Has education reform lost its power?
When President Obama tapped deputy education secretary John B. King Jr. to replace his departing boss, Arne Duncan, he signaled that the US Department of Education would maintain its course during the final year of Obama’s term.
But everything else about the politics of education is in flux — because the political dynamics that brought Duncan and King to prominence in Washington may finally have run their course.
Duncan, the former Chicago public schools chief, has been in the vanguard of an education reform movement that links greater funding to higher academic standards, more accountability for schools, and the creation of independent publicly funded schools to provide competition for large, lumbering school systems. King, a founder of the Roxbury Preparatory Charter School in Mission Hill and the former commissioner of education in New York state, has similar credentials.
But whether ed reformers will have much traction among Democrats in the post-Obama era is another question entirely. As Hillary Clinton seeks to fend off challengers to her left, she’s picked up the support of the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers — two powerful unions that are deeply skeptical of charter schools and high-stakes testing.
And while public employee unions were the object of particular suspicion at the depth of the recession, labor groups are finding a more receptive audience during a weak recovery marked by yawning inequality. In this spirit, pro-union activists have sought to rebrand business-backed policies as “corporate education reform.”
