ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the current context that facilitates greater public attention to governance reform at the district level. It examines two analytical perspectives on system wide governance and politics, namely regime theory and integrated governance with mayoral accountability. These perspectives provide alternative accounts of how institutional boundaries are shifting to enable mayoral leadership and broader civic engagement in governance of urban school districts. Developed by the Progressive Era reformers, independent local school boards and professionalized district management under the leadership of a superintendent tend to govern most urban school districts in the United States. As the former CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, then US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan identified mayoral leadership as a supportive condition for improving urban schools. Secretary Duncan's policy position came at a time of growing public interest in mayoral accountability as a viable strategy to improve public school governance.
