ABSTRACT
Senator Barack Obama’s dinner in 2005 at the Café Gray in the New York City’s Time Warner building dramatically changed the Democratic Party’s education agenda. The dinner was hosted by a group of investment bankers organized as Democrats for Education Reform which had declared its goal of returning “the Democratic Party to its rightful place as a champion of children, fi rst and foremost, in America’s public education systems.”1 The work of this group resulted in current “school reform” proposals contained in Obama’s Race to the Topcreating a common core state curriculum, teacher evaluations using student test scores, and the expansion of charter schools. Democrats for Education Reform also played an important role in President Obama’s selection of Arne Duncan as U.S. Secretary of Education.2
