The past few leaders of Chicago Public Schools have not been called superintendent nor director nor president -- they've been called chief executive officer. It's a title that suggests a particular kind of approach to operating the nation's third-largest school district and one that signals to the city's business elite that their ideas for school reform will get a hearing.

And get a hearing those ideas have. The Commercial Club of Chicago's Civic Committee helped set the framework (PDF) in 2003 for Mayor Richard Daley's Renaissance 2010 program, an attempt to restructure CPS by shuttering low-performing schools and replacing them with charter schools or giving them over to be run by outside operators. Business groups and foundations followed up by investing millions to support Renaissance 2010 institutions. While the school closing process has often been wrenching for communities that see schools on the close-list as local anchors, the effort has yet to produce the kind of whole-cloth changes its most ardent advocates have foreseen.

Three studies released in the summer of 2009 illustrate the point. An examination of charter schools in Illinois (not just in Chicago) undertaken as part of a major national study found they produced decidedly mixed results (PDF) for students. The Consortium on Chicago School Research found (PDF) Renaissance 2010 high schools improved academic cultures and attendance but saw less in the way of increased student achievement. And The Commercial Club's Civic Committee's own "Still Left Behind" (PDF) report showed that dropout rates at CPS remained high, students were left unprepared, and gains on standardized testing results were mainly the result of changes to the tests themselves. The Civic Committee's document was particularly scathing, given that it came from an organization that has gotten much of what it wanted from CPS's chief executives and Mayor Daley. The report, unsurprisingly, recommended more charters and contract schools as a solution.

With this recent history hovering in the background, school reform at CPS appears to be at a crossroads.

Consider: CPS's current chief, Ron Huberman, is leaving his post at the end of the month. Mayor Daley's tenure at City Hall ends next spring. And CPS's rank-and-file instructors empowered a new administration at the Chicago Teachers Union that is aggressively entering the local educational and political fray.

CTU, led by President Karen Lewis, a former chemistry teacher, has fought layoffs on the streets and in federal court. Lewis demanded that tax increment financing dollars held by the City of Chicago flow back to CPS to support education. CTU has reached out to community allies, backing the parents who occupied the Whittier Elementary field house and calling for a "Marshall Plan" to invigorate neighborhood schools. Lewis has said she'll fight the expansion of charters and standardized testing.

Another piece of the alternative platform CTU seems to be articulating came out yesterday at a press conference in City Hall. Lewis -- joined by allies from groups like the Raise Your Hand Coalition, Action Now, the Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization, and others -- demanded the next leader of CPS have an educational background. She called for forming a "true blue-ribbon panel" that would oversee a search to find someone "who knows something about learning." Here's a clip from the press conference:

Later, other advocates demanded a leader who will not see children as data nor will be chosen to satisfy the members of Chicago's executives:

Asked about finding an educator for CPS later yesterday, Daley shot down the idea. He said he'll find someone to takeover CPS quickly -- and that someone will have a business background. "The CEO is always more of a business person," the Tribune reported Daley as saying. "Then you have a CEO for operations and a CEO for education. We put that together."

One of the possible implications of appointing an educator to lead CPS is she or he may prove more skeptical to the Renaissance 2010-style reforms that have restructured CPS over the last few years. (That, of course, depends on who the educator is.) At very least, the call yesterday for an educator leading a school district hints at unease with the direction of Chicago school reform.

Though Daley will make the pick for CPS before he leaves office, this key personnel decision and broader education issue will ultimately fall to the city's next mayor. Expect CPS and its direction to be a banner issue in the mayoral campaign. Rahm Emanuel has already talked about mimicking the federal "Race to the Top" program here. Another candidate, Gery Chico, was once head of the Board of Education for Daley. State Sen. James Meeks, meanwhile, has fought for equitable school funding during his time in the General Assembly and pushed for a voucher program, the latter putting him at loggerheads with teachers unions.

With their call for an educator atop CPS yesterday, CTU continues to promote a different vision for the more than 400,000 student-strong public school system in Chicago. There no doubt that CPS must be reformed and improved, but how it makes those changes -- and whether a chief executive officer or schools' superintendent is the one leading it -- is a story yet to be told. Especially in this moment, when so much is up in the air.