The definition of insanity, the saying goes, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. In Boston, we’ve tried both electing and appointing a school committee. Neither got good results for the city’s students. It is time to abolish outdated, ineffective oversight of our schools.

Proponents of returning to an elected committee make two main arguments: We must return accountability to voters and parents and we must restore democracy. Past committees, both appointed and elected, have not been held accountable. Not only did an elected committee defy a state law to integrate the schools and continue to be elected, but its more diverse, better-intentioned successors elected after the 1983 city charter change failed as well if one uses student outcomes and evidence of learning as a measure.

Here is the record: Under the appointed committees, only two members have ever lost their seats, and then only because they made disparaging comments about parents. Among the elected committees in the last fifty years, only two incumbents have been defeated: one who turned in needed qualifying signatures in alphabetical order in the same handwriting, and one who was defeated by an opponent who sided with the racist majority at that time. Despite failing schools, historically, members are always re-elected.

I write as a Boston resident who closely watches the schools and as a former BPS parent and director of the Citywide Education Coalition (CWEC). In the ’80s, CWEC staff attended almost every Boston School Committee meeting. We chronicled the incoherence created by parochial interests, the lack of attention to student learning and progress, and the frequent absurd antics and posturing of members. Chronic education problems – poor student outcomes, the disparity in achievement by race and other factors, the high school graduation rate – were rarely, if ever, discussed.

Meeting time — which CWEC clocked precisely — was largely spent on pet issues of members or on personnel issues. It is difficult to make the case that accountability to voters and parents was or ever will be achieved with a large committee representing different constituencies in the city or even a small one elected city-wide.

The other issue raised to support an elected committee is democracy. Why shouldn’t Bostonians – like the rest of the state — be able to vote for a committee that oversees their schools? The answer is nearly the same: because the rest of the state’s school districts, with a few exceptions, do not have the same record of failure over half a century that Boston does. The democracy argument implies that diverse, representative voices having a seat at the decision-making table will ensure excellent education. There is no evidence from anywhere in the country, let alone Boston, that electing school committees ensures excellent education. Such thinking subordinates the well-being of the city’s children to an ideal of electing representatives to every responsible city position.

Let’s not go back to what has not worked before: diffusing power between the mayor and an independent committee, whether elected or appointed. The moment is ripe for radical change: make the schools a city department with the superintendent a department head answering solely to the mayor and the mayor answering to the voters. Establish a standing committee of parents (chosen by parents), teachers, and others with whom the mayor and superintendent meet monthly.

With a strong mayoral system, there would be at last a chance for accountability. It makes no sense for the mayor to not control the largest item in the city’s budget — $1.4 billion this year – especially since the City Council has budgetary power and exists as a check to the mayor.

It also makes no sense to have a free-standing bureaucracy that operates independently from the departments responsible for the well-being of the city’s children: libraries, parks, health, police, housing, youth services, children and families, even planning and development. Making the schools a city department would bring coordination and create a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Vesting the responsibility in a single person who might actually be responsible — the mayor — is overdue. We cannot have a city with equitable opportunity for all without great schools, and we cannot have great schools with unaccountable governance.

Ellen Guiney is the former director and current board member of Boston Plan for Excellence (BPE). The views expressed in this article are her own and are not intended to represent the views of the organization or other board members.