9486 in the collection
On education, attention is focused on who McCain, Obama would name education secretary
We know McCain's
possibilities are scary and most of Obama's are
too. Just enter the names in a 'search' on this
site.
by Scott Stephens and Edith Starzyk
Chicago -- A couple of miles from Barack
Obama's South Side home, Andre Cowling is
trying to pull off a miracle.
When he became principal of the Harvard School
of Excellence a year ago, Cowling inherited a
school that was the worst in Chicago and ranked
3,090th out of 3,095 elementary schools in
Illinois. One day, 17 of the school's 21
teachers called in sick.
Under a turnaround program involving the
district, the unions and an outside not-for-
profit teacher training program, Cowling got
rid of all but two teachers and even replaced
the custodial and cafeteria staffs.
"We didn't want to be associated with the same
kind of environment as before," he said.
It has worked so far. Discipline improved, and
grades soared. In fact, Harvard posted a 10
percentage-point across-the-board gain on state
tests last year - an unheard of increase.
In a city where so much works well, Chicago's
public schools seem to have improved little
since the days a decade ago when Obama headed a
philanthropic drive here that spent $150
million but did little to improve the
educational opportunities for the city's
children.
But Obama appears to have learned something
from that experience, observers say. In his
presidential campaign, he's pushing an odd
gumbo of ideas that includes charter schools,
performance pay, more money for preschool and
other initiatives that seems to reflect what
has and hasn't worked here.
By contrast, the Republican nominee, Sen. John
McCain, has embraced more-traditional GOP
views, such as freezing new federal education
spending, basing teachers pay on the
performance of their students and expanding
access to private-school vouchers.
"He's laid down a strong marker for choice,
especially for charter schools and continuation
and expansion of the [Washington, D.C.] voucher
program," said Frederick Hess, director of
education policy studies at the conservative
American Enterprise Institute. "And McCain has
avoided promising open-ended new dollars."
Obama's platform can be a little unsettling to
Democratic purists, who are used to candidates
towing a traditional party line defined by
teachers unions. It has baffled conservatives,
who are finding an unlikely advocate for many
of the ideas they embrace.
"The Obama package looks pretty good to me,"
said Chester Finn Jr., president of the
conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute and
former education undersecretary in the Reagan
administration. "There seems to be a
substantial schism in the national Democratic
Party on these issues, and it's fascinating
watching this work itself out in the
presidential race."
American Federation of Teachers President Randi
Weingarten might not be campaigning door to
door with Finn, but she agrees that the
conversation about education has changed.
She said the change really began when George W.
Bush created a bipartisan No Child Left Behind
law that gave the federal government an
unprecedented role in public education.
"Now you have an interesting array of people
whom you can't really characterize," Weingarten
said. "You have to talk in shades of gray.
Things never get implemented in education when
you talk about litmus tests."
That's why Weingarten is spending every weekend
on the road campaigning for a guy who talks
about performance pay. On Oct. 30, she's making
her second personal visit to Ohio on Obama's
behalf. The AFT, which supported Sen. Hillary
Clinton in the primaries, is now actively
working for Obama in 35 states. Last week, the
union launched a series of radio ads for Obama
in eight battleground states, including Ohio.
"Our members are there," she said. "We're
squarely in his corner."
McCain is hampered, in part, by Republican
association with No Child Left Behind, a brand
name so damaged it will probably be changed
when the law is reauthorized next year.
In fact, neither Obama nor McCain has talked
much about the bipartisan law's future, such as
whether they would keep the controversial
provision of universal student proficiency in
reading and math by the end of the 2013-14
school year.
"Nobody wants to be the education president
this year," said Gloria Ladson-Billings, an
education policy professor at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison.
Education has gained so little attention in the
arena of presidential politics that two of the
nation's most influential philanthropists, Bill
Gates and Eli Broad, have stopped contributing
to their nonpartisan "Strong American Schools"
campaign.
The billionaires had pledged to spend up to $60
million to make education one of the marquee
issues of the 2008 presidential campaign. The
donations were halted after about $24 million.
Instead, education insiders are focusing on
whom either candidate would choose to serve as
education secretary. If McCain is elected, look
for the job to go to Lisa Graham Keegan, the
former Arizona education superintendent and the
senator's senior education aide. Minnesota Gov.
Timothy Pawlenty and former Massachusetts Gov.
Jane Swift also could be in the mix.
The names most floated in the Obama camp are
Jonathan Schnur, who heads the nonprofit New
Leaders for New Schools in New York, or
Stanford University professor Linda Darling-
Hammond, one of the nation's most influential
education policy wonks.
And don't forget Chicago schools CEO Arne
Duncan, a friend and adviser with whom Obama
often plays basketball. Obama recently
accompanied Duncan on a visit to Dodge
Renaissance Academy, a high school that once
had just 18 percent of its students at grade
level.
But like nearby Harvard, hope and test scores
are rising at Renaissance.
"If a doctor had only an 18 percent rate of
saving patients, you'd run out of the office,"
said Harvard's Cowling. "My kids can't run."
— Scott Stephens and Edith Starzyk
Cleveland Plain Dealer
2008-10-22
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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