Rahm Emanuel’s Non-Apology Apology for Being a School Privatization Cheerleader
Rahm Emanuel’s recent op-ed in The Atlantic may be one of the dumbest things I have ever read.
The title “I Used to Preach the Gospel of Education Reform. Then I Became the Mayor” seems to imply Emanuel has finally seen the light.
The outgoing Chicago Mayor USED TO subscribe to the radical right view that public schools should be privatized, student success should be defined almost entirely by standardized testing, teachers should be stripped of union protections and autonomy and poor black and brown people have no right to elect their own school directors.
But far from divorcing any of this Reagan-Bush-Trump-Clinton-Obama crap, he renews his vows to it.
This isn’t an apologia. It’s rebranding.
Emanuel had been White House Chief of Staff at the beginning of President Barack Obama’s first term. He’s a former U.S. Representative, and senior adviser to President Bill Clinton.
Yet he’s persona non grata.
Now that the extremely unpopular chief executive has decided not to seek re-election, he’s trying to secure his legacy – to make sure the history books don’t remember him as the Democrat In Name Only (DINO) mayor who closed an unprecedented number of schools serving mostly minority students while catering to the will of rich investors. He doesn’t want to be remembered as the lord on a hill CONTINUE READING: Rahm Emanuel’s Non-Apology Apology for Being a School Privatization Cheerleader | gadflyonthewallblog
