Set Up for Failure

The District of Columbia financial-control board's recent takeover of Washington's public schools was another example of such action against an urban school system on the verge of collapse. Since 1989, when the Jersey City, N.J., schools became the first fully state-run local district, several urban school districts have come under fire or been taken over by external authority. The reasons have been as diverse as an inability to pay the bills in Cleveland and Compton, Calif., to "educational bankruptcy" in New Jersey. What makes the situation in Washington a valuable lesson for other districts is that the new chief administrator, retired Lt. Gen. Julius W. Becton Jr., may already be set up for failure. ( "D.C. Schools Chief Takes Reins as Balance of Power Shifts," Dec. 4, 1996, and "School-Closing Plan Poses Test for D.C. Leaders," April 16, 1997.)

Just a month after the control board's release of a report deploring the condition of the capital's public schools and appointment of the general as the schools' new head, The Washington Post urged Mr. Becton to set goals and time lines--to publish a formal strategic plan. The idea was to direct the general's attention beyond the many budgetary and maintenance problems to the "larger and central challenge" of student achievement and, specifically, to press him for plans to improve test scores, drop-out rates, and graduation rates.

What could be wrong with setting goals and expectations? Nothing, if they are reasonable, if they guide the public for what's ahead and when reforms are on track. But neither the maintenance contracts nor the bureaucracy the previous superintendent left behind is the primary obstacle to setting the district's schools...