Education "reform"

Thinking about the components within the K-12 public school system structure, there are at least 20, all of which impact system and student success at some level:

1. Student-parent-family
2. student-peers
3. Facility construction and maintenance
4. Curriculum
5. Materials/Basic student needs
6. Teacher-students
7. Teachers-teachers
8. teachers-union
9. Principal-teachers (management at the school level)
10. principla-teachers-union
11. Extracurricular and out-of-class learning opportunities
12. Before school and after-school programs/day care
13. Parents-teachers-community-principal-school
14. Principal-school system (school system management)
15. Principal-school system (school system management)-union
16. Funding at the school level
17. School system management
18. School system management-union
19. School system-board relationship
20. School system-board relationship-union
21. School board intra-member relationships
22. School Board-public relationship
23. School Board-union
24. General political and advocacy process
25. Funding
26. Elections
27. Union-electoral process (School Board)
28. Union-electoral process (Mayor/Council)
29. Local political and economic elites
30. School system-state relationship [less an issue in DC]
31. School system-state-federal interactions and requirements.
32. School system-state-Congress

I would aver that most "reform" efforts address a couple of these factors, mostly to do with overall system "management." That's not enough, judging by the impact of school reform efforts elsewhere.

Orr (Black Social Capital) and others argue that urban school systems have degraded in large part due to financial exigency, comp.
licated because local interest groups gaining control of the school systems over the past 40 years were primarily concerned with employment, contracting, and other opportunities (spoils) rather than a concern for student outcomes. Elites aquiesced and/or encouraged this in order to maintain overall political power. (Orr writes that underfunding makes reform especially difficult--although this is not really an issue in DC. While I think his work is generalizable, his study focused on Baltimore.)

I aver that the local elites didn't care about school system failures as long as most of the children in the system were from relatively poor African-American families.

As higher-income families either move to the city or are created as the household progresses through the life cycle (singles marry and then have children, and as children reach school age parents decide to either continue to live in the city or leave, primarily over the issue of access to quality schools), with preferences to remain in the city, the local elites ("Growth Machine") are now committed to effecting change within the school system because retention of high income residents is a priority for the city because such residents generate the lion's share of the local government revenue stream (income taxes).

The other issue that people raise is access to underutilized school facilities for redevelopment opportunities and for charter schools. As well as a desire to "reorder" who benefits from contracts and employment opportunities.