Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The 1990s saw the emergence of a “new style” of mayor interested in taking a strong leadership style in their city’s school system. Two mayors, Chicago’s Richard M. Daley and Boston’s Thomas Menino, were at the forefront of this radical movement. On October 25^th, 1996, Mayor Daley visited Boston and made a joint appearance with Menino. Both mayors made it clear where they stood on the mayor’s role in public education. “As president of the US Conference of Mayors, I believe that education is the greatest challenge facing our cities today,” in which Menino agreed. (Brown, 1996)

Given the different types of involvement mayors can have in city schools, I seek to understand how integrated governance, as a formal structure, compares with school districts where an elected board insulates schools from formal mayoral influence. By including integrated governance and elected school boards in my analysis, I can put the formal versus informal debate to an empirical test.

The spread of mayoral control raises new questions of about the institutional structures and consequences of governance for our nation’s city schools. This research seeks to answer this question drawn from the existing body of knowledge on mayoral impact on city school academic success:

How does mayoral control of Chicago Public Schools result in lagging academic achievement outcomes for African American high school students?

The hypothesis that I will test are as follows:

Mayoral control and the model of integrated governance to which it has given rise to centralized power does not improve student performance and achievement, decreases and deplete fiscal discipline, demote the importance of political economy in urban areas, and lowers the positive profile in our nation’s cities.