As Chicago Public Schools begins what are certain to be contentious contract talks with the Chicago Teachers Union, Mayor Rahm Emanuel emerged as the star of a new online video promoting charter schools and ripping the union.
An exclusive interview with Emanuel highlights the 35-minute video produced by the Michigan-based Education Action Group Foundation and Fox News political analyst Juan Williams. Williams narrates the video, saying the teachers union is “radically politicized” and is “repeatedly providing terrible examples for Chicago’s school children.” (Scroll down to see the video)
A spokeswoman for Emanuel said Monday the mayor did not share those views of the union, but CTU officials were irked by Emanuel’s more-measured comments in an interview with Williams. The mayor discusses the opposition he faced from the CTU to some of his education proposals, such as extending the length of the school day this year.
“Do I think the union leadership has been a problem in resisting? Absolutely,” Emanuel tells Williams. Emanuel also says: “I think the system was never designed to benefit the kids.” And he lauds teachers at the Noble Street charter network’s schools as being “on a mission” and “not just doing a job.”
CTU spokeswoman Stephanie Gadlin described the mayor’s collaboration with the Education Action Group Foundation as odd. “Their new video is little more than right-wing propaganda that contributes nothing to the education debate in our city,” she said.
Kyle Olson, the founder and CEO of the Education Action Group Foundation, said he decided to focus the video on Emanuel’s education agenda, including his support for charter schools, partly because of the vocal opposition those efforts elicited from the union. The video’s title, “A Tale of Two Missions,” is a reference to the contrasting visions of the mayor and union officials, Olson said.
The video’s release last week came as Emanuel’s administration began negotiations with the union for a new four-year contract. Olson said the timing was not meant to coincide with the labor talks, but he hoped it would have an impact on public perception of the negotiations.
“You have got a mayor who wants to reform the school system and the teachers union is fighting him virtually every step of the way,” Olson told the Chicago News Cooperative on Monday. “Chicago Public Schools needs to be reformed, and the way you do that is through the contract.”
The interview with Emanuel was conducted in October, after Olson and Williams issued a request to the mayor’s office over the summer.
Tarrah Cooper, a spokeswoman for Emanuel, said the mayor agreed to the interview because the Education Action Group Foundation wanted to highlight school options in the city.
“He and Juan discussed the reforms within the Chicago Public Schools system to ensure that every child in every neighborhood has access to a world-class education to prepare them for college and career,” Cooper said in an email.
In the video, Williams refers to Emanuel’s decision to enroll his children in private school. “Those who are lucky enough to send their children to private schools, do,” Williams says. “Even the mayor has his children in private schools.”
The film also features clips of CTU President Karen Lewis giving a speech last year mocking U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s lisp and talking about her drug use during college. The footage of Lewis’ speech became public when the Education Action Group Foundation sent an edited version to media outlets in November. Lewis later apologized for her comments but criticized Olson as a “neoconservative, anti-labor and anti-public education blogger.”
Williams describes teachers unions in general as “beneficiaries of the failed status quo” who “obstruct and resist education reform whenever and however it is tried.” He touts charter schools, whose teachers largely are not unionized, as a “Chicago miracle” and a solution to poorly performing public schools, although state achievement test data released last year showed charters schools performed nearly the same as neighborhood schools.
Emanuel has been a firm supporter of charters, which receive taxpayer money but are privately operated. In last year’s mayoral election, Emanuel’s campaign co-chairman was Juan Rangel, who oversees one of the city’s largest charter school networks. Emanuel also has pushed for Chicago Public Schools to adopt policies used by charter operators, such as home visits by teachers, stiffer teacher performance standards and providing merit pay for teachers.
The Education Action Group Foundation is not the only out-of-state organization hoping to influence the contract talks in Chicago.
Mary Anderson, the executive director of Oregon-based Stand for Children’s Illinois office, said she was planning events such as telephone “town hall meetings” so parents can ask questions about the negotiations. “We want to make sure parents have a say in what’s happening,” she said.
In 2010, Stand For Children created a political committee that made donations to state lawmakers, and it was a driving force in winning approval for legislation that will extend the school day in Chicago next school year and make it harder for teachers to go on strike.
To counter such efforts, the CTU has hired veteran political consultant Delmarie Cobb, whose clients include Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown and City Council members Leslie Hairston (5th Ward) and Anthony Beale (9th).
Gadlin, the CTU spokeswoman, said union leaders hoped Cobb would help beef up the labor group’s public-relations efforts because they felt “outgunned” last year by Emanuel’s aggressive push for longer school hours.
“They’re very good, as you’ve seen with Kyle Olson,” she said.
The story of the mayor’s collaboration with this right wing group is incomplete without a full description of how Education Action Group has been harassing a Park Ridge teacher/blogger Fred Klonsky over time. EAG has filed FOIA requests for his emails and personnel records in a blatant (though thoroughly unsuccessful) to intimidate and silence him. Yes, these are the type of people that Mayor Emanuel chooses to be in business with, and if you look at the record, it comes as no surprise.
Praising charter school teachers because they have “a mission”? What sexist, antiquated thinking on Emanuel’s part – perpetuating the belief that educators are mere caregivers who shouldn’t care about equitable living wages, who are “second income” wage earners who don’t deserve or need professional wages or working conditions.
Is it truly Emanuel’s position that our children don’t deserve professional, experienced educators in the classroom, but should make do with fresh-out-of-college Teach for America interns who have all of five weeks’ training and who are in the program primarily for a resume entry?
The CPS educators I know – who Emanuel says are “only doing a job” – spend hours beyond their classroom time grading papers and devising lesson plans in the evening – and often spend their after-school hours with students doing tutoring or advising the few extra-curricular programs that survive in the CPS system. They do all of this for wages that often don’t allow them to meet the city’s residency requirement without considerable sacrifice, or having a spouse or partner with another full-time job.
Emanuel’s belief in charters and their “mission driven” teachers carries forward the erroneous and near-libelous belief that anyone who is employed by government is, by definition, incompetent and lazy and undeserving of a fair wage and working conditions. (I’d like to hear his response if the same sort of conclusory thinking was applied to his tenure as a public servant.)
It’s particularly galling now that charters are being forced to report on their actual track records & graduation rates – which often are no better than the so-called “dysfunctional public schools” they replaced, even when they cherry-pick their students. When are we going to admit that the public school system standing alone cannot cure the ills and dysfunctions caused by poverty and class & educational differences?
Great comments. And who is Kyle Olson? Is this person a teacher? Has he ever worked as a teacher? What are his qualifications? Is he even from Chicago? Wish they would all (including Rahm) watch Obama’s state of the union address in which he praised teachers and scolded those who are bashing them (through spin doctors and the media).
Obama was just paying lip service to teachers. His own Secretary of Ed (and buddy/crony) is leading the national teacher-bashing movement!