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