Over the past few years, educators and policymakers have paid increasing attention to school districts. The Annenberg Institute for School Reform’s Task Force on the Future of Urban Districts, School Communities that Work, helped lead this effort by suggesting how districts could be redesigned to support schools in ways that promote results and equity. Other research has shown the critical role that districts play in school improvement.

This new attention is a welcome sign. For decades, school districts have been vilified as impediments to reform. This view was perhaps best exemplified by David Rogers’s 1968 book 100 Livingston Street, which turned the headquarters of the New York City school system into a symbol of what he called a “sick bureaucracy.” Reformers in the 1980s and 1990s sought to bypass districts; standards-based reform was originally designed as a system in which schools would be accountable to states, and charter schools were created as a way for schools to be free from district rules altogether.

Yet, while researchers demonstrated the support that districts can – and need to – provide, their work raised the question of how districts can function effectively. What should a “smart district” look like? What would a modern-day 110 Livingston Street do?

This issue of Voices in Urban Education attempts to provide some answers to these questions. Using a variety of lenses and perspectives – those of researchers, consultants, reform-support organizations, and community leaders – the authors suggest what an effective “central office” would do and how these practices differ from those district central offices have typically performed.

• Ellen Foley and David Sigler lay out a framework for a smart district that focuses on six essential functions.
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• Meredith Honig shows how central office staff in Chicago and Oakland worked to support an initiative to create small schools in those cities.
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• Andrew Moffit draws lessons from the corporate sector to describe the three key areas a central office needs to address.
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• Mary Sylvia Harrison discusses how a central office can and should engage parents and members of the community.
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These authors make clear that the role of the central office ought to be far from that of the stereotypical bureaucratic agency. Effective central offices do not simply monitor whether schools comply with an endless set of rules; instead, they work with schools to provide needed resources and support and reach out to community members and organizations to find additional sources of support. They are nimble and flexible, rather than hidebound. And they make decisions by using data and research.

These articles also make clear that there are some things districts should stop doing. Of course, some functions, like transportation and legal services, will not go away. But the authors suggest that those administrative functions need to be conducted in service to the district’s mission, which is to ensure a high-quality education for every student. That suggests that redesigning central offices involves cultural change at least as much as it requires technical modifications to structures and roles and responsibilities.

Redesigning district central offices so that they function more effectively will not be an easy task. Change of that magnitude rarely is. People do not like the idea that the way they have worked for decades might have to change. But as these authors show, a redesigned district central office can be far more effective for children and families. Perhaps with the new attention on their role, central offices can have a chance to fulfill their potential.