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LP - Chicago's rich turn on the schools. They must have a lot of experience in them.
WASHINGTON -- As the Chicago teachers strike edges toward its close, both sides of the education reform debate are trumpeting arguments for or against the strike and the policies put forward by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Beneath the rhetoric lies a stream of fundraising aimed at influencing lawmakers and the public on education policy that has, in recent years, shifted away from the teachers union and toward education reformers backed by some of the wealthiest members of Chicago's elite.
Stand for Children is a non-profit education reform group advocating for the inclusion of standardized test scores in teacher evaluations, charter schools and decreased teacher union power. Over the past three years, the group's political action committee has raised more than $4 million and doled out more than $1 million to politicians, political parties and other political committees in Chicago and around Illinois. That's more than double the $460,000 the Chicago Teachers Union PAC has given to political campaigns and other committees over the same period of time. While contributions from the Illinois Federation of Teachers bring the two sides into closer competition, much of IFT's contributions went to a Supreme Court race in 2010.
All of that money -- raised from billionaires in hedge funds, private equity and real estate -- has been used to push Stand for Children's aggressive, hard-charging agenda, which assumes unionization often runs counter to the interest of education. Part of that agenda was attempting make it impossible for the Chicago Teachers Union to strike, though it only made the union more defiant.
The biggest victory for this new monied coalition came in 2011 when Gov. Pat Quinn signed Senate Bill 7, which made teacher tenure and layoffs contingent on achievement and rearranged teachers' salary schedules to align with evaluations instead of seniority. The bill also took certain topics, such as class size, off the table in collective bargaining negotiations. The bill actually had the support of the Chicago Teacher's Union until the last second, when its president, Karen Lewis, realized that the bill also made it harder for the union to call a strike. Previously, the CTU only needed a simple majority of assent from its members to walk out; it now needs 75 percent.
In comments to The Huffington Post made prior to the current strike, Jonah Edelman, Stand for Children's co-founder and CEO, hailed the bill as a key stepping stone toward preventing a future strike. "Going forward, [Senate Bill 7] will prevent the threat of the strike precluding progress for students."
"A year ago in Illinois ... these types of reforms would have been considered absolutely impossible," Edelman said at the time.
That possibility was made a reality thanks to the huge injection of money by wealthy Chicagoans from the worlds of high finance and real estate.
Full Story: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/14/chicago-teachers-stand-for-children_n_1885421.html
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