Hon. Eva Moskowitz, Chair
Committee on Education
The Council of the City of New York
City Hall, Room 5
New York, NY 10007
I want to thank the Education Committee of the New York City Councilfor this opportunity to testify. This testimony was also submitted tothe State Task Force on Community School District Governance Reform atthe hearing held on December 10, 2002. My name is Elizabeth Sullivan,and I am the program coordinator in charge of Right to Education issuesin the US Program at the Center for Economic and Social Rights. TheCenter for Economic and Social Rights is a human rightsnon-governmental organization with a decade of experience in advocatingfor economic and social human rights in the United States and aroundthe world.
As we consider all the critical policy implications at stake indetermining what governance structure will replace the Community SchoolBoards, it is also important to be highly conscious of the rights thatare at stake. Each and every child in the New York City school systemhas a fundamental human right to education. This right is not onlyreflected in our State Constitution, it is universally recognized byall the nation-states of the world. It is codified in the UniversalDeclaration of Human Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child,the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man, theInternational Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, andother significant human rights instruments. The United States was oneof the primary drafters of the unanimously adopted UniversalDeclaration of Human Rights, is a signatory to the Convention on theRights of the Child and the International Covenant on Economic, Socialand Cultural Rights (although ratification of these treaties are stillpending), and is legally bound under regional law to adhere to theprinciples in the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man.
The human right to education obligates government actors at alllevels to ensure that education is available, accessible, andappropriate for all children, as well as adaptable to their educationalneeds. Human rights standards also require that the government employprinciples of equity and non-discrimination in education, that allcommunities receive quality education, and that there will be noinstances where children in particular communities, whether due toclass, race, ethnicity or other factors, are relegated to inferioreducational opportunities and outcomes.
The human rights principles of particular relevance to the questionof what will replace the Community School Boards, however, relate togovernment accountability to rights-holders. Specifically, they are: 1)the right to participation by civil society (such as parents, students,community members and advocates) in the governance of the educationalsystem; 2) the obligation to provide effective remedies when violationsoccur; and 3) the obligation to monitor the right to education. Underthe current school system, municipal government is failing consistentlyin all these areas. Because the role and function of the new governancestructure speak directly to these issues, we urge you to consider thehuman rights dimension of this task.
- The right to participation
The right to participation, which is imbedded in all facets of thehuman rights framework, is a critical component for ensuringaccountability by government actors to rights-holders in society.Without vigorous, informed participation by civil society intransparent and democratic government processes, governmentaccountability is illusory.
Despite existing policies whose supposed purpose is to ensureparticipation, our Right to Education project has documented asystematic failure by municipal government to ensure even minimalparticipation in educational decision-making and/or implementation ofexisting policy. (Our documentation included an extensive process ofinterviews of a wide range of stakeholders, including parents,community advocates, policy experts, and educators themselves.)
Parents and community members routinely face barriers when trying toaccess information and participate in education decisions. Onecommunity advocate we interviewed struggled for weeks to gain access toher school???s Comprehensive Education Plan (CEP) and was unable toreceive help from school officials in trying to interpret the document.Despite repeated requests to her child???s teacher and principal, oneparent we interviewed was unable to obtain any type of syllabus or workplan for her daughter???s class in order to assist her with homework.Parents complained that School Leadership Teams in many schools aroundthe city, which are meant to help facilitate the participation ofparents and communities in school governance, function without adequateparent representation or resources for training, and fail to adequatelydisseminate information to parents.
As we consider what may replace the Community School Boards, we havean historic opportunity to change this destructive pattern and createan effective mechanism that connects the input and concerns of parentsand communities to the decision-making processes and structures ofgovernment officials and educators. A necessary pre-condition forsucceeding in this task, is ensuring that the governance structureitself that will replace the Community School Boards includes all keystakeholders (such as parents, students community members, and civilsociety actors, including community-based organizations) and istransparent, accessible, and accountable to communities. If thesepre-conditions are not met, the structure will merely replicate andreflect the broader problem. If properly constructed to represent atruly democratic body, however, it can serve key functions to addressparticipation on a broader level. In particular it can:
- Ensure the participation of all stakeholders in all levels ofgovernance by serving as a liaison or advocate to communicate theirneeds and concerns to officials and institutions at the school,district and citywide levels.
- Ensure that public fora exist for all stakeholders to voicetheir concerns and provide input, such as organizing regular publicmeetings or hearings around specific issues. Procedures should beestablished to ensure that these fora are accessible, such aspublicizing meetings adequately in advance, equipping them withtranslation services, and scheduling them at times of the day and atlocations that are practically accessible.
- Ensure transparency in and public access to information, suchas city-level, district and school budgets, Comprehensive EducationPlans (CEPs), data on school and student performance, curricula, andclass syllabi. The new governance structure can provide thisinformation itself, or it can facilitate the access of parents to thisinformation. Either way, procedures should be established to determinewhat bodies are responsible for disseminating specific types ofinformation and for monitoring that it is disseminated appropriately.Information should be presented in a format which is easy tounderstand, is translated at a minimum into the primary languagesspoken by the community, and is disseminated in a timely manner.
- Ensure participation in key decision-making processes, such assetting goals for education, developing and approving budgets,developing and approving CEPs, andconducting evaluations of principals and superintendents. This can bedone in a number of different ways, such as giving key stakeholdersdirect power over certain decisions, giving them power to evaluate theperformance of other decision-makers such as principals,superintendents, the Chancellor and the Mayor, or giving them vetopower over key decisions. Whatever mechanism is chosen, human rightsstandards mandate that participation be meaningful and that the viewsof parents, community members and civil society have a real impact ondecisions.
- Ensure that participation is informed and the capacity ofstakeholders is developed, (including those serving on governancebodies), such as providing access to quality and easy to understandtrainings on interpreting budgets, strategic plans and curricula,providing advance notice of all key decisions, and distributing keydocuments in a timely and accessible manner.
The new governance structure can be provided with the resources tocarry out these functions itself, or can serve as a liaison to othermechanisms. At a minimum, this new governance structure should becharged with ensuring that mechanisms for participation are identifiedand that they function effectively. In order to succeed in this effort,the City Council and all those involved in this process, must expressstrong political will to get beyond tokenistic efforts and allowparticipation in a way that re-distributes social power moredemocratically in the education system.
- Right to a remedy in the case of violations
Under international human rights standards, the government isobligated to ensure that any individual or group has access to aneffective remedy for violations of their human rights, whether throughjudicial or other appropriate means. The remedy can take many differentforms, such as reparations (including restitution, monetary or otherforms of compensation), rehabilitation for damage incurred, orsatisfaction of a right that was previously denied. It can also come inthe form of a guarantee that the violation will not be repeated in thefuture.
Under the current New York City school system, remedies are eithernon-existent or inadequate. In many cases, when students, individuallyor collectively, are faced with a violation of their right toeducation, the primary mode of complaint is writing letters to school,district or Department of Education staff to request a resolution. Incases when formal complaint procedures do exist, such as around specialeducation and discipline issues, parents are often unaware of theirrights and the rights of their children, and are not provided with thenecessary guidance to navigate the system.
Federal law, under the No Child Left Behind Act passed in 2001,provides transfer to another school as a remedy for an inadequateeducation. This remedy is illusory in relation to any large number ofstudents, however, as there are simply not enough slots in adequateschools for all the students who may benefit from them. Moreover, evenfor the limited slots available, many parents are not being given theinformation and guidance about this policy they should be receivingfrom the city.
We have the opportunity to explore ways in which this new governancestructure can help ensure more effective remedies for violations of theright to education. The new governance structure could become amechanism for filing complaints and awarding remedies, or it couldfacilitate access of parents and students to such a mechanism.
- Government obligations to monitor the right to education
Under international human rights standards the government isobligated to monitor the fulfillment of the right to education. Inorder to be effective, it must monitor the implementation of policiesand programs, the performance of administrators and educators, spendingpatterns and other practices relevant to the right to education.
Monitoring is for the most part non-existent in the NYC educationsystem. Our human rights investigation has identified that manyviolations of the right to education stem from a failure to implementseemingly good policies, and a lack of monitoring to ensure thatpolicies are implemented. For example, when the State Board of Regentsimposed new testing standards for ELL students,they developed a list of services that schools must provide to preparestudents for the tests. A report by education advocates revealed thatin most schools, these services were not implemented. There was nosignificant monitoring done by the NYC Boardof Education or the State Board of Regents regarding the implementationof these policies and there was no accountability for not implementingthem. Despite this, ELL students were still expected to pass the new tests and as a result, drop out rates are increasing among ELL students.
This new governance structure could potentially help fill thefunction of monitoring. It could serve as a monitoring body itself, ifgiven adequate resources and access to information, or it could holdother bodies accountable for monitoring.
As a final note, we urge the City Council to request that thepreliminary and final recommendations of the State Task Force bedisseminated to the public allowing for a period of feedback beforethey are sent to the Governor and Legislature. We request that anyproposals made by the City Council are also made available to thepublic.
Thank you.
Elizabeth Sullivan
Right to Education Project
Center for Economic and Social Rights
162 Montague Street, 2nd Floor, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Ph: 718-237-9145; Fax: 718-237-9147
Email: esullivan@cesr.org
Web: www.cesr.org