Over the past couple of years, Detroit Public Schools and the emergency financial managers who have run its operations on behalf of Michigan’s state government, have struggled to develop a road map to determine its future. Under former czar Robert Bobb, the nation’s most-atrocious failure cluster planned to spin off 41 of its schools into charters — and only managed to convert five of them. Then Bobb’s successor, Roy Roberts, shifted gears, teaming up with Gov. Rick Snyder and Eastern Michigan University to form a state agency modeled off of the successful Recovery School District in New Orleans that would take over 45 schools. But the Education Achievement Authority will only have 15 schools under its control by the time the new school year starts.

So it isn’t hard to view Robert’s announcement yesterday that he’s allowing 10 of Detroit’s high schools to essentially become charters with some skepticism. After all, the number of schools that may actually end up being spun out of the district could be far less than even that miniscule number, or worse, won’t happen at all. But the good news is that Detroit is slowly admitting that the traditional district model no longer works, either for the city or the children forced to attend the district’s woeful schools. It now needs to go further and fully embrace what Dropout Nation calls the Hollywood Model of Education that ends the traditional model once and for all.

Under Roberts’ latest plan, each of the 10 high schools would be overseen by a five-person board that includes a business operator, a parent and three others appointed by the district. They would then be in charge of school budgets, curricula, and hiring, controlling all of the federal dollars allocated to the district for them (and 97 percent of other school funds not allocated for servicing the district’s debt). In theory, the school would actually run itself, while contracting with Detroit for school lunch and other services.

For the most part, the plan sounds good. It is a small step in the right direction. The fact that Detroit is not looking to just bring in charter operators from the outside and actually taking steps to grow capacity in the city limits also makes sense; the inability to find national and regional charter school operators and other school players willing (or capable) of doing the work is why a similar effort in D.C. profiled last year in a report by the Education Sector has had limited success in terms of the number schools actually spun off. So is Roberts’ other plan to essentially become a service provider to other schools and districts, offering its expertise is handling school lunches, transportation, information technology, and building services (if Roberts actually implements the plan as envisioned). And it is good to see the district admit that it is “facing both an academic and financial emergency.”

But the plan still doesn’t come close to accepting the reality that the traditional model of centralized district bureaucracies is obsolete — and doesn’t do what needs to be done in order to help Motown’s kids get a high-quality education.

In controlling the majority of seats on local school boards, Detroit still maintains too much control over school operations. Given the district’s past failures in running school operations, Roberts should scale back the district’s role to that of an oversight agency. The fact that families only get one seat on each of these boards once again shows that Detroit doesn’t get it. As I noted in this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast, the only way families can truly be engaged in schools (and help their kids get the high-quality education they deserve) is by giving them majority power over operations.

The bigger problem lies in the fact that Roberts’ school spinoff plan is what the average baseball player would call small ball thinking. Given past opposition to similar plans from local education traditionalists and the American Federation of Teachers’ Motor City local, this is understandable. But a small-ball plan won’t lead to any real improvements in school or, ultimately, student achievement.

Roberts needs to accept the reality that Detroit needs to ditch the traditional district model. This includes spurring the opening of new charter schools in the city, and continuing with transitioning the district from being an education provider to a school support services operator. It also means making plans to hand off the rest if its schools to charter school operators, universities such as Wayne State, community groups, churches, and even coalitions of families and others. The latter won’t be easy. After all, there are the capacity issues on the ground — including the lack of strong charter school operators willing to take on failure mills. But as former Center for Reinventing Public Education boss Paul Hill has pointed out, capacity isn’t developed until the need for it comes into play; in short, the concept of growing your own capacity must be accepted as a reality. More importantly, there are models upon which Parent Power and community groups can build, including Chicago’s famed Providence St. Mel (which was taken over from the Second City’s Catholic archdiocese by school principal Paul Adams); the growth of blended learning — and the model set by pioneering outfit Rocketship Education — also allows for new opportunities to provide Detroit kids with high-quality education.

The children of Detroit deserve better than either the status quo or Roberts’ small-scale plan. It’s time for the district to get out of the education provider business once and for all.

Cleveland may be the one city in which mayoral control of schools has so far been an unabashed failure. In the 14 years since Ohio state officials handed over control of the traditional district to city hall, none of the three mayors who held the chief executive job during that period have done much to get a handle over the district’s operations or have managed to make any of its “transformation” plans stick. This while cities such as New York, Boston, Chicago, and D.C. have made improvements. Its current two-year-old reorganization plan — which has included  has been slowed down by the retirement of chief executive Eugene Sanders (who proposed the initial plan) early last year and a scandal involving Renee Cavor, the bureaucrat charged with overseeing its execution. And with four out of every ten eighth-graders dropping out by senior year of high school, only 52 percent of young black men in eighth grade graduating in five years, and abysmally high levels of students condemned to special ed ghettos, Cleveland continues its competition with Detroit and Indianapolis Public Schools for the position of Superfund Site of American public education.

Yet second-term Mayor Frank Jackson may finally take some real action and essentially take steps towards l if he can get Ohio state officials to buy into his latest reform plan. As with everything when it comes to who gave Jackson’s plan a shout-out last night) will back it wholeheartedly But his plan still doesn’t go far enough in abandoning the obsolete and ineffective traditional district model.

Under the plan, Jackson proposes to partially decentralize school management by embracing a portfolio approach to operating its traditional schools. Top-performing schools would be allowed to manage their own budgets — including hiring and firing of teachers — while low performing schools would be aggressively overhauled. At the very least, it moves at least some teacher hiring decisions away from central bureaucracies, which often conspire through incompetence and servile relationships with American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association locals to effectively keep principals from actually managing their schools. Year-round schooling, with.schools getting the ability to extend the school day.by longer than six hours, is also on the table. The plan also calls for the district to partner (and share dollars with) with some high-quality charter schools, while authorizing new charters. Particularly likely to be folded into the district’s portfolio is Breakthrough Schools, a collection of six schools in Cleveland that have garnered attention for its success with students who would have otherwise been stuck in local failure mills.

The most-interesting aspect of Jackson’s plan lies with the proposed creation of a “Transformation Alliance” that will be charged with regulating school quality across the entire city. As envisioned by Jackson, the outfit would assess both the district and charter school operations, weed out failing charters and district schools, and inform parents about high-quality school options. This is a clear step toward embracing the Hollywood Model of Education under which a state or local agency would regulate schools instead of operating them. And honestly, Jackson should have built the entire plan around it.

Jackson deserves credit for offering something other than a few half-measures. He should also be praised for recognizing that negotiating with the AFT local on what his plan should entail in the hopes of collaboration is a fool’s errand — and for lobbying state legislators hard last year for a more-comprehensive statewide teacher evaluation system. Chances are that the Republican-controlled state legislature (which must approve the plan) will bless it and Gov. John Kasich (who gave Jackson’s plan a shout-out last night) will back it wholeheartedly But his plan still doesn’t go far enough in abandoning the obsolete and ineffective traditional district model.

For one, the portfolio approach still leaves the central bureaucracy in charge of 55 percent of the district’s schools, effectively putting the administrators whose abysmal leadership led to their status as failure factories in the first place. As seen in cities such as New Orleans — where charters have all but displaced traditional district schools — and New York City, you must either abandon the district model entirely or bring in reform-minded school leaders who are willing to slot it out with NEA and AFT locals and midlevel mandarins who are more likely to sympathize with laggard teachers than battle for reform. Given that the district has had three chieftains in the past 14 years — and the difficulties Sanders and most-recently, Gordon, have had in overhauling the district — Jackson would have been better off embracing the Big Easy approach.

Jackson also doesn’t address how he will allow families to be real decision-makers in education. At the very least, he should allow for a Parent Trigger mechanism that families can use to force overhauls such as converting a district school into q chatter. He should have also made school governance boards consisting solely of parents part of his plan. While it’s nice for the Transformation Council to serve as an information source for families in need of information to make smart choices, Jackson’s plan doesn’t include developing a comprehensive city-wide school data system that would put thorough, easily-understandable data on school performance at the fingertips of the parents who seek it. And Jackson’s plan doesn’t detail whether the district will abandon zoned schooling and other Zip Code Education policies.

Finally, Jackson’s plan to seek a property tax increase to help the district close $105 million in budget shortfalls in the coming two fiscal years shows that the mayor hasn’t learned that more money doesn’t equal better results, financial or academic — especially if the district doesn’t hold a line on the high costs of traditional teacher compensation systems and contract deals with teachers’ union affiliates. Between 2005 and 2009, the amount Cleveland spent on teacher benefits increased by 79 percent; the district now spent 55 cents on benefits for every dollar of salary in 2009 (the latest year available from the U.S. Census Bureau) versus 30 cents five years ago, a greater amount than the average 32 cents for every dollar of salary spent by school districts nationally. By the way, Cleveland’s district revenues increased by only seven percent in that period. Instead of pursuing a tax increase that Cleveland voters will likely (and rightly) vote down, Jackson should lobby the legislature to allow Cleveland to become an enterprise zone of sorts, giving the district the ability to ditch expensive degree- and seniority-based pay scales.

All that said, Jackson is at least making the case that mayoral control in Cleveland may not be a lost cause — and, in fact, should be the norm throughout the nation’s big cities.

When Dropout Nation last turned its eyes to the City of Brotherly Love, it had just fired it superintendent, Arlene Ackerman, after a tenure wracked with enmity from nearly everyone in the city (especially over her rather sweet pay packages). Since then, the district’s condition hasn’t gotten much better. Faced with a deficit of at least $61 million (and based on the remaining deficit that the district plans to solve, as much as $98 million), the state-controlled school reform commission has hired a former local utility chief executive, Tom Knudsen, to serve as its “Chief Recovery Officer” and replace acting superintendent Leroy Nunery II as the district’s top boss. Knudsen will spend the next six months addressing the current shortfall, along with challenging the district’s long-term woes.

In hiring a turnaround artist, Philadelphia is taking a well-paved path. Nine years ago, St. Louis hired the turnaround firm Alvarez & Marsal to fix its longstanding financial woes; by 2007, it still ended up being taken over by Missouri state officials.  Other districts, most-notably Detroit, have largely failed in wrangling with their fiscal woes and found themselves under some sort of state takeover. But unlike those districts, Philadelphia is already under control of Pennsylvania’s state government. More importantly, this isn’t the latest overhaul. In the 11 years since the state took over Philadelphia, the district has gone through an array of overhauls, including the hand-off of school operations to outfits such as Edison Schools, and even the hard work of reformers such as Paul Vallas (who began Chicago’s successful school reform effort and has just finished up a successful stint overseeing the revamp of New Orleans’ school system).

But Philly remains a fiscal mess. Back in 2000-2001, the district faced a $216 million deficit in its $1.7 billion budget; the district projects that it will face $269 million in shortfalls during its 2012-2013 fiscal year, even with revenues likely to have increased by two-thirds in the past 13 years.This isn’t surprising. Shuffling superintendents in and out of leadership isn’t a school reform strategy; contracting out school operations also doesn’t work when there is no underlying plan for overhauling how the district does business. The fact that the district currently has no plans to revamp its central bureaucracy or address inefficiencies in operations outside of whatever changes Knudsen plans to make, also points to the reality that state education departments — especially Pennsylvania’s — are just ill-equipped to handle school or district takeovers.

It also doesn’t help that the district also has little wiggle room with which to maneuver. Eighty-three percent of Philly’s costs are either tied to its contract with the American Federation of Teachers local or state laws governing the district’s management of teacher and school performance. These restrictions make it difficult for the city to overhaul its overly burdensome traditional teacher compensation structure — or develop alternatives that are more cost-effective (and, at the same time, reward the district’s good-to-great teachers).

The inability of Philly to get a handle on its fiscal woes reflects the reality that the traditional district structure it embraces no longer works. Given that the district remains a giant dropout factory — with a mere 65 percent of the city’s Class of 2010 were promoted from 8th grade to 12th grade versus 74 percent of students from the graduating class nine years ago — it no longer makes sense for the state to continue a central bureaucracy that can neither improve finances nor student achievement. While handing control of the district to Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter could be a step to take, the fact that the city government is struggling to get control of its own fiscal and operational house (along with the reality that Philly still doesn’t have a handle on its quality of life and crime woes) means moving the district from one failing overlord to another.

So it is time for the district to embrace the Hollywood Model of Education and essentially move away from traditional district management. Pennsylvania can easily start by embracing the approach taken by Louisiana and its so-far successful reform effort in New Orleans, handing over control of traditional schools to an array of Parent Power groups, community organizations, and charter school operators. Allowing families and churches to launch their own schools through a DIY model — which is possible thanks to the advent of online and blended learning — would also be a smart step.

Either way, the status quo in Philly can no longer continue — and taxpayers and families shouldn’t have to stand for it.

It would be hard for any superintendent to justify shutting down Fulton Science Academy Middle School. After all, the Alpharetta, Ga., charter school is doing a fine job of educating all of its students. Forty-one percent of its black students scored at advanced levels on Georgia’s standardized tests in 2010-2011, nearly double the rate for the entire Fulton County school district; while 67 percent of the school’s Latino students scored at advanced levels, double the rate for all of Fulton County. As a result of this success, the U.S. Department of Education named the Science Academy one of its 2011 Blue Ribbon Schools, one of eight Peach State schools (and the first charter school in the state) to gain such an honor.

Yet shutting down the school is exactly what Fulton County’s superintendent, Robert Avossa, is recommending to the school board. Why? The underlying reasons illustrate why it is time to abolish state laws that put charter school authorizing into the hands of traditional districts — which are generally competitors with charters for students and funding — and move toward a system in states handle the approval and regulation.

At the heart of the fracas between the Science Academy and the district is the question of how much oversight should the district have in actually overseeing the school. The Science Academy, opened nine years ago and currently operating under a 10-year charter, wants another decade-long agreement in place. But Fulton County district officials want to place the school on a three-year renewal cycle. Why? Not because the district plans on subjecting its other charter schools to similar renewal periods. According to the district, it is prompted by Science Academy’s effort with two other charter schools to build a new campus and take out $18 million in bonds for the purpose. Even though the liabilities for the bond lie solely with the Science Academy and its partner schools — and the school’s annual cash flows are likely more than enough to sustain its share of bond debt — the district declares that it needs a shorter renewal period so that it can “ensure adequate monitoring of the financial liabilities associated with the bond”.

The other issue lies with the school’s request for a waiver from Title 20, a set of state regulations which requires that all teachers have some sort of certification and require schools to maintain class sizes at just 24 students per teacher. Science Academy has been given waivers from Title 20 since its opening. From where the school sits, requiring the school to comply with Title 20 will limit its ability to provide a high-quality education to its students. For example, it notes that Title 20’s class size requirements may keep it from either increasing the number of students for its Connected Mathematics classes, or reduce those numbers in order to provide students intensive remediation. (There’s also the fact that there is no correlation between certification and student achievement, along with research showing that small class sizes only improve student achievement for poor students in the early elementary grades.) Given the Science Academy’s top performance, especially compared to the district’s own middle schools, such an exemption makes sense.

But Fulton County argues that granting the Science Academy a waiver would be inappropriate because they don’t provide waivers to the schools it operates. The district claims that it may allow Science Academy to exempt itself from some specific elements of Title 20, but it can’t determine whether it would be justified because the school insists on a blanket waiver. As far as the district is concerned, complying with Title 20 ” does not prohibit innovation or flexibility” and only allows the school district to monitor the Science Academy’s financial and educational performance. The district also argues that two previous schools failed in part because they didn’t comply with Title 20. But as a former colleague of mine, Bob Pepalis of Patch’s Alpharetta Web site, notes in his report, the two schools the district cites were either shut down or closed voluntarily because of fiscal failure, noncompliance with environmental regulations, and the lack of special education teachers, almost none of which would have to do with Title 20 regulations.

Certainly, one can argue that both sides are making good points. Science Academy’s longstanding performance exemplifies the best of what charter schools can and should be able to do when you move education away from the traditional district concept. Fulton County, on the other hand, should be able to keep an eye on the charters it authorizes (which is something that authorizers of all kinds should do). Yet the way Fulton County is handling the reauthorization of the school is rather heavy-handed, with little thought as to whether the regulatory approach makes any sense; the heavy-handedness is amazing given that the district itself is attempting to take advantage of Georgia’s own efforts to embrace the Hollywood Model of Education and allow districts to free itself from regulations. This lends credence to the perception among some parents and others that the district is more annoyed with the fact that the charter is showing up traditional district schools than concerned about ensuring high-quality education for students.

This, in turn, shows one of the biggest obstacles to the expansion of charter schools and school choice that, as I point out in this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast, is critical to sustaining the reform of American public education: The fact that in many states, school districts are charged with deciding whether charters can open in the first place.

Considering that charters are essentially competitors with districts for students, funding, and reputations for improving student achievement, there is little incentive for the latter to allow for any to open in the first place. It is akin to allowing Red Lobster to decide whether an Applebees can open next door. This is particularly true for suburban districts such as Fulton County, which, until recently, have been able to maintain the image that they are provide high quality teaching and curricula despite evidence that this isn’t even close to reality. It is why Montgomery County, Md. (where only 31 percent of students would outperform peers in Singapore) has allowed only one charter to open , and why the suburbs outside of urban locales such as New York City and D.C. work hard to restrict the opening of charters in their midst.

Even when the district opens the charter, the fear of being shown up by the rival school creates a tension that can spill out into regulatory activity. What can, on its face, seem to be sensible regulating by the district may end up being little more than a petty effort to close down a competitor that places pressure on it to do better. This is certainly possible in the case of Fulton County, which, unlike Science Academy, hasn’t made Adequate Yearly Progress. Since some districts provide the dollars for charters (albeit, in most cases, in a pass-through role), the district can use “protecting taxpayers’ interests” to justify putting charter competitors through the proverbial grinder

The proper solution is place charter school authorization solely in the hands of state education departments. After all, given that charters actually function as local education agencies, it makes sense that they should be monitored only by the state. In Georgia (where efforts to allow a state agency to authorize charters was kiboshed by the state supreme court earlier this year), the first step starts with following that of states such as Indiana and amend state law in order to make charters their own school districts.

A more important step lies with overhauling school funding systems. Considering that states account for 48 percent of all school funding (in Georgia, it is 43 percent),  it would make sense for states to replace local property tax funding with state dollars. This would essentially turning school funding into vouchers that follow every child to whatever school, public, private or parochial, they so choose, allowing for the expansion of charters and other choice options (and remove districts from obstructionist roles).

The dispute between Fulton Science Academy and the Fulton County district shows once again the need to get charters from under traditional district control — and embrace the Hollywood Model of Education.

To get a better perspective on why the traditional public school district and the large-scale model of American public education it represents is no longer workable, consider the work of the See Forever Foundation in turning around the economic and educational prospects of poor and minority children who have dropped out of school.

The Washington, D.C., nonprofit, which runs the Maya Angelou charter schools and an academy at the District’s juvenile jail, not only does it seek to help its students gain a high school diploma, but even works hard to help former dropouts who return complete higher education. It is a particular challenge. Just 27 percent of high school dropouts who return to gain a high school diploma even seek a college degree, according to the Alliance for Excellent Education. Since most dropout recovery efforts are aimed helping dropouts meet the minimum standards for attaining a diploma or a General Education Development certificate, it often means that those students are not getting the rigorous college preparatory curricula needed for success in either traditional colleges, technical schools, or apprenticeships. Even when the students get strong instruction and curriculum, they face other challenges to higher ed completion. Some of these students have criminal records, which can bar them from living in college dorms or even being admitted into college in the first place.

Early on, See Forever realized that while its students were graduating with high school diplomas and getting accepted into college, few of its students were actually enrolling once they were accepted, much less graduating with a degree. What they learned was that these students were struggling with navigating the complex system of staying in college. After all, nearly a third of ex-dropouts nationwide who graduate are the first in their families to gain a high school diploma, and are often also the first to even think of college; many of the rest come from households with no familiarity with navigating the work of filling out federal financial aid forms. This lack of knowledge, along with their reluctance to ask questions (which is perceived to make one vulnerable), the financial challenges (how to pay for books or even room-and-board when the Pell grant payment has yet to be delivered to the Bursar),  the challenges that come from existing circumstances (such as being a single mother), and the emotional issues that can come with leaving behind other relatives for whom they were the only source of stability, conspires to make higher ed completion akin to climbing Everest.

So See Forever and its executive director, Lucretia Murphy, began addressing those challenges in a holistic way. It began providing its graduating students with counselors, who work to keep the students on track during their final year in their schools and even when they are in college. They work with families on annually filling out financial aid forms — a challenging document that can be made even more difficult when relatives are earning incomes through informal means such as day labor. And it provides other forms of counseling for these kids so they can deal with emotional challenges of being the first in their families to move out of neighborhoods and move onto the path to economic and social achievement.

Even before the kids enter college, See Forever also teachers kids how to deal with the most-important part of succeeding in college: The ability to make life decisions on their own. Many of the ex-dropouts who attend See Forever’s schools have spent most of their lives being dictated by the rules set by government agencies. Says Dr. Murphy this past Wednesday at the Alliance for Excellent Education’s confab on college completion: “They deal with welfare agencies. Their parents report to probation officers.” This makes it difficult for these students to succeed in higher ed institutions where autonomy and self-study are the norm. So See Forever works with students on understanding that they must take personal responsibility for their life path. This includes showing up for school on time — and encouraging fellow classmates by word of mouth and even Twitter to do the same.

The results of this work — and their work in helping their traditional students stay on the path to college completion — can be seen in the numbers. Eighty-seven percent of See Forever’s graduates make it through their first year of college; 60 percent of graduates leave college with a degree, higher than both the average for ex-dropouts and for all American students attending higher ed in six years. But for See Forever to do this work, it has to be nimble in every way, from the focus of its schools on at-risk students, to its specific fundraising for its college completion efforts.

This kind of work could, in theory, be handled on a mass scale by traditional school districts, especially D.C. Public Schools, whose dropouts end up heading into See Forever’s schools. After all, they already have the dollars and the bodies to do the work.  But traditional districts barely track where their students go once they leave high school, much less follow up with them on higher ed completion; the state of affairs I found back at Indianapolis Public Schools in 2004 when I began writing about the nation’s education crisis, largely remains the reality today.

This wouldn’t be surprising to Dr. Murphy. Murphy told Dropout Nation that traditional districts would have to hire more guidance counselors to help graduating students stay on the path to college completion. But districts reduce their numbers during periods of belt-tightening — and rarely hire enough guidance counselors in the first place. Nor do districts hire enough mental health workers — or even contract and partner with organizations that can do such work — to help either traditional students or ex-dropouts get ready for the emotional challenges of higher ed.

Meanwhile districts have other challenges they struggle to handle in spite of their size. Given that as many as 40 percent of students entering kindergarten need specialized, intensive reading instruction regardless of what their parents do at home, one would think traditional districts would devote more resources to that work. After all, it would lead to fewer numbers of functionally illiterate students, keeping more kids on the path to graduation. Yet this almost never happens.

Nor do districts do a good job of handling another basic task: Managing the performance of the very teachers whose work is the most-critical to student achievement. Just 40 percent of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s veteran teachers and 70 percent of new hires (who attain near-lifetime employment, and thus are far too difficult to dismiss, after two years on the job) were evaluated by the district during the 2009-2010 school year. While collective bargaining agreements, state laws, and the politicking of National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers locals are major reasons for this abysmal performance management, the fact that district bureaucracies are just terrible at managing operations (and school leaders are abysmal at doing their jobs) is also part of the problem.

Meanwhile districts fail in handling the back-office activities that are part of the day-to-day work of running schools. Just 69 percent of school buses are kept in operation throughout the school year, according to Michael Casserly of the Council of the Great City Schools. As I noted in A Byte At the Apple, the data management systems used by school districts throughout California are also a mess, with some districts actually using FileMaker, Sybase, and other outdated software to handle basic functions.

All of this points to a reality: That the very scale that, in theory, should allow traditional districts to help ex-dropouts and traditional students stay on the path to educational and economic success (and, more importantly, keep students from dropping out in the first place), is of little use in an age in which ensuring all children get a high-quality education is more-important than how many students attend in the first place.

One of the underlying themes in the battle over the reform of American public education is the pursuit of scale. The idea is that a new solution to the nation’s education crisis — usually an organization — will only be workable if it can be expanded from small scale to regional and (usually) national scope. It is this fetish, borrowed from industrial companies of the 20th century, based on the idea that inputs and outputs are more important that outcomes, and shared by both education traditionalists and school reformers alike, that drives such discussions as to whether Teach For America’s expansion efforts will make its efforts in teacher training less effective, and battles between reformers over which formula will be effective in systemic reform.

Left unsaid and unconsidered is the fact that scale is not all that people think it should be. If anything, American public education has already proven that it is scaled for failure. The collective bargaining agreements and state laws that essentially protect laggard teachers and fail to reward high-quality teachers (all of which are artifacts of industrial-era thinking and a time in which teacher performance could not be measured) are two examples of scale run amok.

Then there is the traditional public school district itself. Each district looks exactly like the other, with a superintendent, central office staff, collective bargaining agreements with NEA and AFT locals, and other practices. Yet no one thinks that this form of scale should continue to be duplicated. If anything, the very size of districts (along with the longstanding practices that have plagued American public education) have led to the development of bureaucracies that foster cultures of mediocrity and failure that are difficult to overhaul.

The simple reality is that it is time to abandon the traditional district model of education. As I’ve noted in this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast, they are broken down Model Ts that weren’t built to serve all children in the first place. Instead what is needed is to move toward what I call the Hollywood Model of Education, in which a variety of schools — including independent public  schools, public charters, private schools, online outfits, DIY schools launched by families and communities, parochial school operations, and charter management organization-managed schoolhouses — help all kids succeed in school and life. Some will do same kind of work See Forever does with dropouts looking to get back on the path to economic and social success, while others will serve young black men or other needs. But all will be able to do their work nimbly, with little bureaucratic inertia.

This doesn’t mean that scale is abandoned completely: One can imagine a collection of schools contracting out with firms to handle transportation, school lunches, and building services. Other areas, such as testing students, teacher evaluations, and school governance, can only be handled on a mass level. This will likely lead to state education departments either expanding their own operations or contracting such work out to companies or nonprofits. It also means that Common Core state standards will be needed in order to ensure that all schools meet their obligations to our children.

But it is clear that the work of See Forever in getting more ex-dropouts (and other students) on the path to college and career success cannot be done through the traditional district model. It is time to toss it into history’s ashbin.

As the worst school district in the Midwest outside of Detroit, Indianapolis Public Schools has exemplified everything that is wrong with traditional school districts. Last August, Indiana Supt. Tony Bennett seized six of the district’s worst-performing schools and handed them off to a group of charter school operators charged with overhauling them. This included Emmerich Manual High School, a subject of past Dropout Nation reports, which has been an abject failure for most of the past four decades. Meanwhile the seven-year regime of the district’s superintendent, Eugene White, already marked by rampant nepotism and incompetence, garnered even more negative attention last month when he proclaimed that the district was failing because it educated special ed kids he called “blind, crippled, crazy”; the district’s do-nothing school board merely let him off the hook by letting him apologize for his callous remarks. (His remarks and his failures were featured in this month’s Dropout Nation Podcast on transforming school leadership.)

So it isn’t shocking that Indiana state officials and school reform organizations such as former Indianapolis mayor Bart Peterson’s Mind Trust are looking to put the district’s status as an independent entity into education history’s proverbial glue factory. Under proposals being bandied around the Hoosier State’s legislative halls and along the Indianapolis’ Monument Circle, IPS would be placed in the hands of the Circle City’s mayor, Greg Ballard, either allowing him to appoint members of the school board, or make the district a city agency whose superintendent would be a mayoral appointee.

Either way, by next year, Indiana may end up bringing back the conversation about handing over traditional districts to mayors and other municipal and county chief executives, who can then lead much-needed reforms. And that is a good thing. It is important to continue ditching the outdated concept of independent school districts that lack accountable, central leadership.

Thanks largely to last year’s defeat of Adrian Fenty for a second term as Washington, D.C. mayor, the idea of mayors taking control of big urban school districts has quieted down. Even though Fenty’s defeat had far more to do with his arrogant demeanor and general incompetence as mayor in areas out side of education, the prospects of using considerable political capital on overhauling traditional districts– especially amid quality of life concerns — has made mayoral control less interesting an idea. While mayors are still active in pushing for reform, and some mayors (notably San Antonio’s Julian Castro) may still be willing to take over of traditional districts, mayoral control hasn’t been the major topic of discussion that it was last year.

Meanwhile education traditionalists such as Diane Ravitch have argued that mayoral control hasn’t been a success at all. Ravitch, in her usual disingenuous and intellectually dishonest manor, attempted to paint New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s efforts as being little more than “smoke”; while Nation writer Dana Goldstein attempted the same feat with far too many more words in her own recent tome against reform. Affiliates of the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers are also geared up to make sure that mayoral control doesn’t happen elsewhere, arguing that mayoral control is somehow undemocratic (even though mayors are elected by the same voters and, generally, in far greater numbers). They also attempt to argue that mayor-led reforms are failures.

Yet, oddly enough, mayoral control has largely succeeded in spurring much-needed reforms. Under Bloomberg and his chancellors — including Joel Klein — the percentage of fourth-graders reading Below Basic, as measured on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, declined from 53 percent in 2003 to 38 percent in 2009, while the percentage of students reading at Proficient and Advanced levels increased from 19 percent to 29 percent within the same period. The average fourth-grader in 2009 was reading at a grade level ahead of a peer six years earlier. The percentage of eighth-graders scoring Below Basic in math declined from 46 percent in 2003 to 40 percent in 2004, while the percentage of students scoring at Proficient and Advanced levels increased from 21 percent to 26 percent in that period. The average eighth-grader scores half a grade level higher in math in 2009 than a similar student six years earlier; the average black male fourth-grader reads at a grade level higher in 2009 than in 2003. Meanwhile, the Big Apple’s graduation rates increased from an abysmal 37 percent at the time Bloomberg took over the district in 2002 to a slightly less-horrifying 50 percent.

The story of improvement under mayoral control isn’t atypical. In D.C., the percentage of fourth-graders who were functionally illiterate declined from 61 percent in 2007 to 56 percent in 2011, while the percentage of kids reading at Proficient and Advanced levels increased from 14 percent to 19 percent over that time. The percentage of fourth-graders in the district performing Below Basic in math declined from 51 percent in 2007 to 40 percent in 2011, while the percentage of fourth-graders performing at Proficient and Advanced levels increased from 14 percent to 22 percent in that same period.

Then there’s Boston, which came under the control of the mayor’s office two decades ago. Between 2003 and 2009, the percentage of fourth-graders reading Below Basic declined from 52 percent to 39 percent, while the percentage of kids reading at Proficient and Advanced levels increased from 15 percent to 24 percent. The average Boston fourth-grader reads at a grade-and-a-half level higher in 2009 than a similar student six years earlier; the reading score for the average black male fourth-grader was a grade point higher in 2009 than six years earlier.

Even Chicago, whose reform efforts under former mayor Richard Daley and his former schools czar (and now-current U.S. Secretary of Education) Arne Duncan, have been much maligned as of late, showed progress. The percentage of functionally illiterate fourth-graders declined from 60 percent to 55 percent between 2003 and 2009, while the percentage of students reading at Proficient and Advanced levels increased from 15 percent to 24 percent during that time. While Chicago didn’t succeed under the latter half of Daley’s reign at the stunning levels displayed in New York, D.C., and Boston — the average scale score for black males barely budged — graduation rates for the city (based on eighth-grade enrollment) increased from 55 percent to 63 percent within that period; the five-year promoting power for black males (based on eighth-grade enrollment) increased from 47 percent to 62 percent over that same period. And when one takes the longer view and considers that most of the work began under Duncan’s predecessor Paul Vallas, Chicago has made rather amazing progress under mayoral control.

This isn’t to say that mayoral control has been an unquestioned success as a school reform strategy. The fact that so many of the districts still struggle in improving student achievement for black males — even amid the successes overall — remains problematic. The fact the array of state laws and policies — including near-lifetime employment policies and reverse-seniority layoff rules — that contributed to making districts servile to AFT and NEA affiliates also limits the reform efforts mayors can undertake.

Then there is the reality that mayors can succeed in continuing reform efforts on the school front only if they master the other aspects of their job: Keeping crime low; attending to quality of life issues; efficiently managing city government; and artfully keeping opponents (and sometimes, even allies) divided or placated. Fail in any of these areas, let alone all of them, and the mayor may not have much time to overhaul school districts — or anything else.

Yet, in spite of these issues, mayoral control has proven effective as a reform strategy. Why? Start with the fact that, unlike the traditional (and mostly unaccountable) board structure, there is one elected official who is in charge of schools, who is accountable for its success and failure of schools in providing high-quality instruction and curricula to children whose taxpayers are also voters. Given a mayor’s chief role of improving the city’s quality of life, the critical role of schools in economic and social development, and the bully pulpit that comes with the job, a mayor can be the standard-bearer for systemically reforming schools.

This reality can force mayors to wisely pick school chief executives, who will have plenty of time (so long as the mayor remains in office) to do the hard work. While Fenty’s tenure — and that of Michelle Rhee, who served as his schools czar — was rather short, most mayoral control arrangements have involved tenures far longer than the three year average for superintendents in traditional district arrangements. In New York City, for example, Klein remained in charge for eight years, while Tom Payzant in Boston held his job for 11 years; in Chicago, Duncan and Vallas held their jobs for, respectively, seven and six years.

Another lies with the fact that mayors can stand up to AFT and NEA locals more-effectively than any school board. After all, unlike school board members, who are dependent on the endorsements of locals (and their campaign cash), mayors can count on a wider array of donors and political alliances that can sustain them during the inevitable battles over revamping teacher compensation and revamping curricula and instructional practices. As seen in the case of Bloomberg and Klein, the mayor can play the proverbial good cop role even as his education czar does the dirty work. Sometimes this may mean mayors will hold off on more-radical reforms (or, as in the case of Bloomberg when he essentially took over the negotiations with the AFT’s Big Apple local in 2005, undercut their school leaders altogether). But more often than not, teachers’ union bosses know that any effort being undertaken by the district is one that has been vetted and blessed by the mayor.

Then there is the budgetary value of mayoral control, which is quite considerable. One of the reasons why urban districts such as Philadelphia and Bridgeport, Conn., generate so little in local tax dollars (even when, as Contributing Editor Michael Holzman noted yesterday, their tax rates are higher)  is because of the dysfunctional fiscal policies — including tax abatements given to developers for costly real estate schemes that siphon off dollars from district coffers. In those cities, politicians who run the rest of government can ignore the fiscal needs of the school district, whose operations they don’t oversee. The fact that state governments also fund most of the district’s expenditures (often as much as 80 percent of the annual spend) also makes it easier for city leaders to not concern themselves with school funding.

When districts are under mayoral control, city officials have to be more-thoughtful about the impact of their fiscal decisions on schools. It also forces mayors to think more about the high cost of traditional teacher compensation — including the pension deficits and unfunded retired teacher healthcare liabilities that will be a drain on taxpayer coffers for decades to come.

Finally, mayors can be the leading forces for pushing systemic reforms at the state and national level. Daley proved this during his tenure, especially during his final months in office as he successfully pushed for a modest revamp of Illinois’ teacher evaluation system, while Bloomberg has been even more effective, fostering a school reform culture within the Empire State where there was once none. Even mayors who don’t have significant control of school systems have proven to be leading agitators for reform. In Indiana, Peterson’s successful push to get power to authorize charter schools helped foster a reform-minded culture in the Hoosier State upon which the school choice and teacher quality efforts of state superintendent Bennett and Gov. Mitch Daniels has been built. And in California, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s agitation for reforming the Los Angeles Unified School District — including his unsuccessful effort to get Golden State legislators to hand him control of the school system — has helped sustain other school reformers, including the group of parents that have recently filed suit against L.A. Unified to force overhaul of its teacher evaluations.

There are plenty of cities and counties in which more mayoral activism is needed. And Indianapolis is one of them. While IPS is particularly abysmal — a 37 percent graduation rate for its Class of 2009 based on Dropout Nation‘s analysis of eighth-grade enrollment — its sister districts in Indianapolis’ townships are not much better. Just 67 percent of Decatur Township’s eighth-graders in the original Class of 2009 graduated five years later, while 64 percent of Perry Township’s eighth-graders made it to graduation. And when one looks at the performance of black male students throughout the Circle City, the extent of the education crisis is astounding.

While the charter schools effort begun under Ballard’s predecessor, Bart Peterson, have provided some higher-quality options, the low number of the schools, the lack of charters in the districts outside of IPS, and the approach of Ballard and Peterson to emphasize quality over quantity of charters has meant that neither IPS nor its sister districts have had step up and actually overhaul their operations.

Reform must start with overhauling IPS, which account for more than a fifth of all of the city’s students, and operate most of the city’s failure mills. In many ways, Ballard would already be prepared for such a move. After all, he oversees charters, which, though command just 6.6 percent of all students in Indianapolis, would be considered the city’s eighth-largest school district if they were consolidated into one entity. The fact that Ballard had proposed earlier this year to take over IPS’ worst failure factories before the state proceeded with handing off those schools to charter school operators also shows that he has the capacity to run the district.

If Hoosier State officials hand over the district to Ballard, it could also spark a new round of mayoral takeovers. Seattle, for example, would be one possibility; there, the current mayor, Mike McGinn, has already said he wants to take control of the district. Another would be St. Louis, where current mayor Francis Slay has unsuccessfully fought to place reformers on the district’s school board. Newark Mayor Cory Booker is already active in pushing for reform of that city’s woeful school district; it wouldn’t be surprising to see him team up with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to push for mayoral control. And Atlanta still remains ripe for takeover; even as Georgia’s education officials, has finally removed the scandal- and dysfunction-tarred district off probation, it is likely that Mayor Kasim Reed can persuade Gov. Nathan Deal and the Republican-led legislature to hand him control of the woefully-run schools.

Another possibility may lie in countywide takeover of districts. This is especially possible in states such as Virginia, Maryland, Georgia, and Tennessee, where countywide districts (save for areas surrounding cities such as Baltimore and Atlanta) and county government chief executives are already the norm. In the first two states, the districts have to have their budgets approved by county and independent city governments. One can imagine a situation in which the dysfunctional DeKalb County school district near Atlanta is taken over by the county’s chief executive, Burrell Ellis. The newly-formed Memphis-Shelby County district in Tennessee, featured in this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast on expanding school choice, could, in theory, end up under the control of county Mayor Mark Luttrell Jr., if the Volunteer State’s governor, Bill Haslam, pushes the legislature into that direction.

What may happen in Indianapolis in the coming year may mean the return of mayoral control. And this wouldn’t be a bad thing at all.