Urban Reform

My brief is really to write about national issues here, but since one big problem with urban governance is that there's a fairly impoverished public sphere for discussion of local politics with the consequence that there's a tendency for squeaky wheels to dominate things. Thus, I might note that DC Mayor Adrian Fenty seemed completely justified in his decision to fire these six social workers whose screwups contributed to the murder of four girls. That other civil servants are pissed off about that accountability moment is understandable, but it's simply vital that this city demand a higher quality of public services.

Similarly, this school closure plan seems mostly spot-on (the families who don't want their kids to need to cross a highway on foot en route to school seem to have a good point so the aspect of the plan affecting those people needs to be rethought). The District's school population has fallen dramatically from its current peak, and closing especially under-utilized schools is a no-brainer response. Right now we have underpopulated yet poorly maintained buildings. With some closures and rationalizations, kids could attend properly maintained schools.

Comments

School closures are always a giant pain. There's no constituency for change. The fact that Fenty can use the offsets to improve maintenance or staffing at other schools is a nice.

That said, I thought the latest movement in school reform was to smaller schools, or "schools within schools" where kids and teachers are split into smaller social networks to increase cohesion. The Fenty proposal seems to go against that.

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot | January 22, 2008 1:47 PM

Without more of a record, it's difficult to say that six social workers should have been fired. You don't have to let the police, or anyone else, in your house just because someone thinks you're a bad mom. There were several visits to the house, which did not provide any substantial evidence of abuse. If the District's truancy laws were tighter, and more strictly enforced, the city might have had legal justification for taking stronger action (both the older girls should have been in school but probably weren't but there was only testimony about the oldest). I live in DC and I know how poor the social services can be, but absent a clearer record of official incompetence, I suspect that Fenty was more interested in appearing "tough" than in being fair. It's ridiculous to expect social workers, or anyone else, to be able to predict the future.

Posted by Alan Vanneman | January 22, 2008 2:50 PM

Well, the Freep (the detroit paper,not the FreRep) is having a series on the lack of urban policy. So why not roll this into the national issue of the lack of a national urban policy.

Posted by crack | January 22, 2008 2:50 PM

In my field gov't employees make less than half of what they would make in the private sector. Why do they accept so little? Part of their compensation comes in the form of 100% air tight job security.

I think they are so mad because if you want to start makeing them accountable you are going to need to double their wages. But, for many of these people, they don't want more money, what they value above all else is job security.

Posted by Jmo | January 22, 2008 2:51 PM

Alan,

In my field you are given a group of people and you are charged with doing X. If your people don't perfor you fire them and hire new ones. If you can't motivate your remaining staff to do X you get fired.

"It's ridiculous to expect social workers, or anyone else, to be able to predict the future."

So the CEO's of Citi and Merril should still have jobs? I mean, how can you expect them to predict the future.

Posted by Jmo | January 22, 2008 3:01 PM

Jmo, the sacrifice-salary-for-job-security may be true for public employees whose skills are easily exportable to the private sector, but social work is, by its nature, a public-sector job, and thus they're already paid "the market rate" for their services.

Public sector job security is supposed to protect employees from hiring-and-firing whims of employers. It's not supposed to prevent firing in these sorts of "accountability moments."

Posted by Tyro | January 22, 2008 3:20 PM

In my field, which is social work (not CPS), if you're given a job that requires you to have a caseload of 35 to be done properly, and then are given a caseload of 95, then shit doesn't get done properly. Want better social services? Invest in your service delivery mechanism. Don't fail to maintain the machine and then kick it when it ceases to function.

Frankly, Mayor Nenty's actions scream of post-Nixmary Brown hysteria. Overloaded systems are prone to failure, and child welfare is not only overloaded, but structurally incapable of providing everything people expect it to. CPS social workers lack enforcement powers. If the police are unwilling to cooperate, there's not much a social worker can do (as happened in the Nixmary Brown case). Social workers can't kick down the door. If you can't substantiate abuse, you can't do anything about it. That's clearly what happened here. Most states have statutes on the books that prevent us from using cumulative patterns or from keeping cases open-ended; and, frankly, with the volume of work, keeping cases open-ended would further break an already floundering system.

I hate to sound cynical, but this kind of thing pisses me off: you never hear about the thousands of kids saved every year. Just the instances where an overloaded system shorts out.

Posted by James F. Elliott | January 22, 2008 4:23 PM

In my field you are given a group of people and you are charged with doing X. If your people don't perfor you fire them and hire new ones. If you can't motivate your remaining staff to do X you get fired.

You can't judge the performance of these social workers by the deaths of these children. It's not clear what else they should have done. Meanwhile, there surely are other instances where social workers are screwing up but where Fenty isn't firing anyone because no one died. What's needed is sustained management, not a politician swooping in only when there's a tragedy.

OTOH, maybe Fenty is managing things pretty well -- with the impoverished space for discussion of local politics, it's hard to tell.

Posted by Tyrone Slothrop | January 22, 2008 4:46 PM

Four children are dead because of incompetence and indifference. Did you even read the story? Did you even listen to the phone call? Wow, you all have great futures in the public union of your choice. Solidarity now! Solidarity forever! "Screw the children. Let 'em starve. Its all about me and what I want. I'm not paid enough to do the job." Well, screw you. Those who let it happen should be fired. Do the job or get out.

Posted by RW Rogers | January 22, 2008 4:47 PM

What should the social workers and police have done differently at what stage? Those children were killed by their mother, who was crazy.

Posted by Tyrone Slothrop | January 22, 2008 5:42 PM

So, what you're saying, RW, is that you want an "accountability moment" that is no such thing. Social workers on the line can't fix the system when it's broken: that falls to those charged with funding, administering, and crafting policy.

I don't see any indifference, nor do I see any real indications of incompetence (yes, I read the story, you twit; not everyone opines on fields of work they know nothing about, unlike you).

Once again, for the reading impaired: Social workers are not allowed to find allegations they cannot substantiate; they are not allowed to perform investigations like a police officer; and they're damned well not allowed to kick down a door and demand answers. I'll ask again: what more is the social worker supposed to have done?

Screw the children. Let 'em starve. Its all about me and what I want. I'm not paid enough to do the job."

Oh, yeah, and screw you for writing that. You'd curl up and die if you held my job for a week, you histrionic freak show.

Posted by James F. Elliott | January 22, 2008 6:13 PM

I disagree with you on the necessity of the federal govt to be more involved in urban policy, but agree with you on the larger point that people spend an outsized proportion of time on national politics compared with state/local affairs. Just in terms of money for instance, feds spend about 2/3 of taxes, state/local about 1/3, but the attention paid to what one's state legislator and/or county councilperson are doing is probably less than 10% that paid to the presidential race.

Posted by Kolohe | January 22, 2008 6:34 PM

Ah, Matt, what a difference having children makes.

Q: When does the desire to subscribe to the egalitarian idea of public schools run up against the goal of 'doing the right thing' for your kid(s)
A: When you have kids in 'an urban school system'.

Closing DC schools probably won't result in more money flowing to the students within DCPS. The presumed savings that is the rationale for going through the painful school closure process will not occur.

The more probable outcome will be to accelerate the exodus from DCPS to charters and the suburban public schools. The shift of students to DC public charter schools will transfer funds to charters and reduce the oversight and reduce the number of schools that are 'failing' within the DCPS system. These DCPS failing schools are the ones where the Mayor gets the blame. The charter schools have very little accountability and are not the responsibility of the Mayor.

Charter schools get the same 'per-student-funding' that the DCPS student is awarded. If students migrate from DCPS to charter schools the charters will get the full funding and no savings will accrue to DC government. Charter schools have significant financial advantages over DCPS schools already. The charter schools don't need to accept any student, they don't have their funds withdrawn if the student is bounced back to the public school system, they don't have to pay cost overruns for special education and transportation. (The 'cost overrun for special ed/transport' is a perennial item which causes funds to be yanked from the DCPS schools after budgets were set and teachers hired.) Charters also benefit from a facilities rental allowance which usually exceeds (often by a lot) the cost of rent and utilities. DCPS schools have the facilities charges removed from their budget.

The school closings will combine many smaller schools into larger schools, combining some neighborhood schools and neighborhood gangs. Likely outcome is more violence in the schools or increased dropout rates.

Whether any of this 'improves' the school system or not is debatable. It seems more like a 'shift the blame' exercise.

Posted by ygab | January 23, 2008 3:11 AM