives there summed up the Houston story this way — the question many people there have is whether kids actually learned more with the reform, or if the board was satisfied that the district simply looked much better, helping the business community relax.
There have been no allegations of cheating or statistical games here. But the same question could be asked in Dayton — are kids learning significantly more or do things just look better?
On the question of what kind of school board is best, here’s one way to look at it.
Littlejohn’s approach has these advantages — it respects our democratic process and keeps her and her allies accountable to the public. But it’s also hard to maintain momentum. Already, Littlejohn’s team is down to just two original members as one ally was defeated for re-election and one moved out of the city. The board still generally follows her lead, but it is clear she is not as strongly in charge as when she commanded a majority of the board at all times.
Mayor control bypasses the democratic process and appointed board members are not directly beholden to the public. But this approach can promote a consistency of leadership and professionalism perhaps more easily than elected boards. Those attributes were also present for Littlejohn’s reign here, which helped keep things running smoothly.
What’s your take on the best way to run a school system? Elected school boards or appointed by the mayor?
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools, My Favorite Posts, Schools and Politics, Urban School Issues
Comments
By Rick
May 31, 2006 6:21 PM | Link to this
Oldprof I agree with your perspective but disagree with your conclusion. You state that until we have changes from the top progress witll be fleeting and inconsistent. I think we have to have changes at the top and at the school board level. This particular board has been very informed and consistent. BTW, are you familiar with something called the effective schools movement? (Or something like that.) This was a series of people who did independent research to try to determine what makes an effective school effective. So they compared successful schools with not so successful schools, with the schools about the same demographically. This was done in the US and Britain. They found five factors that were common: a) A highly motivated and involved principle (most important), b)high expectations for students, c) high expectations of teachers, d) high level of parental involvement. For the life of me I can never remember the fifth one. Would you happen to know it?By Oldprof
May 31, 2006 1:40 PM | Link to this
In this case Mary and I are on the same page. School boards change with the wind, and a board that’s professional and successful will morph into something pathetic as members aim for higher office or return to private life. These problems are exacerbated at the state level. When a board isn’t consistent in the long term, there’s rapid turnover in superintendents (look at Dayton—50 years ago, a superintendent would serve for decades! Recently it’s been less than ten) and a manic vacillation among initiatives, testing, curricular options. The headline here says it all; we can keep working hard in the trenches, but until the people at the top—meaning our legislators—change the system, improvements will be fleeting.By Mary
May 30, 2006 1:58 PM | Link to this
Scott, I do not think the democratic process is as healthy through public school board elections as you imply. Number one, percentages of people who register and vote are fairly low. Informed voters who can read the tea leaves past the marketing and endorsements (including Dayton Daily News endorsements) is also probably very low. Enough of the right types are not even running for the office. Running is a time consuming, expensive and thankless job. The book “Cheating our Kids” talks about the shell games of school board elections. I personally think the media has been slow to see though all this and helps support status quo to the detriment of education.