Although a Democrat, Ben Chavis, the former principal of the American Indian Public Charter School in Oakland, is an unlikely advocate for the education reform plan backed by President Obama.
Chavis bucks the conventions typically associated with his party’s education platform, which is generally union-friendly.
“The Democrats have it wrong, guys,” Chavis said Friday at a forum hosted by the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington. “We have screwed up the public school systems.”
When he took over one of Oakland’s worst-performing charter schools, he emphasized the importance of standardized test scores, shamelessly ousted teachers he considered substandard, and employed military-style discipline on his students.
Now, based on California’s Academic Performance Index, only four middle schools in California perform better than his Oakland charter school, where 81 percent of kids are classified as low-income.
It is this style of teaching accountability that the Obama administration seeks to employ – much to the chagrin of unions – with Race to the Top, a competitive grant program for schools that the White House unveiled in July.