Julie Woestehoff was the longtime executive director of Chicago-based Parents United for Responsible Education (PURE), a reform-minded schools advocacy group that pushed for citizen involvement in the city’s schools and equitable use of standardized tests.
Woestehoff encouraged “many parents to get involved with their children’s education because she believed that parents were the key to advocating for their own children. They knew what the children needed,” said Wanda Hopkins, a former PURE assistant director. “And we believed that every child had the right to have the best education possible.”
Woestehoff, 72, died of a blood infection Feb. 25 at Lee Memorial Hospital in Fort Myers, Florida, where she and her husband had a winter home, said her son, Sten Turpin. Woestehoff was living in Arlington Heights after many years in the North Side Rogers Park neighborhood.
Born in Rochester, Minnesota, Julie Margaret Woestehoff was the daughter of Ellsworth S. Woestehoff, who taught education at the University of Chicago, and Margaret Ann Woestehoff, an elementary school music teacher. The family moved to Chicago when she was in kindergarten, later living in Rochester, New York.
Woestehoff received a bachelor’s degree in comparative literature from Northwestern University in 1974, then worked briefly in Germany, where she met her future husband.
In 1976, the couple moved to the Chicago area and she enrolled at the U. of C., eventually earning a master’s degree in comparative literature and taking coursework toward a doctorate. Staying at home with her children, she ran for the local school council at Eugene Field School in Rogers Park.
“It was a matter of equity. The active teachers were steered toward an options program that was going on in CPS at that time, and the white children were steered toward the options program, and everybody else was…left to fend for themselves,” her son said. “My parents were involved in opposition to that.”
Woestehoff soon began volunteering for PURE, a coalition of parents, teachers and students that met weekly during a 19-day Chicago Teachers Union strike in 1987 to plan and carry out teach-ins and other activities during the strike. The nonprofit group built more momentum after the 1988 law creating the CPS’ 559 local school councils. PURE soon evolved to become a local school council training group and a school reform advocacy organization.
Woestehoff, who eventually became the group’s executive director, frequently clashed with CPS CEO Paul Vallas over the balance between local control and City Hall’s powers over the schools under a 1995 school reform law.
“You have to look at the trend over time, and the trend since local school councils started has been very positive, which is why it’s very disappointing that the present administration doesn’t recognize the impact of local school councils,” Woestehoff told the Tribune in 1997.
Woestehoff regularly wrote letters to the editor and op-ed articles in the Tribune. As the watchdog group’s leader, she was a “loud voice for the multicultural communities,” recalled Ismael Vargas, a former PURE associate director.
“It was very rare because you had this white lady who was just fighting for Latinos and Blacks,” Vargas said. “Her voice was very loud on that, and so that was so beautiful. She prepped me and she trained me and she put me out there to defend parents’ rights in the Chicago Public Schools.”
Vallas said his experiences with school reformers such as Woestehoff “helped influence my growth as a school superintendent.”
“We did battle, but it was a healthy battle,” Vallas said. “Julie was tough, there was absolutely no doubt about it, but I never questioned her commitment. I welcomed the give and take with Julie.”
Woestehoff often spoke out against CPS testing practices, including its use of cut-off scores on the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills to prevent the promotions of tens of thousands of children.
“The practice of flunking children has proven harmful to them,” Woestehoff wrote in a 2000 Tribune op-ed. “It pushes more and more children out of school. Four decades of studies, including a recent study of the Chicago program itself, have also found that retention does not help children progress academically.”
Woestehoff also regularly criticized charter schools, contending that studies at the time showed that they had not demonstrated an ability to perform much better than regular neighborhood schools.
“What do students and parents really get?” she told the Tribune in 2001. “For one thing, none of these schools has a local school council, which gives parents a voice in how the schools are run.”
Woestehoff continued leading the charge against proposed school closings and charter schools, still advocating for schools with local control. She took aim at the city’s Renaissance 2010 initiative, alleging that the plan was a way to privatize and eliminate local school councils and unionized teachers.
Late in her career, Woestehoff continued her campaign against high-stakes standardized testing, having PURE join forces with the CTU and several other groups to form the More Than a Score Coalition, which advocated for limiting standardized tests.
With funding harder to come by, Woestehoff wound down PURE in 2014. That year, Woestehoff and her husband moved to Wyoming, although she remained involved in education policy as a founding member and head of a national parent advocacy organization, Parents Across America. She retired from that role in 2018.
In addition to her son, Woestehoff is survived by her husband of almost 50 years, Larry Turpin; another son, Anders Turpin; a sister, Kristin Ziama; a brother, Mark Woestehoff; and two grandchildren.
An open house was held.
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
