Until now, Chelsea has always attended public schools-a fact her father mentioned frequently during the campaign. In Little Rock, she was an eighth grader at a racially integrated magnet school specializing in math and science. But Little Rock isn’t Washington. The District’s schools are among the most troubled in the nation, usually ranking near the bottom of standardized tests. The Clintons did have some good choices. They could have sent Chelsea to Alice Deal Junior High School, a short distance from Sidwell Friends in an upper-middle-class neighborhood in northwest Washington. Deal has some of the highest test scores in the city and a student body ethnically and economically close to Sidwell’s.
So why pick Sidwell? Chelsea’s privacy could be one factor. As First Daughter, she would stand out in any school. But at Sidwell, she’s certainly not the only student with famous parents. President Bush’s education secretary, Lamar Alexander, sends his 13-year-old son there; other Sidwell parents include Sen. Bill Bradley, Donald Graham and Bob Woodward of The Washington Post, PBS reporter Judy Woodruff and The Wall Street Journal’s Al Hunt (wife and husband).
Sidwell stresses activism and community service. Parents and students must prepare meals for the homeless as part of an outreach program. “Sidwell takes ethics very seriously,” says Gail Pastor, president of the Parents Association. It’s a Quaker school, and much more ethnically diverse than most private schools: 17 percent of the 1,030 students are black, 7 percent are Asian and 3 percent are Latino. In other words, private-but politically correct.
Academically, Sidwell ranks high. Virtually all graduates go to college, most to highly selective schools. Of the 98 members of the class of 1991, 14 went to Harvard, Brown or Yale. Eighth graders like Chelsea get about two hours of homework a night and generally take American history, Asian studies, environmental science, art, math and English.
Although his critics say the Clintons’ choice is hypocritical, given their emphasis on public schools, Clinton has never said he is opposed to private schools-only public funding of private schools. Clinton himself went to a Roman Catholic school in Arkansas when he was a child. Ultimately, the importance of his choice is more symbolic than practical. “His record will be judged on the basis of his proposals for funding and reform,” says Casserly, “not on the basis of where he sends his daughter.” And Clinton is not the only official to separate personal from political. A Washington Post survey last year of education policymakers indicated that none sent their kids to Washington public schools. Still, there are 81,000 students in those schools, most of them with no way out. Making Chelsea one of them would have been a powerful gesture, but in this case, the Clintons put family above politics.
