Illinois Innovator

Although he is superintendent of public instruction in Illinois and a former history professor, Michael J. Bakalis, 34, is convinced that education is far too important to be left solely to professional educators. "I have no allegiance either to the teachers or to the school board members," he says. His duties are to the children, he believes, and he is determined to take a fresh look at what they need. "What's wrong with our schools," according to Bakalis, "is a certain mindlessness about what we think they should be doing."

After his election to office two years ago, Bakalis held six regional hearings, gathering suggestions and discussing them at a meeting of 3,000 citizens. "We pour our money and, more importantly, our children into the public schools and are given no accounting of what happens to either," was the gist of many complaints. Out of 20 Ibs. of testimony, Bakalis and his associates drew up a set of common goals for Illinois schools in the 1970s, the only ten-year plan of its kind in the U.S. Bakalis promises to experiment with more plans for individualized, go-at-your-own-speed instruction, a frequently expressed demand at the hearings. In certifying teachers, he intends to play down education courses in favor of monitored teaching experience, including a compulsory one-year internship. He pledges prekindergarten programs (voluntary attendance for ages three and four) in every school district four years hence, new reading centers for adults, better schools for prisoners, new courses in consumer education, and more experiments with a twelve-month school year.

Even as he was drawing up his master plan, Bakalis-was ordering improvements in the way Illinois educates its poor and minority children. Even if they cannot solve all social problems, "schools have the responsibility to guarantee every child an ample opportunity to become self-sufficient," he believes. To that end, he has ordered a series of wide-ranging--and sometimes controversial--reforms. The most important:

-- That more centers be set up and staffed with bilingual instructors to teach Cuban, Mexican and Puerto Rican children social studies, science and math in their native tongue. There are 42 such centers now, but they reach only about 5,000 of the estimated 100,000 Spanish-speaking children in Illinois. Formerly, the chief goal of Illinois' public schools in educating such youngsters was to teach them English, despite a dropout rate that exceeded 70% in Chicago alone.

-- That the racial composition of all student bodies and staff must not vary more than 15% from that of the district as a whole. Bakalis asked each of the state's school districts to report to him the racial composition of its schools and found that 21 of the districts did not comply with his guidelines. For those districts he has provided a manual outlining various methods of desegregation, such as school pairings and pupil reassignments. If the districts do not soon come up with satisfactory plans, Bakalis has threatened them with court action. One of these areas is Chicago, where 501 of the city's 656 schools fail to meet the Bakalis standard.

-- That privately operated vocational education be revamped to give poor children another route to jobs. Cracking down on the 400 such schools in Illinois, whose courses ranged from poodle grooming to computer programming, his office ran frauds out of business. Among those closed was a school for innkeepers whose advertised job placement service turned out to be just a list of hotels and motels.

Greek Baker. Explains Bakalis:

"The ultimate doers may be the local school districts, but this office has to be the mover and shaker." Ironically, Mayor Daley's Democratic machine expected no such innovations when it tapped Bakalis to run for superintendent against a well-entrenched Republican incumbent in 1970. Quiet and unobtrusive, Bakalis was known neither to politicians nor voters. The son of an unschooled Greek immigrant who ran a wholesale bakery, he grew up on Chicago's blue-collar West Side and graduated from Northwestern with a doctorate in 1966. He was a history professor and assistant dean of arts and sciences at Northern Illinois University in De Kalb when he agreed to run for office. To the surprise of the professional politicians, he led a vigorous grass-roots campaign and rode into office with a 500,000-vote margin, largely because of voters' disgust with his predecessor's patronage-ridden regime.

Bakalis quickly made it clear that his would be no ordinary politician's office. He refused to clear appointments with Democratic leaders, recruited a staff of enthusiastic young teachers anxious to try out new ideas, and even managed to cut his administrative budget, eliminating jobs and seven staff automobiles, including his own limousine. He holds regular "bypass the bureaucracy days," during which anyone can talk with him without going through the regular red tape. To keep top assistants in touch with the classrooms, he ordered them to teach weekly courses at colleges throughout the state. Bakalis himself taught a course in public education at Rosary College outside Chicago last year, and next year will teach politics and education at Northwestern.

Above all, Bakalis' administration has a sense of urgency. Because of a constitutional change, his job becomes appointive by the state board in 1975. His reforms have offended so many groups--politicians and white parents over desegregation, school boards and teachers over certification--that his staff is worried about whether he will be appointed. Says one: "We've got to do all we can now."

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