Michelle Rhee’s minions meet their match: New anti-charter group declares war
High-profile Democrats -- from Donna Brazile to Jennifer Granholm -- are saying enough is enough re: charter-mania
The internal war among Democrats over education policy escalated another notch this weekend at the annual convention of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) union in Los Angeles. Delegates savaged the “education reform” agenda as a corporate-led threat to “everything we hold dear.” And three high-profile party stalwarts announced the formation of Democrats for Public Education, to contest the reform agenda with a public-centered alternative. We’re likely to see proxy fights between these opposing forces for years to come.
For many years now, Democrats at the highest levels – including President Obama and his Education Secretary Arne Duncan – have pursued a series of so-called reform policies, which include charter schools, test-based teacher evaluations and eliminations of tenure. The Race to the Top program, where the Education Department forced school policy changes as a condition for competing for additional funding support, engendered a quiet revolution in the classroom. Duncan famously called Hurricane Katrina “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans,” an example of his desire to overhaul school districts and break union power.
Teacher’s unions typically resisted the reformers, but in the end would come back into the Democrats’ fold, perceiving Republicans as worse. Both the AFT and the National Education Association (NEA) endorsed President Obama in 2012. With teachers a substantial part of the Democratic activist base, unions had reasons to downplay the disagreements.
But a ruling out of California became a touchstone, bringing this simmering debate further into the open. In the Vergara case, bankrolled by Silicon Valley elites, a state judge effectively invalidated California’s teacher tenure rule as violating the civil rights of poor students, who cannot have bad teachers jettisoned from their classrooms. The ruling earned praise from Arne Duncan, and Obama Administration alums formed a public relations group to support future copycat lawsuits in other states. Vergara threatens perhaps the core position of teacher’s unions – job security for their members.
