Big business and school reform: The case of Chicago, 1988

In 1988, an uncommon coalition of business leaders and community activists agreed to support and implement a new governance law for the Chicago Public Schools. Parents, community members and teachers were to compete for about 5500 elected seats on 550 Local School Councils, each of which had been given budgetary and personnel authority extracted from the Board of Education. Simultaneously, the law strengthened the financial and programmatic oversight authority of a five-person, appointed super-board, the School Finance Authority. The Board of Education was required to "downsize" to pay for the changes, and reconstitute itself as a monitoring and facilitating body subject to the approval of the SFA. Although the central school board remains legally accountable for student performance, teacher contract compliance, federal and state law, the private interest groups that led the reform have been directing its implementation.;The business half of the enacting coalition was led by a well-organized, stable family of business associations with longstanding involvement in the Chicago public schools. This case study examines those associations; their organizational structures, and the role each played in school reform prior to enactment to answer the questions: How and why did business became involved in the most radical decentralization of an urban school system since the 1900's?, and What led to its role in implementation? Theoretical and analytical techniques were borrowed from historical and neo-corporatist approaches to trace the development of organizational capacity among business associations and the effects of local political culture on the opportunities for business involvement in school policy making. Primary data consist of interviews with business leaders and community activists and archival research.;This study describes how organizational characteristics of Chicago business shaped its involvement while changing political contexts provided opportunities to legitimize and sustain it. It concludes that while some school based decisions were delegated to parents, central control was ceded to businessmen, who have used their superior resources to develop an alternative management services, thus creating a new privatization. This decentralization combined with corporate oversight questions democratic decision making and the role of teacher's unions in urban school systems nationwide.