Mayors Seek to Take Charge of Schools

School boards have fallen on their faces -- hardly a surprise given low voter turnout, etc. -- so it's high time to give mayors control of schools.

For example, before a mayoral takeover of New York City's schools, an investigation into a Bronx school board Bronx found that members routinely misused district personnel and resources — once ordering X-rated pay-per-view movies.

Those kinds of problems, plus low voter turnout for school board elections and sagging test scores, have fueled a movement since the 1990s for mayoral control of schools. Besides New York, it has happened in Boston, Chicago, Cleveland and Harrisburg, Pa.

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Mayors Seek to Take Charge of Schools

By NANCY ZUCKERBROD, AP Education Writer

The statistics tell a sorry tale about the public schools in America's capital. A majority of fourth- and eighth-graders are failing to read or do math at basic levels. Roughly four in five schools are not meeting achievement goals under the federal No Child Left Behind law. Just 43 percent of students graduate from high school in five years.