Today’s Boston Globe editorial on Mayor Tom Menino’s education record offers a devastating assessment of the mayor’s leadership on an issue that he famously challenged voters to judge him “harshly” on more than a decade ago. Despite Menino’s clear concern for the city’s schools, the paper says, 16 years of mayoral control over the system has brought only marginal improvement. That’s far from the turnaround necessary to send students on to success in college and beyond, or to win the confidence of families who continue to vote with their feet by leaving the city or flocking to charter schools, private schools, and the Metco program.

The editorial makes its case through a litany of statistics and examples of cautious plodding by the administration, summing up the the mayor’s approach with this: “Menino has been too willing to accept change only at the pace the bureaucracy can handle.”

Hardly a vision of change to believe in.

For a shorthand understanding of what a bold agenda for urban education would look like, check out the Statement of Principles offered by the Education Equality Project, a diverse national coalition of elected officials, school reform advocates, civil rights leaders, and business officials. Then check out the impressive list of signatories to the group’s principles. It includes reform-minded superintendents from New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC; leaders from across the political spectrum from John McCain to Al Sharpton; and mayors who are pushing the envelope on major school reform, including Michael Bloomberg in New York, Cory Booker in Newark, Richard Daley in Chicago, and Michael Nutter in Philadelphia. 

Conspicuously absent from the list are Boston’s self-proclaimed education mayor and his school superintendent, Carol Johnson.