W'S FAVORITE MAYOR:

Classroom Cop: Mayoral control of the schools is put to the test in Chicago. (Dirk Johnson, 5/05/09, Newsweek)

It has been 13 years since Mayor Richard M. Daley seized control of Chicago's school system, creating a new template for urban education. City hall now runs the classrooms in New York, Boston, Cleveland and a handful of other major American cities. The Chicago model has also gone federal. President Obama reached into the city's system to tap Arne Duncan as education secretary; he brings to the national stage a penchant for merit pay and charter schools, a determination to close failing schools—and a reasonably amiable relationship with the powerful teachers' unions, which may soon be put to the test. Duncan recently warned that he may withhold federal education stimulus money from states that limit the number of charter schools—caps typically backed by the unions. Success won't come easy.

"We're going to see some real drama on the education horizon," said Timothy Knowles, the director of the Urban Education Institute at the University of Chicago, which has designed some new schools for the city. "This is the first time we're hearing some of these calls—for more parent choice and competition—coming from the Democratic side nationally." [...]

The Chicago schools were considered virtually a lost cause when the Illinois Legislature shifted control to the mayor in 1995. Robert Bennett, the secretary of education during the Reagan administration, had labeled Chicago's the worst classrooms in the nation. "The schools were a disaster, just poison," said Paul Green, a professor at Roosevelt University. "Some of them didn't even have toilet paper."

At the time, Republicans controlled both chambers of the Illinois Legislature. "They thought they were handing Daley a dead-bang loser of an issue," Green said.

Daley, adopting a bottom-line, business-oriented approach to the schools, changed the title of the top job from superintendent to chief executive officer. He put his budget director, Vallas, in charge, and ended the practice of "social promotion." In 1997, a whopping 25 percent of eighth graders were held back. Until then, more than 90 percent of eighth graders were being passed along, even with poor grades and scores.

Backers of mayoral control point to successes in Chicago, where 64 percent of the students met or exceeded state standards on achievement tests in 2008, compared to 36 percent in 2000. Under Duncan's leadership, test scores improved overall, and the city revamped dozens of schools, typically dismissing administrators, teachers and staff in underperforming schools, and starting over from scratch.

In his fifth-floor office in city hall, Daley told NEWSWEEK that the teachers union for too long had operated as if it only had "to answer to God."

"You need competition in education," the mayor said. "When you have a monopoly, it just doesn't work."

Some 60 charters now operate in Chicago, and the long lists for admission seem to indicate their popularity with parents. But many of these schools rely heavily on idealistic young teachers expected to perform on shoestring budgets. It is a situation that can lead to burnout. Turnover at charters tends to be very high. Three charter schools in the city have recently taken steps to form unions.

In the view of union president Stewart, the Daley model of running the schools has made a scapegoat of unions. "We have some Chicago public schools that are humming along beautifully," she said. "It's unconscionable to blame the teachers' union for the problems we see in some schools."