“Reforming” Education back to the Stone Age

Sep 17, 2012

When the Chicago Teachers’ strike broke out, the news media was hit with an anti-union campaign. A full-page ad in USA Today (September 14) declared, “Someone New is Blocking the Schoolhouse Door: Teachers Unions.” It was paid for by a Washington lobbyist who has long represented companies out to bust unions.

A television ad that ran on local Chicago ABC stations blared out attacks on the union, the teachers and the strike, with veiled threats against teachers if they don’t cave in. This ad was paid for by a group calling itself Education Reform Now (ERN).

Reform? What a joke! ERN, like its parent, Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), is headed by a board of directors made up of six Wall Street speculators and one so-called “educator.”So it’s no surprise that DFER openly calls for ending teachers’ seniority rights, increased testing, busting unions and privatizing public schools by turning them into charters–all in order to reduce how much money is paid for schools and staff–so that the very richest can pocket massive profits.

These financiers may pay big money for advertisements, but it is very small change compared to the profit they hope to squeeze out of public education nationwide. When lobbyists for Wall Street helped to push through a new law in the New York State legislature allotting more money for charter schools, a New York money manager congratulated his partners “on an investment of one million dollars that yielded an estimated 400 million dollars.” (New York Sun, May 31, 2007)

A few multi-billionaires are trying to get even richer by destroying the education of young people and the jobs and livelihoods of masses of educators.

Get their filthy hands off our schools!