Passing Notes

In case you missed it, Barack Obama recently gave a major speech on Education in Ohio, where he called for:

• Doubling federal funding for charter schools and touting his record of doubling charter schools in Illinois;
• Rewarding excellent teachers with “merit pay” or “pay for performance”;
• Replacing ineffective teachers, even if they are tenured

Doesn’t this sound a bit like a Mayor we know from Cumberland, Rhode Island? That’s right, these are tenets of Mayor Dan McKee’s education plans. McKee and Best for Kids worked with a broad coalition of community leaders last session to expand Rhode Island’s charter school law. The most controversial elements of the law: those that will allow charter schools to offer “merit pay” and those that will allow charter schools to replace ineffective teachers.

The powerful NEA union decided to make McKee their enemy #1 as a result, vowing to take him out in a primary election and going on record with Education Week that McKee would “Pay at the polls.” They even resorted to personal attacks against those who supported charter schools.

But last week in Rhode Island’s primary campaign, McKee beat his primary challenger by an even bigger margin than he did in the last contest he faced with the same opponent, despite all the opposition smears of McKee’s stand on education. The Valley-Breeze summed up McKee’s big win this way:

With money and copywriting help from teacher union political action committees, Iwuc, a retired police sergeant, made the race a referendum on the Mayoral Academy concept McKee has championed for the past two years.

It didn’t work.

The full article is worth a read, as it goes into detail on the tactics that were used to smear McKee’s good record on education.

This will serve as a powerful lesson to those who were intimidated by powerful groups for standing with children in advocating the expansion of charter schools in Rhode Island: the emperor has no clothes. Indeed, the direction of the Democratic party is shifting, as reported in this USA today article that highlights the work of Democrats for Education reform:

A funny thing happened to the Democratic Party on the way to an education platform: The party has visibly split with teachers unions, its longtime allies, on key issues.

The ink is barely dry on the official document, which outlines the party’s guiding principles, but it shows that in this fall’s general election, Democrats will stake out a few positions that unions have long opposed.

…

“We have to understand that as Democrats we have been wrong on education, and it’s time to get it right,” said Newark Mayor Cory Booker. He said unions have pressured him to reject charter schools, vouchers and other ways to broaden urban students’ access to better schools.

“Ten years ago, when I started talking about school choice, I was tarred and feathered,” he told the crowd. “I literally was brought into a room by one of the union officers. … He threatened me that I would never win in office if I kept talking about school choice and kept talking about charter schools.”

Doesn’t Newark Mayor Cory Booker’s story sound a lot like what some tried to do to Cumberland Mayor Dan McKee?

The reason for Democrats for Education Reform, a federal PAC, is to support people like McKee and Booker, who dare to challenge the status quo within their own party and thus don’t have a NEARI-PACE type of fund to support them. Education reform is no longer a “red or blue” issue. This will be a very interesting development to watch unfold in the coming years.

The big question: would Obama be half the education reformer that Booker and McKee have shown themselves to be? Time will tell.