Thursday January 4th, 2007.

Welcome to Cato Daily Podcast and Adastasia Yuglova.

Shortly after taking office, DC Mayor Adrian Fenty made it clear that revamping DC public schools

would be his top priority.

Among the many changes his plan calls for are making a school system a cabinet-level agency

that reports directly to the mayor and creating a chancellor for DC public schools, but education policy analyst Adam Schaefer is skeptical

that these centralizations of schools by cities like Chicago and New York will have a lasting

and positive impact on the quality of education.

What is the state of public school education in D.C?

The state is very poor.

The District of Columbia competes for dead last with other states in the country every year and they

spend much more than most other states around 15 to 16,000 dollars a year so they're

really not getting much for their money. But hasn't DC made some headway in the area of school choice?

They certainly have. Mainly in charter schools, there is a new voucher program that is also

serving about 1,800 students, but that's set a much larger student population and really doesn't begin to make a dent in the need for school choice and other options.

So what is Mayor Fenty's plan for public education?

The details of his plan have yet to be released, but... is Mayor Fenty's Plan for Public Education?

The details of his plan have yet to be released, but mayoral control usually includes

dominance of a school board and other direct controls over education, usually budget and curriculum.

Isn't Fenty's plan an improvement over the Board of Education Monopoly on school curriculum?

I suppose it depends on what he does with that control, but certainly in the past it's been an improvement over the system that it replaces which is usually so broken that people are willing to give a try with a drastic reform such as mayoral control.

What has been the experience of other cities with school centralization?

...