FOR YEARS, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) were, as former Secretary of Education William Bennett charged, "the worst in the nation." And no one was doing anything about it.

In 1988, the Illinois legislature sent Chicago on the road to recovery with the School Reform Act (SRA). But the brief and troubled history of SRA shows that the road is a rocky one indeed. The state Supreme Court and Chicago's educational establishment have combined to block reform at every turn.

Today, CPS are still the worst in the nation. And unless the fledgling power of parents can overcome the entrenched power of the bureaucracy, urban school reform will be postponed indefinitely.

IN 1988, after bailing out strike-ridden CPS nine times in 18 years, the Illinois legislature passed the SRA. It was immediately hailed as a model for other cities' reforms. The news media and education experts called it a landmark in education reform. A broad minority coalition led by the Chicago Urban League enthusiastically supported the reform.

The SRA created a separate school district for each of Chicago's 540 public schools, all represented by 11 Local School Council (LSC) members. So that parental choice, not politics, would be the basis for LSC elections, six of the members at each school were elected directly by parents.

Any attempt to make schools' administrations responsive to parents must begin with parental control over appointment of teachers and principals. In the old CPS, parents had almost no power over educators, as principals were chosen (but rarely fired) by the mayorally appointed Board of Education. After running into trouble at one school, teachers would move on to another, since union contracts made firing them virtually impossible.

Under the SRA, LSCs gained some control over school budgets, as well as the power to fire incompetent school principals after their four-year contracts expired. They also received the right to review schools' curricula and help set their educational priorities.

Two years later, LSCs had signed half of CPS's 540 principals to four-year optional contracts. They had also fired more than 100 principals, according to Patrick J. Keleher Jr., president of the Chicago-based Taxpayers for Educational Accountability and Choice (TEACH America).

In the fall of 1989, the city mobilized in a Tocquevillean dream as thousands of parents and citizens ran for spots on their LSCs. (Minority school districts had among the highest participation rates in the LSC elections). In late December, the reform's slogan--"Parent Power"--became a reality as LSC's took office.

BUT IN DECEMBER 1990, the Illinois Supreme Court declared the SRA unconstitutional because it violates the "one person, one vote," principle of constitutional law. Although the state legislature has tried to salvage the SRA by declaring ex post facto that the LSCs are appointed by the mayor of Chicago, this constitutional challenge has obviously thrown a giant fly into the reform ointment.

However, reform has been dealt a more serious setback by educators. The Chicago Principals' Association has attacked SRA's educational overhaul in court, in the LSCs and in the schools themselves. Fortunately, their legal challenge of the anti-tenure portions of the act was denied, but the association continues to oppose any substantive reform. It is appealing the ruling. And the Chicago Teachers' Union has supported the principals' challenge.

With principals and teachers pushing parents' concerns out of the limelight, the conclusion is as plain as graffiti on playground equipment. The educational establishment in Chicago does not want reform; it wants to protect its budget and its constituents' job security.

Like any bureaucrats, the teachers and principals of CPS callously think of their own security before the interests of their students, as the nine strikes in the past 20 years show.

While strikes have helped balloon the CPS budget to more than $2.3 billion today from about $600 million in 1970, the quality of a CPS education has fallen steadily. ACT scores at 38 of 45 of Chicago's public schools have declined to the lowest four percentile in the nation. More than half of all Chicago high school students fail to graduate. Those that do often can only read at a seventh grade level.

Obviously, school reform is badly needed. But many parents--especially minorities, who comprise 85 percent of CPS students--believe that even more drastic challenges to the education bureaucracy may be called for, and call for a privatized voucher system. As Professor Kevin Ryan of the Boston University Education School says, public schools have "all the problems of a monopoly, of a protected industry that is there to serve its own interests, not that of the consumer of education."