Picking schools for the Obama girls

last updated 8 January 2015

Barack Obama, the first black president, "now has a chance to shatter another White House convention," said Robert Bobb and Mary Lord in USA Today. He can be the first president since Jimmy Carter to send his children to public schools. "Even a scouting visit by the first family to some of our city's outstanding public and public-charter schools would validate education-reform efforts here and across the nation."

Don't get your hopes up, said Clarence Page in the Chicago Tribune. The Obama girls, Sasha and Malia, attended private school in Chicago, and "Michelle Obama offered a clue to what her family's choice will be" when she visited Georgetown Day School this week. But the world will be watching to see whether the new president feels private school is best for his kids, even though he opposes "tax-supported voucher programs to less-fortunate parents" who would like to make the same choice.

Let's hope the Obamas are spared the kind of "flak" the Clintons faced, said the Rocky Mountain News in an editorial, when they decided to send Chelsea to the "pricey" Sidwell Friends School. Like the Clintons, the Obamas should pick the school they feel is the most "academically challenging" and the best for their kids—that's "the only reason that really counts."