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How D.C.’s Education Governance System Is Failing

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You can’t fix what you can’t face. But one thing I’ve noticed over and over again in my years as an education advocate in D.C. is the ways in which the District’s current education system prevents the community from confronting educational problems and undermines our ability to discuss and remedy them. I’ve come to believe that incentives built into the system prevent the release of dispiriting data, silence candid feedback from principals and teachers, and suppress public discussions that generate nuanced, effective responses to complicated problems.

I’ve just finished serving eight years on the D.C. State Board of Education. Here is my assessment of the educational system we have, the problems it has caused, and some solutions that make sense.

I. The system we have

In 2007, the D.C. Council, at the request of newly elected Mayor Adrian Fenty, adopted the Public Education Reform Amendment Act, which abolished the independent school board that previously oversaw DC Public Schools. As was the case in other cities that instituted mayoral control of schools, the law turned the reins of school district control over to the mayor, who was given the authority to hire and fire the DCPS chancellor. It also moved a relatively small office, the State Education Agency, out from under DCPS, and turned it into a stand-alone agency, the Office of the State Superintendent of Education. Some version of OSSE exists in every state and has responsibilities for oversight, collecting and reporting data, and providing technical support to traditional and charter schools. OSSE is run by a state superintendent whom the mayor also names. 

The law also created a new deputy mayor for education, named by the mayor to oversee and coordinate the work of these agencies. It continued the Public Charter School Board, originally established by Congress, to oversee the charter sector; the board’s members are also appointed by the mayor. And the law created the first-ever DC State Board of Education, made up of nine elected members. It has no formal authority over any of the new education-related agencies, but a handful of OSSE policies require SBOE approval to go forward.  

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Written by enovate

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