Why Rahm Emanuel's Set-Back to "Chuy" Garcia is Such a Big Deal

First, just from the political angle, this is a humiliation for Rahm Emanuel, the Chicago mayor with mountainous hubris.

No Chicago mayoral candidate had to face a run-off since these rules were made in the 1980s. (The run-off rules were made in the context of Harold Washington and his victory in a three-way split of Washington, 37%, Jane Byrne, 33% and Richard M. Daley, 30% in the February 23, 1988 Democratic primary.)

Challenger Cook County Commissioner Jesus "Chuy" Garcia was able to dent Emanuel's momentum in yesterday's primary.
Emanuel: 45.4 %
Garcia: 33.9%

Emanuel and his business allies expected an easy victory. And the Emanuel campaign rolled in old friend and ally President Barack Obama to campaign for him. (Emanuel had been chief of staff in the early Obama White House.) Thursday, Obama made a speech at an ostensibly historical site (Pullman district) occasion, singling out Emanuel for special praise.

Emanuel developed a big war chest, $30 million, to maintain his spot as mayor.
But Emanuel had made many enemies among ordinary Chicagoans with his education and development policies. As this blog has noted, he closed dozens of schools, and created discord with his education department's sending students across gang lines. Some experts have attributed youth shootings to his school closure policies. 
He has been anti-democratic, displacing the democratic power of an elected school board with his cherry picked one, headed by his developer friend, Penny Pritzker.

Garcia's potent challenge to Emanuel is a delicious news for Chicago teachers and their allies. Garcia's showing can be credited in part to the work and endorsement of the Chicago Teachers Union. Labor Notes cited the CTU role, and reported the story as "Chicago Teachers Force Rahm into a Runoff".

Moreover, this could be the beginning of the end of Emanuel's career, and the end of a banner Democrat for media enablers to point to when pushing the education privatization/"reform" agenda.

Emannuel's plans to replace SE Chicago school has teachers, community concerned

From WLS TV:

Gallistel Elementary parents: Upgrade our school before building new one

Click to above link for video

Chicago Teachers Union officials want to know where CPS came up with the money to build a new school on the Southeast Side.

[Mayor Rahm Emanuel ran off before he could answer teachers' and community members' questions.]

From Progress Illinois:

New Neighborhood School Planned For Chicago's Southeast Side

Plans to erect a new neighborhood elementary school on Chicago's far Southeast Side are in the works, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Sunday.

At a news conference at Gallistel Elementary Language Academy, Emanuel said the new school is meant to help curb overcrowding at nearby schools. Other than that, the mayor provided little details about the proposed $35 million dollar school that would be funded in part by the city's tax increment financing dollars and state government. Ald. John Pope (10th), who was also at the news conference and answered some questions when the mayor left, said the school is slated to be constructed at 104th Street and Indianapolis Avenue.

After the news was announced, parents at Gallistel acknowledged that they desire relief from overcrowding at the school. They said students from Gallistel are currently split up among six buildings to help reduce overcrowding. But the parents also raised concerns about what might happen to their school once the new one is built, noting that the Chicago Board of Education voted back in May to shutter 50 neighborhood schools.

Once the new school is built, that means “you’ll have the haves and have-nots” in the neighborhood, said Jose Garza, chairman of Gallistel's Local School Council.

Pope assured the parents that those at Gallistel would not be abandoned. A Chicago Public Schools spokeswoman also told the Chicago Sun-Times after the announcement was made that Gallistel and another community school, Jane Addams Elementary, would see upgrades. The school district is working with principals at both schools regarding the needed improvements.

Chicago's Friday Morning Massacre - the Human Collateral in the War of Testing Over Teaching

CASUALTIES IN WAR OF TESTING OVER TEACHING - SINGLING OUT ACTIVIST TEACHERS? - HEARTBREAK AND CLASS WARFARE - POSTSCRIPT: GANG EXPERT PROFESSOR WARNS OVER SCHOOL CLOSINGS

One backscript lurking behind the story of the mass ejecting Chicago Public School teachers from their positions mid-summer is that this is in a context of a high-flying financial sector economy in Chicago. The Windy City, the magnet of Chicagoland, drawing people from the otherwise troubled former industrial heartland that is the Midwest, sometimes called the Rustbelt (a term I do not prefer as it dismisses manufacturing and industrialism as old hat), is doing well. The Chicago (and disadvantaged cities of Illinois, for that matter) public revenues can do well by taking the public's fair share from the wealthy.

In addition, akin to the old guns and butter debate of military spending versus social needs, we must point out that Illinois' questionable decision to pony along with the Common Core mania has worsened public education's situation. In carrying out Common Core mandates, Illinois is hitching itself to the computerized testing that the test entails, and the computerization expenses that come with it. Namely, note that Illinois is going along with the PARCC program, the computerized test for executing the Common Core. (The test expense itself is making more districts to be wary of the tests. Oklahoma pulled out of PARCC over technology difficulties.) A rising public debate is challenging the Common Core. The key matter is, must we jeopardize educations and careers in the unnecessary rush for commercialized testing?

In short, the funds are there. There is no need to dismiss teachers or support staff. It is a question of priorities.

A second disturbing backscript is one wonders some of these schools and programs are being cut purposely in areas that have key activist teachers. Close a school, slash a program, through a teacher out of her or his program, and conveniently Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel and the education privatizers can (hope to) silence strong voices in the resistance against commercialized education.

Namely, I refer to Xian Barrett, a key activist in the Chicago Teachers Union. He has been a key figure in the Chicago scene and he has traveled out of the region to support teachers in New York City and elsewhere who are engaged in like educational-political struggles. Furthermore, he has been a well-recognized teacher of law and history. So when I read that he was among over 2,000 educators in a mass dismissal Friday morning alarm bells went off in my mind that this could be political scapegoating. Here is a fine piece from the 'Chicago Sun-Times,' from Fred Klonsky's blog yesterday. Note how there is yet another agenda at work here: the replacing of veteran, tenured teachers with less expensive Teach for America recruits (read on these glorified 2 year temps, here, here, here):

Gage Park High School teacher Xian Barrett learned Friday morning he was one of 2,113 Chicago Public Schools employees losing his job from his mother.
Why the principal called his emergency contact instead of his primary number, he isn’t sure. But when Barrett returned the message his mother relayed from his principal, he was read the script thanking him for his service — but pink-slipping him.
“The fact that there’s a script and it has in it, ‘Thank you for the service to the kids’ but no details — the fact that it’s always done this impersonally. It’s not just about firing. It’s how CPS treats their students. They’re interchangeable, and the relationships in their lives are interchangeable,” Barrett, 35, told the Sun-Times Friday. It went better, though, than the first time the district laid him off in 2010, when the principal — who also called his mother — went right into the script.
“The principal laid off my mom,” said Barrett, recipient of a prestigious and national U.S. Department of Education Teaching Fellowship, and a tenured teacher of law and of Chicago history at Gage Park on the Southwest Side. His law class typically spent Monday mornings with a triage of cases kids brought to him that friends or relatives were involved in.
“We get to a point where we’re called to serve the entire community. What I just challenge people to think about is that one teacher who made the difference in your life and what would happen if they were torn out of the fabric of your life,” Barrett said.
Barrett didn’t yet know how many of his Gage Park colleagues were part of the massive layoffs that hit Friday.
In one of the city’s largest teacher layoffs ever, the district pink slipped 2,113 teachers and other employees.
Of those laid off, 1,036 are teachers and 1,077 are support staff, with the laid-off teachers accounting for about 4 percent of last year’s total faculty of 23,290.
Budget cuts are to blame for 815 support staff, 398 tenured teachers and 510 non-tenured teachers; school closings for 68 support staff employees and 194 food staff employees, and changes in school enrollments account for rest, the district said.
Another 161 highly-rated teachers from the 48 schools that closed permanently in June also learned later Friday they will not follow their students to new schools — there aren’t enough open jobs in the receiving schools, according to CPS spokeswoman Kelley Quinn. Their positions have been cut, but they’re not technically laid off since they continue to collect full pay and benefits in a teacher reassignment pool for the first five months of the school year, and slightly lower pay in the cadre substitute pool for the next five months, Quinn said.
The district, which has been saying for weeks it would “minimize cuts to the classroom” while staring down a historic budget deficit, blames the layoffs on a $400 million increase in annual teacher pension payments. Those payments jumped this year from about $196 million a year to about $600 million because a three-year period of pension relief came to an end, CPS said.
In a statement Friday, Mayor Rahm Emanuel called the cuts “yet another painful reminder to Springfield that we need immediate pension relief.
“With a billion dollar budget deficit, decreased enrollment and ballooning pension costs, CPS has been forced to make extremely difficult choices to put our school district in the best position to be successful next year and beyond,” the mayor’s statement said.
Flanked by teachers and parents Friday afternoon, CTU vice president Jesse Sharkey called the layoffs “outrageous.”
“The school day for students got more than 20 percent longer and yet now we see massive layoffs in the staff that’s supposed to be delivering the educational content that makes that school day better. I don’t see the point of making the school day 20 percent longer and then laying off all the art music, physical education teachers that were supposed to fill the day up with education,” he said. “This is the starving of public schools through insufficient revenue and when the district first said they would be closing 50 public schools in order to save money, I think that was about the right answer…What it means is we’re offering a more and more meagre and a poorer education.”
He seemed doubtful the CTU could restore any of the jobs without major change in Springfield or city leadership, just as the union and its supporters weren’t able to save schools from closing: “The public disagreed with the school closings and yet we couldn’t soften the heart of Pharaoh, those school closings still went through.”
The layoffs come about a month after 850 other employees were laid off — 545 of them teachers — mostly due to the closure of 48 schools.
They include teachers, teacher assistants, clerks, technology coordinators, instructional aides, lunchroom workers and security guards.
Some of the teachers could be replaced by Teach For America recruits, as the district has committed to more than doubling its investment in the TFA program that trains college graduates for five weeks then sends them into schools for two years at a time. The Board of Education voted to increase its payment to TFA from $600,000 to nearly $1.6 million, and to add up to 325 new TFA recruits to CPS classrooms, in addition to 270 second year “teacher interns”.
TFA spokeswoman Becky O’Neill said about 200 of the new recruits are destined for charters, the rest to interview for openings in neighborhood schools.
“We’re looking forward to getting more information and better understanding how all of this impacts the schools and principals with whom we partner,” she said.
Sharkey denounced CPS’ TFA placements “at the same time it’s laying off veterans. This is an organization who started out saying their mission was to serve underserved children with a teachers shortage. There’s no longer a teacher shortage.”
The tumultuous news capped a year of upheaval that included a teacher strike, the implementation of longer school days, mass school closings, budget cuts and a new school budgeting system that grants autonomy – but also tough spending decisions and less money – to principals.
Principals from the affected schools began notifying employees Friday morning. Ruth Augspurger, the art teacher at Carson Elementary School, 5516 S. Maplewood Ave., said she got a call from her principal saying her position was cut – but that’s all she remembers from the shock.
“I believe that every child should have the privilege to have the highest level of education,” the veteran teacher of 9 1/2 years who originally moved to Chicago to attend Art Institute of Chicago, said crying, “so knowing there were many challenges to teaching in this district I decided to stay here for almost a decade.”
Parent group Raise Your Hand called the CPS announcement “a frightening day for the children of Chicago.”
“Our mayor has chosen to prioritize property tax spending on unnecessary and frivolous projects such as $55 million for a stadium for DePaul University, while CPS continues to receive drastic funding cuts that severely impact our children’s ability to thrive and learn,” they said in a statement Friday. “The mayor’s decision not to use TIF money to offset some of these cuts is deeply disappointing and is forcing many parents to leave the city.”

Diane Ravitch posted on the mass dismissals, and pondered whether this brass knuckles move was payback revenge for the Chicago Teachers Union's strike last September.

Veteran educator and activist Lois Weiner writes today in the journal "New Politics"' online blog points out that there are two strategies to pursue, revolt from below pressuring American Federation of Teachers (AFT) president Randi Weingarten to use her clout with the White House. I agree-- both channels should be pursued. Quite rightly, she calls mayor Emanuel's moves as class warfare. As I note in my late edit below, New York governor Andrew Cuomo is conducting similar class warfare. As Weiner suggests, teacher unions should rethink their financial support for Democratic politicians.

Heartbreak and class warfare, Chicago-style, July 20, 2013

I’d be heart-broken by the layoffs announced by the Chicago Public Schools, (CPS) even if my pal Xian Barrett (in the photo, talking teaching with me at the DC Save Our Schools demo last April) weren’t one of the folks given a pink slip.

By pinning the blame for the layoffs on “the lack of pension reform” Mayor Rahm Emanuel is trying to force the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) to choose between layoffs and cuts to pensions. Meanwhile, the CTU with parent and community allies has brought the district to court to reverse the school closings, tenaciously contested last Spring.

Layoffs are devastating - as are school closings. Can the CTU win this? Or as a reader of my most recent NP seems to suggest, is schooling just too enmeshed in the muck of capitalist social relations for even a good union to counter?

No one has a crystal ball - not me, not readers, and not our enemies. No one knows what the outcome of this struggle will be. This is class warfare, and in wars both sides have wins and losses. The CTU’s strike and its success in building solid, mutually respectful alliances with parents, students, community, and other unions go in the “win” column. So far the weight of those successes has not been sufficient to keep Emanuel and the political elite of Chicago whom he represents from countering successfully with the school closings and layoffs.

What to do now? I think the union needs to adopt two strategies simultaneously. First is turning up the heat “from below.” CTU knows how to organize and staff are likely cooking up a campaign as I write. Maybe a series of rolling strikes? That’s what the two biggest teachers unions in the UK are doing now to push back on the government’s attacks on teachers and public education. (Catch that band playing! Love those hats!) The Bad Ass Teachers Association has a campaign to phone Emanuel's office and demand he call off the layoffs. Nice work, BATS!

The other part of the strategy is “from above.” This means putting pressure on AFT President Randi Weingarten, who has considerable access to the White House, to use her clout, now. After letting the White House know her intention, Weingarten could have a coffee date with Rahm and explain why he can’t tell teachers to choose between pensions and layoffs - not, that is, if he wants a single penny from the AFT for Democrats (who don’t deserve a cent to start, but that’s another blog…) No campaign workers, no phone banks. And a campaign in the AFL-CIO to follow suit.

What if Weingarten doesn’t respond to private pressure? Doesn't want to use her political capital to save the jobs of Chicago teachers? Then we should go public with the demand. Petitions, phone calls, to the AFT national office. Union officials are only as smart and powerful as their members help them to be. Union officers get lots of heat from the media and the politically powerful to be reasonable, that is, make concessions. It’s the job of members to push the other direction, hold our officers’ feet to the fire. By making demands on Weingarten to defend Xian and the other 2000 CPS employees told they've been laid off, we’ll be helping Randi Weingarten to do her job. And by organizing at the schools, with parents, students, and community, the CTU is helping Rahm to be a better Mayor. And boy, does he need help. Until we throw him out.

Let us not sit still. This is not an isolated case. This is a international struggle; this is a international cause.

[Postscript: Linking to Weiner's suggestion that the AFT might consider the threat of witholding support for Democrats, there is the parallel case waiting to be pursued: Teachers and their unions should cut any support to New York governor Andrew Cuomo (1) who worsened teachers' working conditions by applying for Race to the Top, and for (2) imposing a draconian teacher evaluation system; and --in solidarity with state employees overall-- (3) for Cuomo's threatening state employees' retirements with his steady attack on pensions.]

Bravo to the rogue NYSUTer who posted a rogue video contribution on NYSUT's Facebook page. Of course, NYSUT issued a disclaimer and pulled the vide, but not before the New York Daily News ran this story, October 24, 2012, at its "Daily Politics" site: State Teachers Union Links Gov. Cuomo To National Attack On Education

The powerful state teachers union Wednesday launched its harshest attack on Gov. Cuomo and his education policies.
The New York State United Teachers posted a seven-minute video on its political Facebook page that links the Democrat Cuomo’s agenda to the roll back of union rights in Wisconsin and GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s education platform.

“Wisconsin wasn’t the end,” the video states. “It was the beginning.”
It then leads into a Cuomo speech on education where he talks of the “failing of our public education system.”
The video disputes Cuomo’s contention that New York is 38th in graduation rates despite being number one in the nation in spending.
It also highlights his attacks on superintendents, principals and teachers before offering a list of his top accomplishments the union considers anti-education.
Among them are changes to the pension system for new government hires, the creation of a 2% cap on local property tax increases, an increase in charter schools, and a new teacher evaluation system.
It even mocks his much quoted contention that the students are the only ones in the education system without a lobbyist.
“I guess the students wanted higher class sizes, program cuts and more standardized tests...because that’s exactly what they got,” the video says.
The video also ties Cuomo’s education agenda to others like Mayor Bloomberg and Romney.
NYSUT in the web posting specifically credits Rep. Tim Bishop of Long Island with voting with the union 100% of the time and chastises his GOP opponent Randy Altschuler for a platform that is “from another planet.”
The video urges union members to band together “or we can fall apart.”
It urges members to sign up for phone banks, talk with neighbors about the issues, attend rallies, and vote.
“We are not Republicans and we are not Democrats,” the video concludes. “We are teachers--and education matters.”
The union in recent days donated $25,000 to the New York chapter of the Democratic Legislature Campaign Committee, a group dedicated to electing Dems to state Legislatures across the country. That's on top of the hundred thousands of dollars that are being spent by the union as an independent expenditure on key state Senate races.
A Cuomo spokesman could not be immediately be reached for comment.

POSTSCRIPTS:
WBEZ Chicago public radio tweeted, July 22 that Chicago Public Schools "could not tell us today how much it is saving by laying off 2,113 school staff."

From Mike Klonsky's blog, July 18, 2013:

Gang expert Hagedorn warns federal judge to stop Chicago school closings

John Hagedorn 

A SmallTalk salute goes out to UIC prof John Hagedorn for speaking truth to power during a second day of testimony before a federal judge who's considering a temporary injunction to stop the district from closing dozens of schools, nearly all in the city's mainly black south and west-side communities.

John, a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Illinois-Chicago's Great Cities Institute and Associate Professor of Criminal Justice, has been researching and writing about Chicago's street gangs from multiple perspectives for decades. He's the author of People & Folks, Gangs, Crime, and the Underclass in a Rustbelt City. This book, published in 1998, re-framed the study of gangs in the United States by focusing on the impact of de-industrialization. He's currently studying why Chicago's homicide rate has not declined like New York City's.

In his 2008 book, A World of Gangs, he writes:

… institutionalized gangs and other armed young men [that] have become permanent fixtures in many ghettos, barrios, and favelas across the globe are an ever present option for marginalized youth. [G]angs are unmistakable signs that all is not well and that millions of people are being left out of the marvels of a globalized economy. 

FOX News reports:

Taking the stand for lawyers opposed to Chicago Public Schools' recent decision to shutter about 50 public elementary schools, John Hagedorn also testified that rival gangs already are posting warnings on Facebook for the incoming children from other neighborhoods to stay off their turf.

"It's already aggravating gang conflicts," he said about the pending closings. And if the closings ahead, added the University of Illinois at Chicago professor, "It is likely a child will be shot and killed."

John told Judge John Lee that it's not a question of whether there will be shooting in neighborhoods kids must walk through. He says shootings are happening now. He adds school closings already are prompting gang Facebook postings warning students to stay away.

"The old times where one gang controlled one neighborhood are gone," he said. "Those changes are what make it especially dangerous to children."

According to the Sun-Times:

Hagedorn displayed gang maps, showing how students would have to cross gang boundaries to get to their new schools and arguing that CPS doesn’t have an effective safety plan in place. For example, he said, children transferred from Pope Elementary to Johnson Elementary in North Lawndale will “literally be walking down a line of fire” on Albany Avenue, where the New Breeds have clashed with rival gangs.

CPS’ “Safe Passage” program, which pays community groups to chaperone children, won’t “protect them from bullets,” he added.

Thanks John.

School System Wrecker Vallas Ousted By Conn. Judge's Order

Ding dong, the witch is ... Bridgeport schools superintendent Paul Vallas has been ousted from his position. He had refused for several months to attend any class necessary toward developing the authentic credentials to lead a school system. Thus, Connecticut Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis ruled that he must leave his post. Per several news reports, here and here, for example, he has refused to leave his post.

He has had a storied career of school leadership controversy. From 1995 to 2001 he was Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Chicago Public Schools, creating more controversy toward the end of his term there, before Arne Duncan really started attacking the Chicago Schools.

In the early and mid-2000s he sometimes ran for elected office and other times toyed with the idea. His highest goal was Illinois governor, but he lost to the inestimable Rod Blagojevich in the Democratic primary. --Yes, Democratic; note that! The liberal party has spearheaded privatization destruction of urban school systems, all in the name of "reform," informed by "free market" thinking principles.

For a short stint beginning in 2002, he led Philadelphia, Pennsylvania's schools. There he led ambitious efforts to outsource school management to all kinds of institutions outside the municipal school system, non-profits colleges, for-profit institutions.

Not long after, he moved on to Louisiana to destroy its school system, exploiting the natural disaster and collapse of governmental leadership in New Orleans, Louisiana, as he led the creepily named "Recovery School District of Louisiana." He supposedly created "gains" for the system, but observers called it a financial scam. He served there from 2007 until 2011, although not without flirting with political ambitions elsewhere.

And after another natural disaster, an earthquake, he did brief work for the Haitian president to "reform" Haiti's educational system.

On June 28, the judge finally removed Vallas from his post at the head of Bridgeport schools.
Yet, worse than merely being without education credentials, his record at each of the city school systems was initiating a legacy of school mismanagement. The outcome has been administrative disorder, and teachers a precarious work experience, and for students a precarious learning experience. More specifically, his record at all these urban school systems has been the mass firing of teachers, particularly teachers of color. Merely removing him from his post is not enough. Maybe there is some way to bring him up on charges for his serial abuse of school systems.

Regarding the rule of law and the final determination that he should go, one commenter at Diane Ravitch's report ("Vallas Will Fight Judge’s Order to Go") on his case wrote of the sweet justice at work,

The judge is certified. She ruled. This is now on Malloy and Pryor.

They wrote the law, signed it and now they want special deals.

Bottom line:

They wrote a law just for Vallas
It was part of Malloy’s bill
It passed and Malloy signed it
It took effect July 1, 2012
He needed simply to take a 13 month school leadership program
He didn’t even try until February of 2013
He took an independent study
He didn’t even register as a student
He broke the law
Pryor broke the law
He lost
The judge rulled he cannot continue
We are the constitution state
No one is above the law
Including all friends of Stefan, Dannel and Arne
The “elite” are not free to break the law
And we are drawing the line
No more

UPDATED: Karen Lewis Responds to Attack on Schools With Political Mobilization; and the UFT is Endorsing Thompson?

UPDATED: Surprise, Surprise: Randy Mastro and Al D'Amato, top Thompson campaign contribution bundlers

At the 18:12 minute point in the Chicago Teachers Union video on researchers' work and teacher testimonials on a closing school --autopsy of an executed school, Karen Lewis, CTU president, moves onto the ball onto the sphere of political action: "CTU releases school closings study, ramps up political activities", April 16, 2013.
More recently, she noted that in the 2011 mayoral election by which Rahm Emanuel became elected to mayor's office, thereby enabling him to control the school board, Emanuel was elected with only 22 percent of the eligible voters ("CTU Kicks Off Effort To 'Change The Political Landscape," video, May 23).

“Brothers and sisters, mayoral control is a disaster,” said Karen Lewis, president of the CTU. “We must change the political landscape in Chicago.”

She then went on to say that the Union will start getting involved in politics, in registering voters and getting involved in political education including recruiting real grassroots candidates for elective office, in Chicago and in the Illinois state legislature in Springfield. The media have read in a more pointed fashion, with several headlines like this, "CTU hosts voter registration drive, aims to have Mayor Emanuel ousted in 2015 over school closings," and "The 2015 Mayoral Campaign Begins Tonight: CTU trains registrars in effort to unseat Mayor Rahm Emanuel."
Given the CORE-lead CTU of the last three years, we can anticipate that CTU political action will be on CTU terms, on teacher advocacy, that keeps in mind teachers' interests and stances.

# # #

THE STUDY IN CONTRASTS: UFT, JOINING IN THE POWER GLOVE WITH "EDUCATION REFORMERS"
Lewis' and the CTU's stance will stand in contrast to the dominant faction of the United Federation of Teachers, which at the May 22 delegate assembly, had reps from various boroughs ringing the bells for former comptroller and School Board President Bill Thompson.
The choice is problematic on so many levels. He is partially himself to the education reformers' agenda, committing himself to continue parts of the Bloomberg legacy, such as charter school co-locations. And the central role of New York State Regent Merryl Tisch in his campaign is disturbing. Diane Ravitch has called Tisch the doyenne of high-stakes testing. Is it any wonder that so many Teachers College (Columbia University) students protested her award this month?
Note that the Gotham Schools site reported May 15 that Thompson with his education platform is seeking to not merely continue some Bloomberg initiatives, such as lengthening the school day, but expanding other ones:

Thompson would expand, not end, many of Bloomberg’s school policies.
He said he would replicate some of the small schools that Bloomberg has opened, continue the city’s nascent efforts to link high schools with industry partners, and revise — not abandon — the Department of Education’s method of evaluating schools.

The article continues:

But a number of items on Thompson’s platform would be extensions of Bloomberg’s policies. He said he would replicate schools such as Pathways in Technology High School and the Academy of Software Engineering that give New York City students direct paths to jobs.

Some of Thompson’s proposals could even run afoul of the union, depending on how they are implemented. He said he would “hold teachers accountable for what happens in their schools and classrooms” in part by using test scores, as is required under state law, and would launch a citywide initiative for longer school hours and school years. He said he would also work to pay “our most effective teachers” more to teach in high-need schools.

Thompson did not say how he would define effectiveness, taking a pass on a crucial issue that the next mayor will have to resolve. He also did not explain how he would pay for his costly proposals, other than by cutting “the excessive amounts of hundreds of millions of dollars” that the Department of Education has awarded in contracts to private vendors. (Public Advocate Bill de Blasio has so far been the only candidate to say he would raise taxes to support schools.)

Note that Thompson dodges the charter school issue:

And Thompson did not mention the divisive issue of charter schools at all, except to say that he would hold them to the same standards as district schools. (Because the schools are publicly funded but privately managed and authorized by state entities, the mayor has little sway over city charter schools’ operation.)

Endorsing Bill Thompson for mayor? No, our union should instead be educating its members on the differences between the candidates. The UFT should be warning against voting for Thompson.
(For on overview of the candidates, see Dana Rubinstein of Capital New York's "How different are the mayoral candidates from Bloomberg on education, actually?"
UPDATES - WEINER POSITION - QUINN: THOMPSON A MOSAIC OF THE BLOOMBERG PROGRAM:
Anthony Weiner, former Queens Congressman and new entrant to the mayor's race, has staked himself to the right, asserting that city employees need to pay more of their health insurance costs. Christine Quinn, city council president, will drop out of tomorrow's education debate hosted by New Yorkers for Great Public Schools. Weiner will participate in the debate.
If Merryl Tisch's support for Thompson is not reason alone to give teachers pause enough for supporting Thompson (with money and as a top campaign advisor), there is the news that former Senator Alphonse D'Amato (Republican and stalwart ally of president Ronald Reagan) is financially supporting Thompson as well. This last point produced the ironic situation whereby front-runner Christine Quinn makes the reasonable critique in the race --ironic, as she is, with good reason, universally seen as the Bloomberg fourth-term candidate. As the New York Times reports:

“The last thing Democrats are looking for in a mayor of New York is someone who is ‘proud’ to have Al D’Amato’s support,” the e-mail said, citing a statement Mr. Thompson made to The New York Times.

Note the new New York Times interactive chart on campaign contributions to the mayoral candidates. Apparently, Randy Mastro (former Rudy Giuliani deputy mayor) and Al D'Amato are the number one and two campaign bundlers for the Thompson campaign. The site also links to a map with campaign contributions. The top fund-raiser in Manhattan, particularly in the ultra-wealthy Upper East Side district: Christine Quinn.
A Quinn campaign spokesperson continued the attack on Thompson, on points progressive teacher unionists should concur with:

On Wednesday, her campaign spokesman also belittled Mr. Thompson’s proposals on education, calling them “a mosaic of things that Christine C. Quinn has already proposed or done.”

It is important for the UFT to make a principled stand. With Weiner's entry into the race the anti-Quinn vote is further divided, potentially giving the Quinn a boost after her recent fall in the polls. Going with Thompson --simply to get a seat at the table with an insider power man-- is wrong-minded and incredibly short-sighted.

Chicago Closes 50 Schools in 1 Minute; TFA Will Pick Up the Pieces

[A bright, inspiring figure in the sad events of the school closings and popular reaction last week is the 9 year old student, Asean Johnson, speaking in defense of his school --watch this video. A great speech from a very well-spoken young man; a leader today and likely in the future. Some adults hosting him on network TV need to get over getting the giggles when a 9 year old speaks as astutely as a 29 year old.]

The sad, sad story in Chicago yesterday. Across America, we mourn for Chicago and what the CPS is doing to its schools.

The link to Karen Lewis, Chicago Teachers Union president's statement on the occasion of the school closings.

From democraticunderground, May 23, 2013:
"In less time than it takes to boil an egg" Chicago closes 50 schools.
From the Chicago Sun-Times (May 22):

CPS makes history, closing scores of schools in less time than it takes to boil an egg

History was made in Chicago Wednesday in about 90 seconds, but most of the folks who witnessed firsthand the death of a record 50 Chicago Public Schools didn’t even realize it.

Rather than list the names of the doomed elementary schools, the Board of Education took a single group vote on most of the closings that will affect some 27,000 children. The board secretary read out the numbers assigned to each resolution and asked for the vote.

But onlookers didn’t even get that, as the board president resorted to parliamentary maneuver to speed the process along.

“Madam Secretary, if there are no objections from my fellow board members, please apply the last favorable roll call,” Board President David Vitale said, referring to the previous vote of six ayes and 0 nays. And with that, the bulk of the history — 49 of the 50 schools closed — was made in a unanimous sweep.

Tone deaf to the audience:
(From Mike Klonsky's Small Talk blog:)
SCHOOL CLOSING QUOTABLES

Columnist Mark Brown

In the end, the board was so tone deaf to its audience that on the crucial vote that closed most of the schools, they used the parliamentary maneuver of adopting the previous favorable roll call — instead of taking the extra 30 seconds to each say “yes” once more. The average person in attendance didn’t even know the closings had been approved until it was over. -- "CPS closings vote shows it’s time for an elected school board"

Sports writer Dave Zirin

It all starts with the person who seems committed to win the current spirited competition as the most loathsome person in American political life: Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The same Mayor overseeing the closing of fifty-four schools and six community mental health clinics under the justification of a “budgetary crisis” has announced that the city will be handing over more than $100 million to DePaul University for a new basketball arena. -- The Nation

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And this post on who gains from the losses during the school closures:

TFA to expand in Chicago areas where many schools were closed, quality teachers laid off.

It's hard to imagine that a record number of school closings in Chicago is so obviously opening the way for Teach for America to take over those areas.

From Katie Osgood at The Chalk Face blog:

Teach for America Has Gone Too Far

But TFA’s recent actions have sent me over the edge. Last night, on twitter, I was appalled to watch tweets fly by about a very fancy, very expensive fundraising dinner taking place in Chicago’s swanky Drake Hotel. As a union-supporter, I am used to the dirty old union halls, folding chairs, sometimes church basements, and maybe a bag of Cheetos for eats, if you’re lucky. I can barely imagine the sort of people who pay $10,000 for a table. Ok, I CAN imagine. They are the same people we must battle everyday in the EdReform Wars.

....Guess which neighborhoods TFA is targeting for their expansion? The very same communities being traumatized by the largest single number of school closings in the history of America. TFA is poised to profit dramatically from the misfortune of hundreds of teachers and thousands of students.

And how TFA has rationalized this expansion to themselves, or anyone else, is beyond me. CPS has told schools they must be closed due to “underutilization” (A suspect claim at best). They say Chicago has too few kids and too many schools, including too many teachers/staff. Due to a supposed budget shortfall of $1 billion dollars (also HIGHLY suspect), CPS says schools must be consolidated. Let me say that again, CPS is telling us that we have essentially too many teachers and buildings in the system.

And TFA wants to go into those communities after mass layoffs–where many quality veteran teachers will be displaced and many may not be rehired, teachers who fought side-by-side with the students and parents of the schools, teachers loved by the community–and offer them uncertified, poorly-trained novices many of whom have never even been to the Midwest, much less know the varied individual neighborhoods of Chicago. It’s like TFA is kicking these communities while they are down. “I know your school was just robbed from you, despite your loud, relentless, justified protest, but here are some uncertified, severely undertrained non-educators who won’t stick around long. We at TFA don’t think your kids deserve properly trained teachers dedicated long-term to your community any more than you deserve the choice of democratic neighborhood schools.”

That is truly insulting to the career teachers who are losing their jobs, to the parents and students who are losing their community schools.

TFA needs to stop thinking their group is superior to experienced teachers. Some Democratic leaders I know need to speak out about the way they are moving into communities when schools are closed.

From 2012 another condescending move by TFA toward public school teachers.

While the budget picture looks no more pleasant than it has in past years, Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources Jacqueline Ellis said the A.J. Fletcher Foundation, a Raleigh-based nonprofit, has offered to cover the $3,000-per-teacher placement fee that TFA would have charged the district for the 15 teachers.

The positions that TFA teachers would fill are among 21 made available by retirements, resignations and transfers.

.."The 15 teachers primarily would be placed in math, science and exceptional children's classes -- all of which can be difficult to fill, especially in a low-performing school like Neal. TFA would also like to offer training to traditionally trained teachers who are already at the school.

They wanted to "train" veteran teachers to think that all kids can succeed. The hubris is overwhelming.

A big piece of Neal's program would be the training for veteran teachers - it's all about changing the mind-set of teachers to believe that every student can succeed, Lakis said. He said TFA is still working out the framework for the training program..."

New Affront to Chicago Teachers, Other Workers: Obama Nominates Penny Pritzker Commerce Secretary

OBAMA NOMINATES CONTROVERSIAL BUSINESS FIGURE PRITZKER TO HEAD COMMERCE DEPARTMENT - OPPOSITION PETITION GATHERS OVER 3,200 SIGNATURES - CONTROVERSY NOW MOVES TO SENATE, WHICH MUST CONFIRM OR REJECT THE APPOINTMENT - MASS CHI. STUDENT WALK-OUTS OVER HIGH STAKES TESTS, TEACHER FIRINGS
President Barack Obama has made a number of moves that have been affronts to teachers and to working people.

His nomination of Penny Pritzker is one of his most brazen affronts to these groups. Of course, one can easily see a pay-back in all this: Pritzker was a key fund-raiser for his 2008 presidential campaign and a behind the scenes funds donations bundler in the 2012 election campaign.

She has drawn controversy in Chicago as the highest-profile member of the Chicago Board of Education overseeing the Chicago Public Schools (CPS), playing most loyal advocate for mayor Rahm Emanuel's "reform" program of closing schools, opening charter schools and fighting against the Chicago Teachers Union. Additionally, she's drawn criticism for her general labor stand --so much so, that progressives launched a petition on the CREDO site gained over 3,200 signatures.

Even by February anticipation of an Obama nomination of Pritzker was giving labor activists the willies, as the Huffington Post reported Februrary 8, 2013. But Obama went ahead, anyway.

Here is the text of the CREDO ACTION petition to Obama against his Pritzker appointment:

Penny Pritzker is an anti-worker business mogul who should not be appointed to head the Commerce Department. Why is this important?

Recent reports indicate that President Barack Obama has chosen Penny Pritzker as a finalist for an appointment to head the Department of Commerce. She is a long-time friend of the President as well as a billionaire, anti-worker business mogul from Chicago. The President received tremendous support during his re-election campaign from unions and working families and it is unacceptable for him to name an anti-worker businesswoman for this position.

As a member of the Hyatt Hotel chain board Penny Pritzker has refused to intercede on behalf of struggling workers. Last summer Chicago workers who organized a rally had the hotel's heat lamps turned on during a mid-summer heatwave. Housekeepers have had their workloads nearly double without proper compensation. All the while Penny has remained silent.

She stood by as her family's hotel chain received a companywide letter from OSHA that warned them of hazards facing housekeepers on the job.

Ms. Pritzker serves on the Chicago Public School's Board of Education. In her role she attempted to bust the union with her fellow board members by closing public schools and opening charter schools, mostly operated by the well-connected, that do not recognize the local union. She has stated that students merely need enough skills in reading, mathematics, and science to be productive members of the workforce. Forget the arts, gym, music, etc.

Her time in public service epitomizes the 1% versus 99%. As one of the wealthiest people in the country she wants our children to become members of the workforce instead of creative, engaged, and well-rounded citizens of the country that she seeks to serve as Commerce Secretary.

Mr. President, we are worth more than a Penny.

Sign my petition urging President Obama to not appoint an anti worker businesswoman as the next Commerce Secretary of the United States.

Here's what some of the press has been saying about Obama's nomination of Pritzker:
The Chicago Tribune wrote a piece lauding Obama for the appointment. However it noted some trouble absent from many of the recent accounts on Pritzker's business history. In addition to the controversies regarding her management stance and her posture towards Chicago students and teachers, she has been involved in banks that got involved in sub-prime mortgages, a role for which she has received kid gloves treatment for her wrong-doing.

During the early 1990s, she chaired Superior Bank, a suburban Chicago lender her family co-owned that later collapsed amid accounting irregularities and subprime loans gone bad. Federal regulators seized it in 2001.

The Pritzkers and their co-owners settled with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. for $460 million, without admitting liability. The FDIC also let the family share in part of a recovery the government obtained from the bank's auditor, Ernst & Young. Neither the federal insurance fund nor some depositors were ever made whole.

It was an unusual deal, and Pritzker no doubt will be asked about it.

Recent national press reports have only obliquely addressed Pritzker's contentious role as head of the Chicago Public Schools Board.

The union fought back against Pritzker and the Board's plans this winter with a satire scary bed-time story, “Stand Up to the Fat Cats,” and a coloring book, the Sun-Times reported December 12, 2012.

With good reason, Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis welcomed her departure from the Board. See this interview, published March 14, 2013, by the Chicago Mag, "Karen Lewis Says Good Riddance to Penny Pritzker."

In recent weeks (in Pritzker's absence, as she has moved on from the Board) Chicago students have been staging mass walk-outs (April 24) against standardized tests and Friday, May 2 against teacher firings. Jacob Chamberlain at Common Dreams noted the various controversies she has stirred.

President Barack Obama nominated another corporate billionaire to his cabinet on Thursday, announcing hotel heiress Penny Pritzker—also longtime Obama supporter and "heavyweight" fundraiser— as his pick to be Secretary of Commerce.

U.S. President Barack Obama announces Penny Pritzker, right, as his nominee for Secretary of Commerce (Reuters) As the Chicago Tribune reports:

Pritzker's nomination could prove controversial. She is on the board of Chicago-based Hyatt Hotels Corp., which was founded by her wealthy family and has had rocky relations with labor unions, and she could face questions about the failure of a bank partly owned by her family.

With a personal fortune estimated at $1.85 billion, Pritzker, 54, is listed by Forbes magazine among the 300 wealthiest Americans.

Ahead of her nomination, a petition organized by CREDO Action urged Obama not to nominate Pritzker, calling her "an anti-worker business mogul who should not be appointed to head the Commerce Department."

The Chicago Tribune adds:

Pritzker also could draw fire from labor leaders. Hyatt has long battled Unite Here in Los Angeles, Chicago and elsewhere. And Pritzker, who served on the Chicago Board of Education until she resigned in March, has been harshly criticized by the Chicago Teachers Union. When she stepped down, a union official said she "has a long and storied history as an anti-labor and anti-worker kind of boss. [...] She could also face scrutiny over the collapse of Superior Bank, which was co-owned by her family. The bank, based in Hinsdale, Ill., was involved in subprime mortgage lending, and its failure in 2001 stirred charges of fraud and mismanagement.

The Tribune reports that Pritzker stepped down from the Chicago Board of Education in March just "days before Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced he had targeted 53 elementary schools and a high school program to close, affecting an estimated 30,000 students."

Such a move allowed Pritzker to avoid "a politically unpopular vote" and "further protests" from angry community members and unionized teachers who loudly objected to the closing.

"We know Penny Pritzker has a long and storied history as an anti-labor and anti-worker kind of boss," Kristine Mayle, financial secretary of the Chicago Teachers Union, told the Tribune in March. "Her policies adversely affect working families. She has worked to close schools and destabilize neighborhoods, and we hope she does a better job in her new position, if she gets it."

And investigative reporter Dennis Bernstein says that Pritzker's nomination is additionally controversial becuase of her involvment in a sub-prime mortgage scandal and the collapse of Superior Bank in Chicago in 2001.

According to Bernstein:

Penny Pritzker played fast and loose with the American Dream. Her pioneering sub-prime operations, out of Superior Bank in Chicago, specifically targeted poor and working class people of color across the country. She ended up crashing Superior for a billion dollar cost to tax payers, and creating a personal tragedy for the 1,400 people who lost their savings when the bank failed. Pritzker, whose family controls Hyatt Regency Hotels, is in the top one percent of the one percent. Her extreme wealth and privilege has not only made her virtually untouchable by law enforcement, but will now allow her to cleanse her sordid sub-prime banking record by becoming the first woman Secretary of Commerce.

During the official nomination ceremony, Obama said of Pritzker, "She knows from experience that no government program alone can take the place of a great entrepreneur."

But as blogger DS Wright suggests at FireDogLake, wouldn't a better Commerce Secretary be someone who was not "at odds with labor unions" or one without "problems complying with bank regulations".

Pritzker's nomination now awaits a confirmation process in the Senate.

Liberal and progressive Democratic senators now must show their integrity and oppose Pritzker's appointment.

Are President Obama's Education Policies Helping Our Kids?

AlterNet / By Kristin Rawls, June 19, 2012
Are the President's Education Policies Helping Our Kids?:
An end-of-term report card assesses how the Obama administration has performed on five critical education issues.

When Barack Obama ran for office in 2008, he did so on an education platform that was “ambitious” to say the least. Then-candidate Obama was clear that he aimed to reform America’s entire education system, from preschool on up through higher education -- and during his first term as president, his administration has indeed made significant changes to educational policy. But have those changes been for the better? Have schools, and their students, benefited from the Obama administration’s educational maneuvers over this first term? As it turns out, the answer is: not necessarily.

Herewith, a look at five critical education issues in America today, and how the president and his team have handled them so far:

1. Funding for Early Childhood Education

It is well-established that early childhood education is a crucial means of improving school readiness and performance among at-risk children. Studies show that preschool reduces high school dropout rates while increasing the likelihood that students will go on to higher education. Furthermore, early childhood education is a great investment: a 2005 MIT study found that every dollar spent on early childhood education reduces future social services expenditures by $13.

Given all that, Obama’s 2008 campaign promises to invest extensively in early childhood education seemed like a no-brainer. And on the surface, he seems to have delivered: the administration’s 2011 Race to the Top Early-Learning Challenge -- a $500 million grant competition that funds preschool programs like Head Start -- allocates a whopping 71 percent of 2011’s $700 million Race to the Top funds to early education.

But the devil, as always, is in the details. Of the 37 states that submitted applications for assistance, only nine won funding: California, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island and Washington. The winning states were required to make a number of corporate-based reforms in order to compete for the preschool funding – including committing to a set of accountability procedures provided by a privately managed preschool assessment agency called Quality Rating and Improvement Systems. QRIS heavily emphasizes things like classroom décor, teacher assessment and parent participation – but even corporate reformer Sarah Mead of Bellwether Education Partners says, “[T]here’s not much evidence that creating QRIS will produce any significant improvements in children’s readiness to learn… The research that does exist is not encouraging: A study…by researchers at the RAND Corporation found little to no evidence of a relationship between childcare programs’….ratings and…outcomes.”

Ultimately, the states with preschool facilities most in need of money and support – those that could not afford to introduce the new QRIS standards in time – were shut out of the competition. States had just three months to prepare extensive applications, and most did not have the time or resources to introduce comprehensive QRIS accountability measures in that short amount of time. For the states that won, this is clearly a financial boon – but in 41 other states, preschoolers are still wanting.

So has the Obama administration invested in early childhood education? Yes -- but in a way that, as yet, has done little to improve early education in the majority of states.

2. Primary and Secondary Education Reform

There is little doubt that President Obama is a strong supporter of the corporate “reforms” that have crept into American education policy over the past three decades – and he appears to be a particular supporter of charter schools. As Ken Saltman, professor of educational policy studies and research at DePaul University, tells AlterNet:

[Obama] has pushed charter schools and other radical market-based turnarounds, like closing schools and firing all the teachers and staff… In some states, like Michigan, the chartering is heavily for-profit. In other states, like Illinois, chartering is predominantly non-profit, but the non-profits still contract with for-profit corporations. In any case, the key issue is that the model that has won is one of market competition and choice.

Yet there is scant evidence that replacing traditional public schools with charter schools improves learning outcomes – even conservative pro-charter think tanks like the Hoover Institute and Mathematica have found little, if any, proof that charter schools fare better than traditional publics overall: A 2009 report from Hoover found that “charter schools performed worse than public schools 36 percent of the time, performed better 17 percent of the time, and performed no differently the rest of the time. The…study suggests that charter schools are twice as likely to make student achievement worse as they are to improve it.”

The report also goes on to point out that subsequent research “on charter schools in New York City, California, Idaho, Indiana, Minnesota and New Jersey, among others, are all consistent with both the Mathematica and CREDO studies: Charters do not increase student achievement compared to regular public schools.”

Beyond charters, the Obama administration has pushed corporate reform in at least two other ways: 1) through the executive initiative called Race to the Top (RTTT); and 2) through continued enforcement of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).

Launched in 2009 as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, RTTT rewards a handful of states with large sums of money in return for implementing far-reaching corporate initiatives -- like replacing public schools with privately managed charters, introducing school choice, tying high-stakes test scores to teacher evaluations and promoting corporate partnerships through computerization (i.e., online coursework). The program is, as its name implies, a contest, or “race”: States compete for a slice of the $4.35 billion in federal funding, winning or losing dollars based on how comprehensively they are able (or willing) to introduce these “reforms.”

In addition, the administration has continued to enforce NCLB mandates, even expanding the focus on high-stakes testing. (The administration has begun offering one-year NCLB waivers to states – but only in exchange for more consistent implementation of corporate reforms.) For example, in March of 2010, the administration released a blueprint for revising NCLB that encouraged states to adopt federal guidelines called the Common Core State Standards Initiative. These “high quality statewide assessments” in reading and math aim to streamline curricula across states, and RTTT funding is tied to their adoption. The Common Core will also eventually result in students from states with poor educational funding being tested using rubrics nearly identical to those used to asses students in very wealthy states -- a huge red flag for anyone who understands that quality of education closely follows school funding, which is uneven at best across this nation.

Yet, ultimately, there is little substantive research that shows that corporate reforms of these kinds improve academic achievement overall. In March 2012, professor and public school advocate Gary Rubinstein’s released an analysis showing almost no correlation between high-stakes testing and student achievement over multiple years. These findings were consistent with a 2005 University of Arizona study that found “no convincing evidence” that testing improves student performance.

Still, the focus on test scores and “accountability” continues to grow, with solid policy backing from the Obama administration.

3. Access to Higher Education and Student Debt

President Obama’s record on higher education is mixed, but has more to recommend it than the rest of his education agenda. On the positive side, the administration has made real gains when it comes to expanding college accessibility and the treatment of student loans. It has doubled the amount of money provided for Pell Grants by cutting private companies out of federal grade exchanges, bringing the number of eligible recipients up to nine million -- a three million student increase during this first term in office. And administration has also promoted price controls to rein in tuition increases, though these have not yet been instituted in policy (such controls may actually be very susceptible to loopholes that allow universities to “revise their calculations of what families can afford to pay – and raise their tuitions accordingly.”)

In addition, the Obama team has made progress in making some student loans more manageable. Students who graduate in 2012 or later will not be required to make federal education loan repayments that exceed 10 percent of their income. Plus, if these graduates cannot repay the loans within 20 years, they will be forgiven.

But while this loan repayment program is clearly a step forward, it still doesn’t go nearly as far as it should. Though it will provided much needed help to the 1.6 million students who graduated or will graduate this year, there are another 34.4 million graduates with student loans who are not eligible to receive this benefit. Additionally, the program does nothing to rein in predatory private student loan companies like Sallie Mae that are hitting graduates with severe credit penalties, targeting them for harassment and leveling lawsuits against them. And students who have defaulted on student loans in the past cannot get help through this new program – even though student loans remain the only kind of debt not dischargeable through bankruptcy in the US.

Finally, the administration has made mixed progress in standing up to predatory for-profit universities like Strayer and the University of Phoenix. Encouragingly, the administration did issue an executive order banning these universities from recruiting among veterans and troops. But while veterans are now receiving protection from these institutions, there has been no move on the administration’s part to stop them from recruiting at, for example, high schools with large numbers of poor students -- leaving millions of young students terribly at-risk.

[Note: Last week, the administration announced a plan to grant legal work status – not a path to citizenship – to up to a million undocumented young people who would have been eligible for the DREAM Act. The memo removes the threat of deportation for these individuals and allows legal work status in the US. It is unclear whether the memo will have any impact on access to higher education at this time.]

4. Supporting Teachers

The country’s two largest teachers unions, the National Association of Educators (NEA) and AFL-CIO affiliate the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), endorsed President Obama in July 2011 and February 2012, respectively. They did this in spite of the fact that the Obama administration makes no secret of its disdain for both organizations. On May 25, Stephanie Cutter, deputy campaign manager for Obama 2012, tweeted the following off-the-cuff rebuttal of Romney’s insistence that the unions and the Obama administration are close:

FACT CHECK: Romney off on Obama’s relationship with teachers’ unions; it’s anything but cozy: http://wapo.st/Lu0nYZ

[Ed.: the above link leads to a dead Washington Post link. The following is a posting on Matt Browner Hamlin's Hold Fast blog that includes part of that now deleting article on Obama's mythical cozy relationship with teachers' unions.]

OFA & Teachers’ Unions May 25th, 2012 · No Comments

Stephanie Cutter is OFA’s Deputy Campaign Manager. She tweeted:

@stefcutter FACT CHECK: Romney off on Obama’s relationship with teachers’ unions; it’s anything but cozy: //wapo.st/Lu0nYZ

The article she links to is an AP fact check that outlines how Mitt Romney is wrong to say Obama is cozy with teachers’ unions. From the article:

ROMNEY: “President Obama has been unable to stand up to union bosses — and unwilling to stand up for kids.”

THE FACTS: Several of the core tenets of the Obama administration’s signature education initiative, the Race to the Top competition, are policies first heralded by Republicans and are in opposition to the steadfast positions of teacher unions on topics like school choice and merit pay for teachers.

… At its annual meeting last year, the National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers union, sent a message to Obama that it was “appalled” with Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s practice of focusing heavily on charter schools, supporting decisions to fire all staff and using high-stakes standardized test scores for teacher evaluations, along with 10 other policies mentioned.

“Obama has taken on teachers unions unlike any previous Democratic president,” said Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institution. “Because of that his support among union members, although it is still there, is rather tepid.”

And again, this is an article that Cutter linked to approvingly.

Of course, Cutter is absolutely correct. Obama is not cozy to teachers’ unions. But the fact that the campaign is openly campaigning on the lack of support for workers shows they think unions are totally captured punks who won’t stop their support of Obama, even in the face of public humiliation like this. And, of course, OFA is right.

Update: Following pressure by pro-worker progressives on Twitter, Cutter has responded with this:

Pres. fights for unions/teachers b/c he believes in them-Mitt dishonest about being beholden to them MT@nitalovesmiles LAME.Explain yourself

Well Cutter certainly did a poor job expressing this. The article Cutter linked to does a pretty good job of showing how the administration’s education policies demonstrate real differences with teachers’ unions. These are differences manifested in concrete policy choices and frameworks for how they think about education. President Obama may way make the occasional good speech to a union audience, but his administration’s actions, especially around teachers’ unions, don’t really come close to his rhetoric. As is so often the case with this President, you are forced to ask, “Who am I going to believe: him or my lying eyes?”

When I read the fact check, I didn’t say, “Wow this is bad reporting,” I said, “Yep, that’s about right.” Staying within the GOP frame is not bad politics here (though it may be that too), it’s that the administration doesn’t have the policy record supporting statements outside the GOP frame.

Returning now to Rawls' article:

It may have been the most honest take on Obama’s relationship with the unions yet. The administration has indeed displayed very little “coziness” with teachers unions, consistently backing policies they oppose. Most importantly, the administration has expanded punitive teacher accountability measures beyond those set by NCLB. As noted above, Obama’s RTTT offers millions of dollars to school systems that tie teacher evaluations to student test performance, undermining job security protections like tenure. The result, Professor Ken Saltman says, is to “transform teaching into a low-skilled, low-paid workforce.”

Obama’s policies have also weakened the collective bargaining rights teachers still hold in some states.Though Obama claims to oppose mass teacher layoffs, and has introduced legislative measures to stop them, his support has been inconsistent: in February, Obama supported a Rhode Island school district’s plan to lay off all of its schoolteachers, and he has religiously supported so-called merit-based teacher layoffs for teachers whose students score poorly on standardized tests.

The only issue on which Obama and unions appear to see eye to eye is on school vouchers -- that is, the use of public money for funding private and religious school tuition. Like the teachers unions, the president has vocal and consistent in his opposition to vouchers -- but praise from far-right governors is at least one indication of how far to the right the president's education policies lie overall. Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, who has just pushed an extensive voucher program through the state legislature, publicly praised Obama’s privatization measures in March. He joined a number of other pro-voucher, anti-union Republican governors who have supported Obama’s education policies, from Bob McDonnell of Virginia to Mitch Daniels of Indiana.

5. Advancing Equity

Corporate reformers like to dismiss calls for equitable school funding by claiming that “throwing money at the problem” of inequality in education doesn’t solve the problem. Yet in 2010, a Rutgers study found that,

"Student poverty -- especially concentrated student poverty -- is the most critical variable affecting funding levels. Student and school poverty correlates with, and is a proxy for, a multitude of factors that impact upon the costs of providing equal education opportunity -- most notably, gaps in educational achievement, school district racial composition, English language proficiency, and student mobility.”

In other words, student poverty and under-funded schools are the most important predictors of, among other things, low student achievement. As New York University professor Pedro Noguera points out,

"The achievement gap is first and foremost an educational manifestation of social inequality... In cities where the economy has collapsed and there is a shortage of good jobs -- as in Detroit; Cleveland; St. Louis; Buffalo, New York; and Erie, Pennsylvania -- schools lack the resources to improve and students increasingly lack the will to achieve… If educators fail to understand or fail to address the numerous ways in which other inequities -- in income, health, housing, etc. -- interact with learning outcomes, then much of what is done to ameliorate the problem will simply not work."

But despite much evidence that inequality is the defining educational issue of our day, the Obama team has largely chosen to skirt this thornier set of problems, focusing instead on teacher and student accountability -- and improving test scores. The president’s selection of Chicago-area corporate reformer Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education was an early indication of how little educational equity would feature in the Obama administration; true to form, Duncan quickly shaped the expansions of NCLB to mirror those already in place in Chicago public schools, where growing funding inequality and an increasing achievement gap have followed fast on the heels of Duncan’s market-based reforms.

As education scholars Pauline Lipman and Nathan Haines explain, the Chicago system masterminded by Duncan created,

"…an accountability system that institutionalized a simplistic, one-size-fits-all practice of demarcating students, teachers, and schools into those deemed ‘failing’ or ‘successful’ and then meted out penalties without regard for inequities in resources, opportunities to learn, teacher’s ideologies, cultural disconnections in curriculum and instruction, social contexts of the school, or strengths children bring to the school setting."

Duncan’s means of treating the dozens of schools deemed “failing” in Chicago under his watch was to shutter them, and to encourage charter schools to spring up in their place. But just as there is no real proof charter schools boost academic achievement, there is also little evidence that they ameliorate inequality -- in fact, they may actually promote it. As Chandra Nerissa Larsen of Sonoma State University points out, Chicago charters now “serve 6-7% fewer low-income students, half as many limited-English-proficient students, and statistically significant fewer students with special needs than regular public neighborhood schools” – prime examples of how charters exclude students most likely to bring down scores and abandon them to increasingly underfunded traditional publics as resources are shifted to charters.

Though few politicians can find it within themselves to admit it, there is no doubt that without treating the equity issue, we will forever fall short of resolving the real problems plaguing our education system. Paul Thomas, associate professor of education at Furman University, writes, “If leaders and policy makers are willing to confront the evidence of social and educational inequity, this hope may lead to the changes promised by the current president now trapped in ‘no excuses’ reform commitments that offer no hope or change.”

Educators alone simply cannot fix such entrenched social problems. But they might make better progress with equitable school funding to ensure that schools needing the most help get more money. Unfortunately, President Obama’s corporate reform measures do just the opposite.

It is widely understood that unfettered capitalist economic policies led to the financial collapse of 2008; we should not be surprised that they are also disastrous when applied to public goods like education. Without a renewed investment in the pro-equity educational tradition in America that spans from John Dewey to bell hooks, poor children and poor schools will continue to be left behind by the US education system. And our whole nation may pay the price.

Kristin Rawls is a freelance writer whose work has also appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, GOOD Magazine, Religion Dispatches, Killing the Buddha, Global Comment and elsewhere online.