I watched as movers hauled boxes from a family's home. "It's the schools," a woman said, her son by her side. "We just couldn't afford private schools for all three of our kids."

It is a familiar complaint, delivered time and again by families who see themselves with no alternative but to move.

Boston has the oldest public school system in the country. Indeed, it was in Boston that a noble idea was first put into practice: education should be available to all, regardless of one's ability to pay.

Today, an appointed superintendent presides over all 123 of the city's public schools. He is responsible for educating 62,000 children with a budget of $444 million. The cost per child works out to a stunningly high $7,200.

For the first time in many years, progress is being made in education, although not as dramatic as might be hoped. People in authority are making a real effort to improve the schools. Much of the reason for that relates to a change that occurred in 1992, when Boston moved from an elected to an appointed school committee.

Like many cities and towns, Boston runs its schools through a school committee. In Boston, the school committee prior to 1992 was elected. It was the school committee that hired the superintendent, the school committee that determined its budget, the school committee that directly ran all of Boston's schools. The Mayor's role was minor. The Mayor had to approve the budget, but he had no ability to increase funding or dictate where it should be spent.

Critics of the elected committee argued that a committee structure contributed to the schools' failures. Mayors consistently, and accurately, disavowed responsibility for the school system. The School Committee was the living proof of the old canard about committees, horses and camels. Finger pointing occurred because in a committee structure no one individual was responsible. Far from depoliticising the schools, critics argued, the school committee practiced the worst kind of politics, making itself a haven of petty fiefdoms, patronage and corruption.

In 1989, residents voted to abolish the elected committee and try an appointed committee. The state legislature agreed in 1991. The appointed school committee is a test, however. There will be a referendum in 1996 on whether to keep it or return to an elected committee.

Mayor Thomas Menino was the first mayor to have an appointed school committee and he has focused his efforts on the city's schools. This fall Menino hired a new superintendent, Thomas Payzant, a former assistant secretary of the US Department of Education. Under Menino, the city executed a new contract with the teachers union that allowed for reforms that years ago would have been thought impossible. Work rules were loosened, on-site school management was strengthened, and pilot schools (the city's version of charter schools) were created.

These changes aside, perhaps most striking has been the tenor of political discourse on schools. There is a remarkable consensus that the system is broken, that it has to be fixed, and that fixing it will not be without some pain.

All of that is to the good. Yet as I watch these reforms, I am struck by their incrementalism. They are the kind of fixes that assume that the fundamentals of the system are acceptable. I am not sure that is true. We continue to operate under a school choice plan that alienates parents and children. The model we rely upon, despite efforts to decentralize, is that of a unified school system controlled by central management. Contract reforms notwithstanding, even modest reforms in hiring, firing, class size, and school day and school year length are severely constrained. We continue to seek to make all of our schools the same (albeit, better) rather than to allow them to diversify. No competition-like incentives are in place to encourage success and penalize failure.

Regrettably, I am left with the feeling that we have hired a new management company for a building that is falling apart. What we really need to do is design and build a new building.