Standing for Corporate America
In a rare moment of ruling class honesty, billionaire James Crown and Stand for Children CEO Jonah Edelman revealed the union-bashing corporate agenda behind education reform in a recent speech.
Speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival, they explained how Stand for Children, a nonprofit ostensibly dedicated to helping “all children get the excellent public education…they need to thrive,” helped push through legislation in Illinois aimed at severely restricting teacher union rights.
Their panel discussion, titled “If It Can Happen There, It Can Happen Anywhere: Transformational Education Legislation in Illinois,” began with Crown painting a picture of an all-powerful teachers union that consistently blocks education reform and has a stranglehold on Illinois politics:
[W]e had a mayor who talked importantly about reforming the schools, Mayor Daley, and we had a CEO of public schools, Arne Duncan, who did everything he could in that environment. But this
