Obama Education Chief Duncan to Lead Attack on Teachers, Public Education

Chicago Schools Chief Axed Over 400 Educators This Year

Obama Education Chief Duncan to Lead
Attack on Teachers, Public Education

By UFTers in Class Struggle Education Workers

So President-elect Barack Obama finally broke the suspense and announced his selection of his “good friend” Arne Duncan, the head of the Chicago Public Schools, as education secretary. Big surprise, Obama has been buddies with Duncan for years. The choice has been portrayed as way to please both sides in roiling debates over education policy pitting the conservative teacher union bashers against liberal ed school professionals who want more investment in schools. “Both camps will be OK with the pick,” said the director of education policy for the Business Roundtable. In fact, Duncan will spearhead the drive for corporate education “reform” that aims at regimenting public schools to fulfill the manpower needs of big business and the military. And the first target in this education war will be teachers.

George Bush’s education czarina Margaret Spellings declared Duncan a “kindred spirit,” a “reform-oriented school leader who has been a supporter of No Child Left Behind and accountability concepts and teacher quality” (Washington Post, December 16). Randi Weingarten, speaking as head of the United Federation of Teachers and the national AFT, gave her nod of assent in advance: “Arne Duncan actually reaches out and tries to do things in a collaborative way” (New York Times, December 14). Chicago teachers report that Duncan fired 400 teachers in 2008, even before the current school year began. But don’t worry, says Weingarten, Duncan will fire you “collaboratively.”

Ever since the election of Obama on November 4, the lobbying has been intense over who would get the education post. E-mail petitions circulated against New York schools chancellor Joel Klein or D.C. chancellor Michelle Rhee as secretary. For all his talk of “change,” the Democratic president-elect is staffing his administration with the same right-wing crowd that ran the Clinton regime, plus Bush’s current war secretary Robert Gates. But Obama had already made clear he would keep U.S. forces in Iraq and escalate the war in Afghanistan. It was his liberal, labor and reformist leftist supporters who peddled the illusion that he would be an “antiwar” president.

It’s no surprise the Business Roundtable considered the choice of Arne Duncan ideal for Obama. Duncan has ostentatiously presented himself as the champion of corporate school “reform,” emphasizing management control. In April 2007 Duncan axed 775 probationary teachers on one day. When teachers lose their positions due to school closings, they can be fired if another principal doesn’t pick them up, as Joel Klein yearns to do in New York. If you want to know why it’s important to have teacher tenure, look at Chicago.

Arne Duncan presides over the most segregated school system in the United States. In more than 400 of the 600 schools, the student body is over 90 percent black or Latino. Of the more than 40 schools that Duncan has closed, all were black; elite schools, on the other hand, are overwhelmingly white. In the one integrated segment of the public school system, magnet schools, Duncan has raised the possibility of eliminating diversity criteria as “unconstitutional” and contrary to “school choice.”

But it’s oh-so “collaborative,” says Weingarten. It is true that Duncan “collaborates” with Chicago Teachers Union president Marilyn Stewart, who negotiated a disastrous contract last year introducing so-called “merit pay” and legitimating the CPS’ rampant school closings. Stewart rammed the 2007 contract through the CTU House of Delegates, refusing to count “no” votes. She has done nothing to stop the proliferation of charter schools, an Obama favorite.

But the fundamental point is that Obama has been working hand-in-glove with Duncan for years, and this is widely known in educator circles. Back when Weingarten and the rest of the UFT/AFT leadership were pumping for Hillary Clinton, they alluded to Obama’s support for “merit pay,” charter schools and axing “low performing” teachers. But the minute they switched to Obama, all this was conveniently forgotten. Leading up to the election, an article published by The Internationalist (November 2008) noted of the different groups promoting school “reform”:

“For sellout union bureaucrats and would-be union militants alike, their support for the Democratic Party in particular and capitalist politics in general guarantees that they cannot defend education workers from the approaching storm. So long as George Bush was in the White House, they could count on sympathy from liberals and indeed most of the population. But against Obama they will be isolated, and stymied by their failure over the last quarter century to oppose outright and propose a real alternative to big business education policies….”

Arne Duncan as education secretary is the direct result of the “lesser evil” politics that chain teachers to the Democratic Party. We in the Class Struggle Education Workers call instead to build a workers party that can transform public education under a workers government.