Idependent Boro Ed Commissions- IBEC

Creating an Independent Task Force for Whole System Change

The Independent Commission on Public Education (iCOPE) calls for the formation of an independent task force of parents, community members, students, teachers, principals, policy-makers, elected officials, scholars and business leaders that is free of political partisanship and control to shape a new common vision for our schools based on human rights. The independent task force will be charged with leading a civic conversation and inspiring the mobilization of the community to demand a restructuring of the school system including strategies for:

• Focusing policy at the school level to create effective “learning communities” based on a teamwork model that respects the professionalism of teachers, the central role of students and families, and the need for collaboration among all participants. The only function of structures and bureaucracies above the school level is to support and ensure the success of such learning communities.

• Creating an accountability system with less top-down, testing-based control and management, but rather much more effective means for school staff, parents, and students themselves to assess each student's progress and take action to assure successful outcomes. More reliable information for the public, city, state, and federal governments is needed to assess the success of each school, and provide assistance and intervention.

• Building a governance structure that guarantees the rights of parents, students and communities to have power in education decision-making independent of the Mayor, School Board and Chancellor. The governance structure must be transparent and free of corruption. A public advocate or ombudsperson should be created to ensure that parents, students and communities have the support, training, and information necessary to fulfill their roles, and to guarantee that remedies are available when rights are violated.

• Ending discrimination by developing school policies, relationships, and classroom methods to eliminate institutional racism and class bias.

• Ensuring a holistic educational system based on a shared responsibility between the home, school and broader community, requiring the collaboration of cultural, civic and health agencies to address the many social and economic problems facing our communities that our schools alone cannot solve.


This new vision for public schools should be guided by the following human rights standards:


• The individual rights of every child to a quality education must be promoted through curricula, teaching methods and services that adapt to meet each child’s specific needs.

• The aims of education must be to help children reach their full potential to participate in society, to do rewarding work for a living wage, and to continue learning. Education must develop each child’s respect for his or her family, language and culture.

• The dignity of every child must be guaranteed by creating an environment of respect and tolerance in schools, preventing practices and disciplinary policies that cause harm or humiliation to children, and promoting self-confidence and self-expression.

• The equitable distribution of resources must be guaranteed across communities and grade-levels according to need to ensure equality in educational outcomes.

• Non-discrimination must be ensured regardless of race, class, sex, sexual orientation, language, religion, immigration status, disability or other factors.

• The meaningful participation of students, parents and communities must be guaranteed in decisions that affect their schools and their right to education.

• Protection of the family must be ensured in the educational process with respect for the responsibilities, rights and duties of parents, guardians, or extended family members.

The independent task force should develop this new vision and strategy in the next two years so that members of the community seeking fundamental changes to the school system through human rights can use it as a basis to fight for change. This strategy will involve participating in debates around city and state elections as well as mobilizing students, parents, and teachers. As we approach the end of the current mandate for mayoral control in 2009, the task force should work to put this new vision into practice to create a more participatory and child-centered school system. As a first step, the task force should identify existing education models that meet human rights standards to encourage their replication and help develop this new vision.

Why We Are Calling for Whole System Change Based on Human Rights

The current educational system in New York City was designed over a century ago. In its early years, the goal of the system was to “sort out” only a small percentage of children for high school. Now it is expected that most students will graduate from high school, but the level of skills and knowledge that many achieve is still expected to be quite low, limiting them to work in low-wage jobs and the military. Built into the system is an expectation that not all children will reach their full potential or fully participate in society. These limited expectations fail to meet both human rights standards and the needs of New York City’s diverse communities, and fail to prepare students for the realities of our interconnected world.

The basic hallmarks of this system include:

1) primary decision-makers far removed from actual teaching and learning;
2) racial and class-based segregation and discrimination;
3) narrow educational goals which exclude the emotional and social development of the child (such as building leadership and character, social skills, ethics, etc.); and
4) the lack of authentic implementation of existing standards for the content of curricula.

Piecemeal reform efforts cannot change the beliefs, relationships, and organizational structures reflected in the current system. Furthermore, recurring cycles of piecemeal reform regularly expose children, especially poor children, to great instability producing school closures, high teacher turnover and frequent program terminations, without tackling the underlying issues. Instead reform struggles are needed that draw people into the larger, ongoing struggle for total system change.

In order to create a school system that guarantees universal, high-quality education for all children, the current distribution of educational resources and aims of education must be fundamentally altered. The human rights framework demands that educational resources must be distributed across communities according to need to ensure that children from different socio-economic backgrounds and with different economic, social and emotional capabilities are all able to receive a quality education.

This system change must be reflected at all levels – student, family, classroom, individual schools and school system. It must tackle the most difficult of systems problems, such as what decision-making processes and funding allocations are necessary to create an educational program that is high quality and meets the needs of all children. Whole system reform must also address the challenge that educators face when children are denied other fundamental rights which impact the right to education, such as the right to food and healthcare. Without addressing these rights, school systems will not adequately educate children. Yet schools by themselves cannot bear the weight created by failures of other social institutions, such as the healthcare system. Whole system reform in education must be combined with efforts to improve quality and access in other social services affecting children and their families.