The Rahmney Plan for Schools
Mitt's approach to education sounds a lot like Mayor
Emanuel's

" Yes, that's right - Republican Romney and Democrat
Rahm are like two peas in a pod when it comes to
public education. It's a little ironic given that
Romney blames President Obama - Emanuel's former
boss at the White House - for everything that's
wrong with education today."

By Ben Joravsky

The Chicago Reader July 3, 2012

http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/romneys-plan-for-schools-sounds-like-rahms/Content?oid=6860548

In my role as the education guy at the Reader, I've
dutifully read Mitt Romney's position paper on public
education - a feat I doubt even Romney has accomplished.

You can read it yourself, if you're up for the challenge.
It's called "A Chance for Every Child" and it's only 30-some
pages long, even with all the footnotes intended to make it
seem like a scholarly dissertation as opposed to a salvo in
a presidential campaign.

Here's the big takeaway for Chicagoans: in many respects, it
reads like it could have been written by our very own union-
busting, charter-school-loving Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Yes, that's right - Republican Romney and Democrat Rahm are
like two peas in a pod when it comes to public education.
It's a little ironic given that Romney blames President
Obama - Emanuel's former boss at the White House - for
everything that's wrong with education today.

Along with teachers' unions, of course.

Let's take it one at a step at a time, starting with the
charters, which Romney loves almost as much as the family
dog - though I doubt he'd strap a charter school to the roof
of the car, even if he could.

"Charter schools are public schools of choice that are run
independently and freed from many of the rules and
regulations governing traditional school districts," says
the Romney missive. "Thanks to a strong and growing
bipartisan base of support, the charter movement is over
5,600 schools strong . . . . While the performance of
individual charter schools in improving student achievement
varies, the most successful among them are having
dramatically positive effects while working with some of the
nation's most disadvantaged students . . . . Under a Romney
Administration, more funds will be allocated to grow the
number of high-quality charter schools and create the
conditions under which they can flourish."

In Romney's defense, some of the things in that passage are
true. Charters do have bipartisan support, though I'm not
sure why. And they are growing like weeds - 110 in Chicago
alone, with 60 more to be added by 2017. I assume that
Romney will pump millions more into charters, if only
because they're also backed by key Republican donors.

But they don't score better than regular public schools
staffed by unionized teachers. Quite the contrary: in
Chicago and Illinois the highest-scoring schools are
unionized, complete with negotiated contracts governing
seniority, tenure, and hierarchical salaries. If you reduce
the field to schools with low-income students who live in
the surrounding neighborhoods, the scores are about the same
- though you can't really do this, since charters take kids
from everywhere. Hey, give the charters this: they're
masters of PR.

And, of course, they're generally nonunion shops. In
Chicago, state law prohibits charters from being represented
by the Chicago Teachers Union.

I suspect that's their greatest appeal to a Republican like
Romney. As he puts it, "America remains gridlocked in an
antiquated system controlled to a disturbing degree by the
unions representing teachers. The teachers unions spend
millions of dollars to influence the debate in favor of the
entrenched interests of adults, not the students our system
should serve."

Translation: Teachers' unions give to Democrats. Charter
supporters give to both Democrats and Republicans, but
mostly Republicans. Incidentally, like many other good
Republicans, he's also a fan of voucher programs that use
public money to send kids to private schools.

Let's not kid ourselves - this debate has very little to do
with education and a lot to do with politics. It's pretty
obvious to me that Romney doesn't have a clue about how to
address the great challenge of public education, which is
eradicating the performance gaps between the highest-
achieving schools, generally located in the wealthiest
communities, and their lower-scoring counterparts in poorer
communities.

And who can blame him? That's the hard stuff. But he does
know this: by beating the drum for charters and vouchers, he
helps the cause of Republicans by undercutting the
Democrats. It's good old-fashioned partisan politics, and
hats off to him and the rest of the Republicans for playing
it.

My main question is this: why is Mayor Emanuel - a lifelong
Democrat - joining in?

Probably for the same reason on a local level. The less
power the Chicago Teachers Union has, the more power the
mayor has - as if he doesn't have enough already.

As Mick Dumke and I noted in last week's cover story,
Emanuel routinely meets with charter school advocates and
funders - some of whom, like Kenneth Griffin, are also
generous donors to the mayor's campaign.

But he hasn't met with Chicago Teachers Union president
Karen Lewis since August 2, 2011, according to Lewis. And
that was the meeting where Emanuel lost his temper and
yelled, "Fuck you, Lewis!"

The mayor's defenders tell me he says "Fuck you" to everyone
- though I personally doubt he drops it on Griffin or any of
his other big-time donors.

Moreover, John Kupper, the political consultant Emanuel
often hires to write his speeches, helped lead the charge
against the union's recent strike-authorization vote by
producing commercials for an antiunion group called
Democrats for Education Reform. The purpose was to fire up
parents against the union in order to force teachers to vote
against a strike authorization.

It didn't work too well. Roughly 90 percent of the teachers
voted to give Lewis the authorization to call for a strike
should ongoing contract talks break down.

Kupper is a partner at AKPD, a firm started by David
Axelrod, who, as we all know, is President Obama's chief
political strategist. So you have Axelrod's firm helping
lead an antiunion campaign in the president's hometown while
Romney assails Obama for being a tool of the unions.

All of which makes about as much sense as our existing
marijuana laws.

I called Kupper to ask why he lent himself to antiunion
cause. He didn't get back to me.

But other Democratic strategists tell me there's a larger
strategy at play here. Let's follow their logic: Obama is
sensitive to Romney's charge that he's too beholden to
unions because he fears the accusation will alienate voters
in key swing states such as Virginia. So he's giving Emanuel
the green light to beat the crap out of Chicago teachers in
order to convince these swing voters that the president is
fed up with unions too.

Well, that's one theory, anyway.

Look at it this way, teachers: by working longer for less
and losing your tenure and watching while one school after
another gets handed over to the charters, you're doing your
part to help reelect President Obama. Not that Mayor
Emanuel, his former chief of staff, will thank you.

[Who is Ben Joravsky --
http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/ArticleArchives?author=847359

I moved to Chicago in 1981 and have been writing about local
politics ever since. I started freelancing for the Reader in
the early 1980s and became a full-time staff writer in 1990.
Since 2003, I've zeroed in on larger citywide matters, with
a special interest in exposing municipal financing scams,
most notably Tax Increment Financing and the city's proposal
to bring the Olympics to Chicago. I've also written dozens
of profiles and features, including my year with the
Roosevelt High School boys basketball team, which was
included in the Best American Sports Writing Anthology. Over
the last few years, Mick Dumke and I have collaborated on
investigations exposing everything from the parking-meter-
sale ripoff to our costly and unfairly enforced marijuana
laws. I've written five books, including Hoop Dreams and The
Greens, which I co-wrote with Rick Stone. I've won many
journalism prizes, including the 2010 Chicago Journalist of
the Year Award from the Chicago Journalists Association and
the 2010 Illinois Journalist of the Year Award from Northern
Illinois University. Last but not least, I also write for
The Third City, a daily humor blog that "rarely lies to the
American people." ]

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