Ed Reform Behind Reopening

Democrats for Education Reform Behind Push to Reopen Schools

By Jim Vail

Shavar Jeffries, president of Democrats for Education Reform
and capitalist huckster on behalf of billionaires.
This former civil rights attorney is telling everyone to go back
 to school despite a virus that is devastating urban minorities. 

Remember Democrats for Education Reform?

Corporations and billionaires fund this obscure group that pushed President Obama's Race to the Top that mandated school districts across the country implement the Chicago reform model of privatization via turnaround - fire teachers, close public schools and open charter schools.

They hate teachers unions as much as Popeye loves spinach!

This group attacks the Chicago Teachers Union every time it goes on strike. So of course they're back demanding that everybody get back in school because poor urban children's education is at stake. They support more standardized testing that has been used to close public schools.

The Chicago Teachers Union has led the fight in this country to force the Democrat Party to support teachers unions and public education. They have elevated the political fight against racism and police brutality and other social justice issues.

 

The CTU's strategy is two part - rally the people to protest in the streets and fund democrats to push for better laws. 

On the other side is Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) who funnel millions of dollars in donations to democrats to back education reform that attacks teacher pensions and seniority rights and promotes increased standardized testing (research shows the higher the parents' income, the higher their children's test scores).

So far the CTU strategy appears to be winning. The openly pro-business and anti-union Chicago Tribune constantly complains about how powerful the Chicago Teachers Union is and how it is hurting the city. The CTU has struck a nerve in the upper echelons of power! 

But the ruling class never sleeps. It's endless bank accounts that buy off politicians like children plucking daisies has been met by a resurgence in teacher union activism. 

And where exactly does the Democratic Party stand today.

Of course both sides are claiming President Joe Biden backs them.

Joe and the Democrats say the country should open all schools by April, which even the country's top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci says is not possible because of a new strand of the virus.

Biden also says the CTU is right to demand a return to safe schools (at the AFT convention I attended with CORE in 2012 in Detroit, Biden's speech was focused on defending the rich).

Biden's heart is with DFER and the business community that wants to reopen the country for business, beginning with the public schools. But they frame it in a way that sounds like it's all about the poor children:

"We're going to see kids fall further and further behind, particularly low-income students of color," Shavar Jeffries, president of Democrats for Education Reform, told the media. "There's potentially a generational level of harm that students have suffered from being out of school for so long.

This is the group that Biden and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot are taking their marching orders from.

When I heard that in some suburbs organized parents are planting yard signs that say to reopen schools, I know from experience billionaires are funding this fake populist sentiment to reopen the schools despite the risk. The same thing happened in 2012 and 2019 when the CTU went on strike. Parents in business suits spoke on behalf of their children to denounce the teachers union to say the strike is bad even though who could argue with demanding the city fund a nurse in every public city school?

And who could argue with trying to stay alive during this pandemic?

Well this is what DFER actually said, and I almost fell off my seat when I read it. The group's president acknowledged that it is harder to open schools in cities like Chicago where the virus can spread fast, people rely on public transportation, and more parents have front-line jobs that could expose them, and their children, to the virus. That is why overwhelmingly parents in Chicago do not want to send their kids back to school.

But so what, Jeffries argues, the teachers union is the one at fault for stopping the city schools from reopening! "The teachers unions tend to be pretty obstinately opposed to going back to school," Jeffries said.

So we should all die for the chance to increase our poor children's test scores and get them back on track!