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Obama Pledges Bigger Role

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The New York Times

Published: September 13, 2008

CHICAGO - Sen. Barack Obama learned how hard it can be to solve America's public education problems when he headed a philanthropic drive here a decade ago that spent $150 million on Chicago's troubled schools and barely made a dent.

Drawing on that experience, Obama, the Democratic nominee for president, is campaigning on an ambitious plan that promises $18 billion a year in new federal spending on early-childhood classes, teacher recruitment, performance pay and dozens of other initiatives.

In Dayton, Ohio, this week, Obama used his education proposals to draw a contrast with Sen. John McCain, his Republican opponent, and to insist to voters that he, more than his rival, would change the way Washington works.

Were he to become president, Obama would retain the emphasis on the high standards and accountability of President Bush's education law, No Child Left Behind. But he would rewrite the federal law to offer more help to high-need schools, especially by training thousands of new teachers to serve in them, his campaign said. He also would expand early-childhood education, which he thinks gets more bang for the buck than remedial classes for older students.

Obama added a new flourish to his stump speech, promising for the first time on Tuesday to double federal spending on public charter schools while holding those with poor records accountable.

But more than most campaign blueprints, Obama's education plan reflects his own work with Chicago's public schools, campaign staff members and people who have worked with him said in interviews. His plan signals that he is looking to apply those lessons nationwide.

"Barack has been very engaged, very inquisitive about the dynamics of how do you improve public schools," said Scott Smith, a former publisher of The Chicago Tribune who has collaborated with Obama on education projects here for a decade.

One of the biggest lessons Obama drew from his experiences in Chicago, associates said, is that student achievement is highly dependent on teacher quality.

In the two decades since Obama arrived in Chicago, its public schools have undergone a sweeping turnaround, from an education wasteland to a district that, while still facing major challenges, is among the most improved in the nation. The city has closed many failing schools and reopened them with new staffs, making it an important laboratory for one of the country's most vexing problems.

One goal, he says, is to turn out 30,000 teachers a year to work in the toughest schools.

Obama's views have drawn heavily from a cast of experts who helped mold the Chicago experience. Strategies for overhauling failing schools have come from Arne Duncan, who as chief executive of the Chicago public schools led the turnaround efforts. The senator derived his views on early-childhood education in part from the work of Dr. James J. Heckman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist based in Chicago.

Obama immersed himself in education issues after his return to Chicago, where he began lecturing at the University of Chicago Law School and joined the boards of two education foundations.

Chicago received $49 million from a $500 million endowment by Walter H. Annenberg, the billionaire publisher, for school reform efforts nationwide, and the city added $98 million in matching funds for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a philanthropic campaign that financed enrichment projects at a third of the city's 600 schools.

Obama was nominated to the Challenge board and was elected chairman in 1995, said Ken Rolling, executive director of the group, which operated through 2001. Obama continued to teach law during his five-year unpaid tenure as board chairman, and he was twice elected to the Illinois Senate.

The Challenge's overall approach - supporting many diverse education projects rather than a coordinated school improvement strategy - had been established before Obama was named board chairman.

But a final report on the Challenge concluded that the massive effort had brought little change.

"The Challenge's 'bottom line' was improving student achievement," the report said. "Among the schools it supported, the Challenge had little impact on student outcomes."

But the experience gave Obama an appreciation for the multiple problems facing urban schools, Rolling said. The city has been a pioneer ever since in exploring ways to recruit, train and support teachers.

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