The testimony discusses the importance of creating a meaningful accountability system in education that prioritizes parental involvement over mayoral control. It emphasizes the need for a mission statement focused on providing educational excellence to all children in New York and proposes key principles: participation, preparation, and pragmatism. The speaker calls for stronger roles for parents, proper training for community leaders, and a pragmatic approach to educational policy to ensure successful outcomes.

1. 1Testimony of Jim Devor - 1st V.P., CEC-15 - March 20, 2009
The discussion of the future of "Mayoral Control" is, of course, vital. But
most of the time, the issue is erroneously framed as whether or not
“Mayoral Control” should be continued. The real question facing
lawmakers will be how to create the means by which our education system
will become meaningfully accountable, NOT to the Chancellor, nor the
Mayor, but first and foremost to the PARENTS whose children will either
be its beneficiaries or perhaps, its victims.
In approaching that problem we must initially agree on First Principles.
As NYU Professor Diane Ravitch has written, “We don’t sustain a massive
investment in K-12 schools to produce workers for our economy, but to
create thinking citizens for our democracy.” Towards that end, the new
law should include a “legislative finding” or, if you will, a “mission state-
ment.” I propose the following:
Providing to each and every child of New York the
Educational Excellence essential to enabling its
students to become productive citizens in a free and
democratic society.
In striving to achieve that end I believe certain underlying precepts must
be paramount. In the interest of alliteration, I have cast them as:
Participation, Preparation and Pragmatism.
Participation - i.e., Strengthening the Role of Parents in School
Leadership Teams and Community Education Councils.
This means parents are not merely customers of the education system but
rather, have a genuine say how and even what their children are taught.
This would mostly be done through strengthened and truly collaborative
School Leadership Teams and Parent Associations, (accessible to both the
public and the press), to which Principals must be accountable.
Likewise, local school districts are undeniably a potent mechanism for
communication and problem-solving between Administrators and Parents
and thus, should be continued. Their governance must not be deliberately
subverted, though, as is now the open practice of the Department of

2. Education. For example, if the functions of District Superintendents are to
have any real value, maybe they ought to be assigned the majority of their
professional work inside of their actual districts? Furthermore, the
selection of the parents tasked with their oversight should not be the empty
civics exercises now being advanced by the Department where mock
elections (or "straw votes") purport to give parents a "voice" when, by
current law they have none, to select representatives who have no power to
serve on bodies that under the present statute will not even exist. All of this
in the name, literally of "Power to the Parents"!
Instead, Community Education Councils (with borders co-terminous with
one or more Community Boards) must play a major role in the selection
and evaluation of District Superintendents who, in turn, should have real
supervisory authority over the schools within their jurisdiction. Indeed, the
statutory framework for this already exists in the law which will go into
effect if the Legislature does nothing. For instance, the old subdivision one
of the 1996 version of section 2590-e of the Education Law governing the
selection of District Superintendents should be restored verbatim.1
Further, those Councils must be largely publicly elected with all candidates
being public school parents. I would also urge that there be some kind of
proportional representation system in electing CEC members which
guarantees that "minorities" (be they "racial" or "political" will be able to
fully participate. Personally, I think that the systems of "cumulative voting"
currently used by the Amarillo Texas School Board or else, the Peoria
Illinois City Council would probably be best. (A succinct explanation of
Cumulative Voting by the Center for Voting and Democracy is attached).
I also strongly believe that here must be collaboration and coordination
between Community Boards and CECs including mandatory overlap
of some members in each and every school district. Doing so would insure
that the knowledge and resources available to both institutions would be
fruitfully shared. Towards that end, I would favor an increase in the num-
ber of Borough President appointees to Community Education Councils.
Preparation
1
“Consistent with procedures of the chancellor . . . and regulations establishing
educational, managerial, and administrative qualifications . . . for such position, the community
board shall select no more than four final candidates for superintendent from candidates for ap-
pointment, . . . . and forward such names to the chancellor for selection . . . . If the chancellor
should reject all the candidates for written reasons within thirty days after the receipt of the
proposed names, the community board shall make another selection of no more than four new
names consistent with such procedures and regulations, until the chancellor selects a candidate.”

3. It’s all well and good to say “empower parents”, but just like citizens in so-
ciety in general, parents and their leaders must be adequately trained
to validly exercise that power.
For example, there must be an independently and separately funded
Parent Academy to oversee training to ensure that parents (and yes, stu-
dents), participate, along with teachers and administrators as informed and
knowledgeable partners in all (non-personnel) decision making processes.
Pragmatism
Finally the system needs to have a strongly pragmatic vision, i.e., a
sensitivity to the real world consequences of various policy choices.
For instance, had that guiding principle been in place, there never would
have been the blanket cell phone ban or the more recent gifted and talented
program debacle which quite predicably, yielded grossly racist outcomes -
especially in Central Brooklyn.
One of the most perverse consequences of "Mayoral Control" has been the
utter corruption of the concept of "accountability". Thus, everything that
happens in New York City Education is looked at by Tweed not in terms of
what helps or doesn't help children but rather, through the lens of whether
or not it makes the Chancellor and Mayor look good.
Let me give you a few examples. It is undeniable that there have been
significant improvements over the past decade in the educational achieve-
ments of our schoolchildren especially at the elementary school level. And
if you ask the Mayor and his minions, it's all because of their Herculean
efforts.
It's a nice narrative but that fiction ignores the very real contributions of
forces predominantly outside of the Mayor's control. First and foremost,
there has been a huge increase in the resources committed to public
education. Over the past ten years, the education budget has nearly
doubled and per pupil spending, controlling for inflation, has increased by
forty-nine percent during that same period. Neither the Mayor nor the
Chancellor has been at the forefront of that endeavor. Indeed, until very
recently, the Mayor's fiscal priorities seemed more focused on maintaining
property tax rebates. Rather, it was the impetus of the Campaign for Fiscal

4. Equity and the yeoman work done by our State legislators that made the
biggest difference in that regard.
A related factor usually ignored by the Chancellor and the Mayor was the
sustained commitment to universal pre-K. In particular, pre-K enrollment
tripled from 14,000 kids in 1999 to 42,000 in 2002 - i.e., before Mayoral
control began. During that same period, early grade class size was reduced
from 25 to 21. Not surprisingly, the achievement spurts, first in 4th grade
test scores and more recently in 8th grade scores closely correlate to those
cohorts who most benefitted from those changes. As such, the evidence -
rather than press releases - points to the rather obvious conclusion that
improvements in student achievement more closely correlated to earlier
reforms rather than administrative changes under mayoral control.
Taking undeserved credit is one thing, claiming improvements where there
are none is another. Let's take educational equity issues. We now know, for
instance, that when comparing mean scaled scores, there has been no
narrowing of the achievement gap between Blacks and Whites in New York
City schools. Similarly, when parents started to scrutinize the actual impact
of "fair student funding" on individual schools, we discovered there was no
consistent change in the overall allocation of financial resources.
As this demonstrates, there must be an independently and separately tax-
payer funded Education Research Organization, loosely patterned
after the Independent Budget Office, which will objectively analyze ex-
isting data, participate in additional research and submit recommenda-
tions on any and all education policies.
These proposals are just the tip of the iceberg. And people can and should
disagree with some of the details. But in any statutory scheme, the first
question must always be:
“Does this proposal advance the agenda of: Providing to
each and every child of New York the Educational
Excellence essential for its students to become pro-
ductive citizens in a free and democratic society?
If it doesn’t, move on. If it does, then try to go with it. That’s all there is.