Over at Over at Slate, Alexander Russo has a really interesting piece on Barack Obama's history of support for Chicago's "local school councils." Russo explains, "Unique among big-city school districts in the United States, these independent, elected bodies at each school are made up of parents, teachers, and community members, 10 in all, plus the principal. Think of them as mini school boards, parent-teacher organizations on steroids, or condo boards for schools. Created 20 years ago, these councils each hire and fire their own principals."
In 1999, then-Chicago school superintendent Paul Vallas, who is white, sought to wrest control away from the LSCs, which are made up primarily of black and Latino parents. Vallas feared that the LSCs would abuse their power to fire principals, taking out reform-minded administrators. There was also little evidence that Chicago's uber-local control was improving students' academic experiences.
According to Russo, State Senator Obama met quietly behind the scenes with concerned parent activists, but didn't make a public declaration of support for LSCs until after the issue had been settled in their favor. Russo concludes that despite Obama's respect for Vallas and his reform agenda, Obama's support for LSCs was too deep to backpedal, since it dated back to his time as a young Southside community organizer.
That's a plausible analysis, but unlike Russo, I wouldn't necessarily assume this episode presages how Obama would deal with NCLB or other facets of federal education policy. Russo is worried that Obama will be unable to stand up to competing interests on education. But Obama has already bucked the teachers' unions more often than Hillary Clinton has. And as Matt Yglesias has written, some of Obama's key congressional supporters are Democrats who are open to a more aggressive and supportive federal education policy.
For a review of Obama and Clinton's respective education platforms, check out this old post.
--Dana Goldstein
