School politics, Chicago style

the long version

At a meeting of the Chicago School Board in the late sixties, a heated debated developed over a proposal to spend $1,800 to light a trophy case. As Paul Peterson shows, this minor issues reflects the larger political dimensions that shape school policy. Peterson's book is the first comprehensive study of an urban school system that considers policy formation from both bargaining and unitary perspectives. Case studies of the three most important issues faced by the CHicago school system-desgregation, collective bargaining, and decentralization-provide a lively interpretative view of Chicago school politics. The author begins by showing how the Daley machine, its reform opposition, and racial changes formed the context for school policy. He analyzes the intense, often bitter bargaining within the school board in an ideological framework, and applies a pluralist bargaining approach to explain Mayor Daley's strategies. Although these bargaining models account for many of the policy conflicts, Peterson then argues that school policy cannot be understood solely in terms of political bargains.