Dropout Nation

Certainly it isn’t a surprise that Washington, D.C., Mayor Vincent Gray failed yesterday to win the city’s Democratic nomination, and ultimately, lost his bid for a second term. As your editor wrote two years ago in The American Spectator, Chocolate City residents were tired of the scandal over his successful mayoral bid against predecessor Adrian Fenty — including allegations that onetime power-broker Jeffrey Thompson recruited straw donors so they could funnel $653,000 in campaign dollars to Gray and other candidates. Thompson’s statement last month during a court hearing that Gray allegedly asked him to lead this “shadow campaign” against Fenty, along with other new allegations of impropriety, rightfully stoked concerns among D.C. residents that city government was once again being mired in the culture of bureaucratic ineptitude, graft and chicanery, and race-baiting that typified city politics during the mayoralty of the notorious Marion Barry. And ultimately, the allegations aided Muriel Bowser, a Fenty protégé (and successor to the former mayor’s old city council seat), in her effort to end Gray’s re-election bid.

But Gray’s defeat isn’t likely fretting school reformers within the District. Why? Because of their efforts, it is more than likely that Bowser and her opponent for the city’s top office, David Catania, are more than likely to stay the course on the reforms that Fenty began and Gray continued. This likelihood, along with Gray’s transformation from teachers’ union ally to reform-minded mayor, offers lessons for all reformers on the importance of building and sustaining their efforts.

Whatever Gray’s other flaws, one can easily give him credit for staying the course on systemic reform. It wasn’t clear that he would. After all, Gray’s successful run for mayor four years ago was supported in part by the American Federation of Teachers and its D.C. affiliate, which spent $1 million on his behalf. For the nation’s second-largest teachers’ union and its boss, Randi Weingarten, defeating Fenty (and, in the process, ending the tenure of his school czar — and Weingarten foe — Michelle Rhee) was an important stand for defending the traditional practices the union held so dear. This fact, along with Gray’s own disdain for Rhee, made many reformers fear that Gray would dismantle the efforts his predecessor undertook — including successfully forcing the AFT to to accept a new contract that allows for the use of student test score growth data in evaluating teacher performance, and firing laggard teachers.

But as it turned out, Gray has proven to be as reliable as Fenty on the reform front. Upon taking office, Gray stunned the union (and school reformers) when he chose Rhee’s low-key protégé, Kaya Henderson, to take her place. While Henderson has eschewed Rhee’s high-profile approach to running the district, she has proven to be as hard-charging as Rhee in overhauling the district. Gray further dismayed the AFT two years ago when a mayoral commission recommended that the city replace shutter some of its traditional district schools with charters; Gray effectively embraced this advice last year when he allowed charters to lease space in 16 buildings formerly occupied by traditional district schools that the city was shutting down.By the time Gray embarked on his third year in office, he had all but distanced himself from traditionalist AFT rhetoric. Effectively declaring that he was pushing to expand school choice, Gray launched an effort to develop a unified enrollment Web site that allows families to choose between traditional district and charter schools.

This isn’t to say that Gray always followed the reform line to the letter. The mayor deserved scorn for his move two years ago to move half of the 2,204 kids in special education from availing themselves of court-mandated school choice into its traditional schools, especially in light of the district’s struggles to improve teaching and curricula for those kids. Charter school operators, who were among Gray’s earliest supporters, continue to be miffed at the mayor for not fulfilling his campaign promise to make sure the District provided equal funding to both charters and the traditional district. But for the most part, Gray has proven to be Fenty’s equal when it comes to advancing and sustaining D.C. Public School’s overhaul.

This didn’t please the AFT or its local. By 2012, then-AFT local president Nathan Saunders criticized Gray and Henderson for outlining a five-year plan that “only amounts to half” of what the union thinks the city should do. It also didn’t work out well for Saunders, whose own successful election to the top AFT local job was built upon his commitment to getting the city to go the union’s way; by the end of last year, Saunders was ousted by Elizabeth Davis, who like Saunders before her, promised to oppose reform. But like Saunders, Davis has found that Gray isn’t an ally of the union and its interest in restoring the status quo ante.

The fact that Gray has become the reformer no one expected him to be raises the question: Why? After all, Gray’s support for reform didn’t help him win re-election. In fact, one can say that Gray’s decision to turn his back on the AFT may have actually damaged his ties to the city’s Ancien Regime of which the union has long been a player, while, at the same time, didn’t win Gray any support among more reform-minded residents who backed Fenty wholeheartedly the last time around.

One reason why lies with the fact that Gray had no choice. The very overhaul efforts Gray opposed during his campaign have been one of the reasons why D.C.’s population has increased by 7.4 percent between 2010 and 2013, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, after five decades of decline. Particularly for black and white middle class households, the possibility that they have a chance to send their kids to a high-performing school has made the District a more attractive place to live. This was clear during the Democratic primary (and de facto mayoral election) battle between Gray and predecessor Fenty four years ago. If not for the widespread support for then-chancellor Rhee, along with fears that Gray would let D.C. Public Schools slide into decrepitude, Gray would have beaten Fenty in a landslide.

There is also the fact that Gray, as predecessors Fenty and Anthony Williams, long ago realized during their tenures, that overhauling public education is as critical as the presence of the federal government to revitalizing and growing the District’s economic and social fortunes. This is a lesson mayors in other cities, along with county chief executives such as Rushern Baker of Prince George’s County, Md.), have learned. Certainly education isn’t the only issue a mayor must address. As Gray, like Fenty, has learned the hard way, mayors can only succeed in continuing reform efforts for the long haul if they master keep crime low, attend to quality of life issues, efficiently managing city government, artfully divide or placate opponents, and remain relatively free of corruption allegations. But mayors can’t ultimately improve quality of life without ridding their cities of the failure mills in their midst.

Meanwhile there is the fact that reformers were key players in Gray’s successful mayoral campaign four years ago. Sure, most reformers backed Fenty. But Gray could count on support from charter school operators, who were miffed with Fenty for not pushing for equalizing funding between their schools and the traditional district. This fact, along with the support Gray garnered by longtime D.C. reformers such as Lisa Raymond (who served on the District’s board of education) and Atlantic Monthly co-owner Katherine Bradley (who co-chaired Gray’s transition committee) meant that the mayor could not ignore break with Fenty’s efforts without endangering his tenure.

The lessons Gray learned are ones that both Bowser (who is now likely to become D.C.’s next mayor) and Catania have also gleaned. While Bowser criticized Gray for not increasing the number of middle schools serving D.C.’s communities, her allegiance to Fenty (and support for the reform agenda Gray has continued) likely means that she will keep the reform effort in place as is. Catania, who serves on the city council as chair of its education oversight committee, is slightly more critical. But many of the reforms he has proposed (including forcing failing traditional district schools to either be overhauled, turned into a so-called “innovation school” free from the city’s contract with the AFT, or handed over to a charter school operator) differ little from those Gray has advanced.

Both Bowser and Catania understand that any Bill de Blasio-like move to turn back reform won’t serve them well at the polls. This fact, along with Gray’s transformation from AFT ally to reform-minded mayor, offers some important lessons from reformers in the rest of the nation.

The first? That they must continually build the case for systemic reform. This includes demonstrating the connections between the need to overhaul education and the quality-of-life concerns voters find to be more-pressing. Considering that mayoral control of schools is a new feature of city government in places such as D.C., it is easy for voters to pay more mind to matters such as crime than to the quality of schools.

Secondly: That they must constantly inform politicians, especially city council members, about why they must make school reform a key part of their platforms. After all, city councils are key players in shaping public policy, and thus critical to shaping education decisions, especially in mayoral control districts. The fact that D.C.’s last two mayors (and likely, its third) previously served on the council, also emphasizes the importance of reaching out to local legislators.

And finally, reformers must also build networks of support within their communities. As reformers in D.C. have understood well — and as their counterparts in New York City are learning painfully every day — it isn’t enough to hope that their favored politician retains office; reform must be sustainable regardless of who sits inside a city hall. Strong support for reform within communities, especially in the grassroots among families, is critical to long-term success.

The good news for reformers in D.C. is that their efforts to build brighter futures for the District’s children will continue regardless of who becomes mayor. As with Fenty’s loss four years ago, Gray’s defeat won’t mean that D.C.’s traditional district schools will slide back into utter ineptitude.

Featured photo courtesy of Washington City Paper