A Charter for the Obamas?
The same New York Times article that mentioned Andray Blatche’s desire to shoot hoops with the new president also contains this less fanciful bit of speculation:
At weekend soccer games, parents wonder aloud which of the city’s exclusive private schools might win the presidential sweepstakes by enrolling Malia and Sasha. (The Obamas could, of course, go the Jimmy Carter route and enroll their daughters in public school; Michelle Obama has said privately that she did not intend to make a decision about school until after the election.)
Obviously, I’m not hear to tell the Obamas how to raise their children. But if you ask me, it would be nice to see them put their money (or, as it were, children) where their mouths are and enroll their children in one of the city’s charter schools, many of which are excellent. There are a few good choices, but Sara recommends Capital City Public Charter School, which has a location that would be more convenient to the White House than any of the fancy private schools, and achieves good results with an economically and racially diverse group of students.
73 Responses to “A Charter for the Obamas?”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
November 6th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
I’m not hear to tell
Matt, sometimes these typos are zen-like, as others have pointed out. Maybe someone should start a blog for this; an Yglesias zen-typo of the day?
November 6th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
I’d imagine safety/security is going to be the #1 concern of the Obamas when chosing a school.
November 6th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Didn’t Santos choose a DC public school of some sort? It’s easier in TV land.
November 6th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Do children still have to attend school these days? It didn’t seem as if Palin’s children were required to attend. Maybe Nicolle Wallace was administering lessons in the back of the bus.
November 6th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
My guess is National Cathedral School with the daughters of the elite.
November 6th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Sidwell Friends is always a good choice. Jews pretending to be Quakers teaching Episcopalians. And the Secret Service knows the turf.
November 6th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
How is choosing a charter school “putting their money where their mouths are”?
Are the Obamas known for being particularly supportive of charter schools? (Maybe my Hopey Fan Club membership is suspect, but I don’t remember this issue coming up much…) And charter school enrollment is free anyway, right?
November 6th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Public schools are for other people.
The Obamas could have chosen to send their daughters to a good University-of-Chicago-sponsored charter in Chicago, but they chosen an expensive private school instead. That’s not going to change.
November 6th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Seriously though, life has to stop imitating the West Wing. At this point, I could have tuned out the election completely and just watched the West Wing’s final season and be able to hold a fairly well informed discussion of the past year and a half. I’d get the names wrong, but the plot would be spot on.
November 6th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
I believe Obama has been supportive of Charter Schools as a matter of policy (though perhaps not practice). The big hurdle is that, unlike Private Schools, Charter Schools are legally prevented from “creaming.” This is from the CCPCS website: “Spaces will be awarded based on the results of a random lottery. Applications for all other grades will be placed on the waiting list and are also based on a random lottery.”
I’m pretty sure looking to circumvent that kind of legal requirement isn’t the best first step for an incoming President who has promised a different way of doing business…
November 6th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Obama does indeed support increasing federal funding and support for charter schools.
By the way, his kids went to the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, which is indeed private but also affiliated with the university where Obama was teaching at the time.
November 6th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
I went to 12 years of big city public schools and am sending my kids to suburban public. But the President’s kids are different. I am not concerned about reporters or fame-seekers, and am no more concerned than anyone else with kidnapping.
The Obamas should do what they think best for the kids’ education and safety and take the heat if they decide it’s not public schools.
November 6th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Did Jimmy Carter really enrol his daughters in DC public schools? My respect for the man, which was already extremely high, just got quite a bit higher.
There are few United States presidents, and few men in American public life in recent decades, with more honesty, rectitude, and personal virtue than James Earl Carter.
November 6th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
“put their money (or, as it were, their children) where their mouths are”
I once thought like this. Then I had three children. You can’t ask their parents to make a policy statement with the education of their offspring.
I just had this argument with my father, a public school supporter and indeed an educator. He couldn’t understand why I insisted on sending my children to private school … because he said that was for elitists. But when I explained that I can’t accept anything less than the best possible choice for my children and that as his son I had learned that duty by watching him, he understood completely and remarked: “I’ve been a grandfather for quite awhile now, haven’t I.”
Parents have a unique duty to not only discern what is best for their children, but also procure it. Non-parents do not have any such duty.
Let the Obama’s do what they believe is in the best interests of their children and please try to let them do so without hints of political symbolism.
November 6th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Carter only had one daughter, and she did go to public school in DC during Jimmy presidency.
Of course, afterwards, she flunked out of Brown, so I’m not sure that was such a great decision.
November 6th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
DTM, the Lab School’s affiliation with the Obamas’ employer didn’t require them to send their kids there. The UofC, as I noted above, also sponsors a charter school. Why wasn’t that good enough?
Obama says he supports the head of DC schoos and opposes allowing poor parents the choice to have their kids exit DC schools. Why can’t his kids get the same as everyone else in DC?
November 6th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
@MikeJ
It’s “Jews teaching Episcopalians how to be Quakers.” The Jews don’t pretend to be Quakers.
November 6th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Obama’s duties to his daughters is completely independent of his duties to the country. Politics should have no consideration.
November 6th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
While all of this fits well into the “none-of-our-business” category… if the Obama’s must choose between a charter school and a DCPS school, they’d be better off sending the girls to Mann or Lafayette Elementary and Deal Jr. High School. And of course, what better high school would there be but Banneker?
‘Natch, the girls will be at a private school, for no other reason than security. Sidwell, I’m guessing.
November 6th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
Like others said, support for charters doesn’t imply some categorical imperative that everyone should go to a charter.
If Obama improves mass transit, that doesn’t imply he has to take the bus to work.
November 6th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Old enough and from nearby, so I remember Amy Carter’s public school days. A nightmare. There was no privacy for her. A private school can force teachers, fellow students and their parents to keep strict media silence in a way public schools cannot. You couldn’t stop someone from holding a press conference about their child getting into an argument with the Presidential child. Also, the DC schools tend to be on city streets, so photographers within their rights to be on public sidewalks could really intrude on the students (and did, to my recollection).
November 6th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
Sidwell is the obvious choice, the girls would benefit from a school where the fact that they are the President’s daughters is as less a deal as possible for students and teachers.
November 6th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Amy and Mo,
Jimmy Carter’s decision sent an important message to the nation about living by one’s principles even when they are costly, and Obama would be well advised to do the same. I’m not sure if I would do the same, but that only means I’m a weaker man than Jimmy Carter.
November 6th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Obviously, I’m not hear [sic] to tell the Obamas how to raise their children. But if you ask me, it would be nice to see them put their money (or, as it were, children) where their mouths are and enroll their children in one of the city’s charter schools, many of which are excellent.
Oh, dear. Let’s review the facts:
YOU WENT TO A $30,000 A YEAR PREPSCHOOL ON MANHATTAN’S UPPER EAST SIDE! THE VERY, VERY ELITE DALTON!
New York City has superior public schools than D.C. Vastly superior. You could’ve tried to go to the public Stuyvessant for highschool, which is a much, much better school than any DC charter school.
What’s more . . . um . . . dude, you weren’t the child of a President who’d be surrounded by secret service agents all the time! Nor did you need worry about the press or anything else!
Yet you went the private school route. The elite of the elite. Worked out rather well for you, kid: Harvard, this gig.
Granted, you evidently never learned when to write “hear” and when to write “here,” but your career thrives nonetheless.
I don’t want to get all Petey on your ass but the hypocrisy and obliviousness of this post staggers the mind. My God, aren’t you even just the least bit embarassed?
November 6th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Supporting charter schools or demanding improvement in public schools should never preclude one’s freedom to choose to put one’s children in a private school if that’s where you want them to be.
Take your personal ideas of the alleged hypocrisy of others for a walk.
As it is, I completely agree that waiting for a charter school lottery to get your kids in is impractical, and the security and privacy benefits of a private school are probably the best thing for these girls. Regardless of anyone’s policies or opinions, Barack and Michelle’s number one priority in selecting the school(s) their daughters will attend is what is best for their girls.
November 6th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
What about KIPP charter schools? They’re the highest performing public schools in the city, and part of the best network of charter schools in the country. The girls would get a great education there and actually become part of the community in a way not possible at Sidwell.
November 6th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Parents have a unique duty to not only discern what is best for their children, but also procure it. Non-parents do not have any such duty.
Let the Obama’s do what they believe is in the best interests of their children and please try to let them do so without hints of political symbolism.
This is absolutely right. The Obamas need to be allowed to make whatever decision they feel is best for their children without thought to the politics of it. It would be nice if the DC Charter schools were good enough that they would merit serious consideration from the Obamas (and I’ve got no idea one way or the other), but if they choose a private school, no one should begrudge them their decision.
November 6th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
DC has some very good, old-fashioned, non-charter public schools. I have my two boys in Oyster-Adams Elementary. Fabulous bi-lingual program.
November 6th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
The Obamas didn’t send their kids to any kind of public school in Chicago. They sent them to the super-elite U. of Chicago Lab School in Hyde Park. Why should they change now?
November 6th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Security isn’t an issue for the Obama daughters because they will have Secret Service protection.
November 6th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
In 1977, when Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter arrived in Washington D.C. from Georgia, they had to subject their daughter Amy to a D.C. public school to prove they weren’t Southern racists.
But by 1993, when Bill and Hillary Clinton rolled into town from Arkansas, everybody who was anybody accepted that the D.C. public schools were awful (even if you had Secret Service bodyguards).
So when the Clintons enrolled Chelsea in an expensive Quaker private school, Sidwell Friends Academy, they didn’t pay a political price for their hypocrisy.
Howard Kurtz wrote in the Columbia Journalism Review in 1994:
“Equally revealing was media response to the Clintons’s announcement that they were sending their daughter, Chelsea, to Sidwell Friends, an $11,000-a-year private school in northwest Washington. When columnist Mark Shields praised Sidwell on The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, he had to note that his children went there, as did Jim Lehrer’s and Judy Woodruff’s. Woodruff’s husband, Al Hunt, made a similar disclosure while defending Clinton on Capital Gang. Carl Rowan touted Sidwell on Inside Washington, pointing out that his grandchildren attended the school. Howard Fineman, whose daughter was in kindergarten at Sidwell, said he “shamelessly lobbied” the Clintons to choose the school.”
November 6th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Eh, what’s that rank smell?
November 6th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
they didn’t pay a political price for their hypocrisy.
Explain why it was hypocritical for the Clintons to send their daughter to a private school.
November 6th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
So, Obama should use power of his office to take two scarce charter school slots from genuinely needy people in order score political points?
November 6th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
If the Obamas just decided to live in the suburbs, this wouldn’t be an issue. Montco schools are fine. Obama can take the train to work like Bloomberg.
November 6th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
It might be elitist to send your kids to private schools but don’t you think “daughter of the president” qualifies as pretty fuckin elite?
November 6th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Sighing Public School Grad,
Mr. Yglesias attended Dalton when he was 14 to 18 years of age, presumably. Most people undergo quite a bit of moral development between 18 and 27. Isn’t it possible that Matt now regrets the choice he made (or that his parents made for him), and belives that the morally better choice would have been not to go to Dalton? The real test of Mr. Yglesias’ beliefs is not where HE went to school, but where he will choose to send his kids to school, as an adult.
If, that is, Mr. Yglesias decides to have kids. For some reason he never talks about future plans for childbearing….hmm, i wonder why that could be?
November 6th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
And I will just say again…..isn’t it amazing that our country was blessed to have a president with the integrity of James Earl Carter, even if just for four years? Everything I learn about the man makes me respect him a bit more.
November 6th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
I agree with you entirely.
I would imagine that the Obamas will put their girls in a private school for security reasons alone. It will be easier for the SS to navigate and manage the security detail for Malia and Sasha. In many respects, guarding them will be more difficult than guarding their dad because they aren’t fully aware of the risks they face.
November 6th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
As an aside, I think this whole argument is silly. To my knowledge Obama has never said there shouldn’t be private schools, so it isn’t hypocritical of him to send his kids to one if he so chooses.
Specifically to Thomas,
I believe the Obamas would have gotten a discount at the Lab School because he was faculty. It is generally a great school, and I know I would find it extremely tempting for my kids if I lived in Hyde Park, worked at the University, and could get such a discount.
November 6th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
By the way, I just want to note of the many silly things Steve Sailer has said in Matt’s comments, this is actually one of the silliest:
Security isn’t an issue for the Obama daughters because they will have Secret Service protection.
If you ever look through some Secret Service materials, the language they use is always something like maintaining a “safe and secure environment” for their protectees. That is why they do all that advanced planning, scouting of venues, planning of routes, coordination with local officials, and so forth–they don’t just show up confident that because they are around, their protectees are automatically safe.
Now I don’t know if that precludes the President’s children going to a DC public school or charter school. But you can bet your house (if you still have one) that the Secret Service will carefully evaluate any potential school and advise the President on whether they think it is suitable for their security needs.
November 7th, 2008 at 7:41 am
hope that you keep reporting and following up on this issue. I signed the petition because I can’t think of anything that is more important to the long-term health of our country, our environment, and our economy than a smart transportation policy, and especially
November 7th, 2008 at 11:02 am
I say home-school them. That would speak volumes.
November 7th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
I’ve already heard that it’s probably Stone Ridge in Bethesda, a Catholic girls school. Weren’t their girls at the Lab School at Univ. of Chicago?
November 10th, 2008 at 9:55 am
Hello All,
I’d like to say I am a parent of a DCPS student. Since I live east of the river, out of bounds for Oyster, Hyde, and some of the “better” DC schools. Each school should offer and be equipped to offer each child a quality education regardless of it’s location in the city. It has been extremely frustrating as a parent and something has to be done. DCPS receives the most funds per child than any other public school system in the nation and it’s down right appauling.
The Obama’s should put their children in a public school.
Maybe then and only then will some drastic change take place in DC’s public school system.
November 10th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
No educated parent would send their kid to KIPP or any other inner city charter school. It’s rote learning test prep with a dose of character education. The kids might do alright on the basic skills test, but they won’t be able to think critically.
November 20th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
Everyone who has a least a decent income sends their kids to private schools. Especially if they live in a big city. Why are the obama’s being called on it because they do?
March 1st, 2009 at 5:56 am
viagra
Incredible site!
March 1st, 2009 at 6:55 pm
cialis
I want to say – thank you for this!
March 9th, 2009 at 11:16 am
sex shop
March 9th, 2009 at 11:17 am
seks shop
March 9th, 2009 at 11:17 am
göğüs büyütücü krem
March 9th, 2009 at 11:17 am
penis büyütücüler
March 9th, 2009 at 11:19 am
zayıflama
March 9th, 2009 at 11:19 am
zayıflamak
March 9th, 2009 at 11:20 am
erotikshop
March 9th, 2009 at 11:21 am
zayıflama hapı
March 9th, 2009 at 11:39 am
porno cd
March 9th, 2009 at 11:40 am
porno
March 11th, 2009 at 4:49 am
I bookmarked this site. Thank you for good job!
March 11th, 2009 at 10:09 am
Gute Arbeit hier! Gute Inhalte.
March 14th, 2009 at 5:31 am
Excellent site. It was pleasant to me.
xanax
March 22nd, 2009 at 6:23 am
tramadol
I want to say – thank you for this!
April 4th, 2009 at 6:45 am
I want to say – thank you for this