Sanders And Clinton Clash On Education Seeking AFT Nod
Those of us who have spent substantial time as classroom teachers teachers know that when it comes to politicians talking education, as John Mellencamp put it, “it’s what you do and not what you say,” that matters. Paying lip service to “educational excellence” and “high standards” is like saying you love America and support the troops–necessary platitudes that do not clearly illuminate what a candidate will actually do once elected. As the late Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone put it,
“Making students accountable for test scores works well on a bumper sticker and it allows many politicians to look good by saying that they will not tolerate failure. But it represents a hollow promise. Far from improving education, high-stakes testing marks a major retreat from fairness, from accuracy, from quality, and from equity.”
This brings us to the current push by the Democratic Party’s candidates for President to gain the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) endorsement. On an issue-by-issue basis, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are quite similar in their voting records. Both have voted against private and parochial school vouchers, both have consistently voted to maintain and increase federal funding for public education at the K-12 and university level, and both have received high marks from the National Education Association (NEA) for their voting records, 83% pro-teacher for Sanders and 82% for Clinton.
Since Clinton and Sanders have voted similarly in the past, we must look deeper into their current campaigns to see how they would individually govern on education issues. Hillary’s campaign just announced the creation of a Teacher PAC that will bring reformers and unions together ,” oversimplifying the education debate considerably since “reformer” can mean anything from supporting evaluating teachers on test scores, to charter schools, to private school vouchers, and since there is no such thing as the “union perspective” on improving education. This new Teacher PAC for Hillary also includes reference to not allowing any child to stay trapped in a failing school, which plays right into the hands of those who would replace traditional public schools with charters or private school vouchers. In the post Citizens United age, Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton might have to adjust her education policies to attract the dollars of “reformers” like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, while simultaneously using her history with the AFT to push for support from the teacher’s union. Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT, has been a friend of Hillary’s for years going back to when Weingarten was President of the New York City teacher’s union and Hillary was a New York Senator. Since Weingarten developed a reputation for being too chummy with billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg and giving in on too many issues of importance to rank and file teachers –like seniority and ability to file grievances against unfair administrative practices–this is a worrisome proposition for teachers in the classroom.
Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, does not have to mince words since he is not seeking the approval of wealthy donors. One of Sanders’ key campaign issues is the rising cost of college tuition, and in Vermont he fought for universal pre-K. Sanders has also spoken out and voted for de-emphasizing standardized testing in No Child Left Behind and using federal programs to recruit more math and science teachers. However, both Sanders and Clinton have used similar rhetoric about educating our children as individuals and not just as little test takers. (In fact Barack Obama said the same when running in 2008, then did the opposite with Race to the Top when in the White House.)
The main reason to be optimistic about how President Sanders would function on education, is that his campaign funds have always come from small individual donors and labor unions, not from large corporate or billionaire donors. Sanders has repeatedly said that he wants the United States to follow the Scandinavian political and economic model. Finland consistently ranks as the #1 school Sanders And Clinton Clash On Education Seeking AFT Nod:
