Big city school boards and superintendents have generally failed to provide the accountability and leadership needed to educate the many disadvantaged children they serve. Mayors and the federal government must take stronger roles in improving urban schools.
In an increasingly global and knowledge-based economy, nothing is more important to the future of cities and to the nation as a whole than education.
America's beleaguered cities cannot rebound without good public schools, now plagued by lack of money, unresponsive bureaucracies, declining enrollments, high dropout and poverty rates, and low academic standards. State and federal contributions to school budgets have not made up for huge inequities in local support.
At their best, public schools give the most disadvantaged children a chance to succeed, but rarely the clear path that children find in affluent districts. More than 50 years after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case declared segregation unconstitutional, the nation's schools remain practically as unequal as ever -- and in places such as metro Detroit, nearly as segregated as they were in 1950.
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