Dear Commons Community,

The Huffington Post has a brief report on comments made by Mitt Romney and by a spokesperson of Barack Obama.

“GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney condemned the Chicago Teachers Union for the high-profile strike it launched Monday, accusing it of betraying the city’s children.

“I am disappointed by the decision of the Chicago Teachers Union to turn its back on not only a city negotiating in good faith but also the hundreds of thousands of children relying on the city’s public schools to provide them a safe place to receive a strong education,” Romney said in a statement. “Teachers unions have too often made plain that their interests conflict with those of our children, and today we are seeing one of the clearest examples yet.”

Romney went a step further in the statement, assuming that President Barack Obama was standing with the union on the strike, even though neither the White House nor the Obama campaign has taken a position on the stoppage.

“President Obama has chosen his side in this fight, sending his Vice President last year to assure the nation’s largest teachers union that ‘you should have no doubt about my affection for you and the President’s commitment to you,’” Romney said. “I choose to side with the parents and students depending on public schools to give them the skills to succeed, and my plan for education reform will do exactly that.”

In a response via email, Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt criticized Romney for his education policies and took a shot at the campaign for playing politics with a local dispute, though he didn’t address the merits of the strike itself.

“President Obama’s leadership has led to groundbreaking reforms in our schools, earning wide bipartisan cooperation and praise,” LaBolt said. “In contrast, Gov. Romney has said class size isn’t a problem and he would cut taxes for millionaires by gutting education funding, leading to fewer teachers. Playing political games with local disputes won’t help educate our kids, nor will fewer teachers. But President Obama’s plans will lift our schools and our students.”

I would add that President Obama also has at stake the policies implemented by the U.S. Department of Education during his term of office namely teacher evaluations based on standardized tests.  This has been a hallmark of his Race to the Top education policy as well as one of the critical issues in the union impasse.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The news media are reporting that the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is officially on strike and that teachers will not be reporting to their schools.  Negotiations over pay, teacher evaluations, health benefits and class size have failed to result in a settlement.  The Huffington Post published:

“CTU’s complaints echo the broader ones of teachers’ unions across America: standardized tests are over-emphasized; class sizes are ballooning; teacher evaluations that use standardized tests “cheapen” schools. Lewis said that the evaluation system required so much administrative work that even the principals, usually not union bedfellows, were calling CTU, asking for help. “When principals are calling Chicago Teachers Union, you know there’s something wrong with this plan,” Lewis said. “Class size matters, it matters to parents,” she added.  Teachers have reported having as many as 42 students in one classroom.”

While Mayor Rahm Emanuel has taken the brunt of the CTU anger, the strike also coincides with the first day of a cross-country bus tour U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will take to discuss education. Duncan gained his education credentials leading the Chicago school district prior to becoming the US Secretary of Education under Barack Obama. He is a major proponent of many of the national education reform proposals including teacher evaluations based on standardized test scores that teacher unions across the country have been fighting against.  He has also used Race to the Top federal funding to force states to enact his proposals.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Paul Krugman, New York Times columnist, analyzes the Republican campaign strategy of blaming President Barack Obama for the state of the U.S. economy.  Putting it as simply as possible:

“When Republicans took control of the House, they declared that their economic philosophy was “cut and grow” — cut government, and the economy will prosper. And thanks to their scorched-earth tactics, we’ve actually had the cuts they wanted. But the promised growth has failed to materialize — and they want to make that failure Mr. Obama’s fault.

Now, all of this puts the White House in a difficult bind. Making a big deal of Republican obstructionism could all too easily come across as whining. Yet this obstructionism is real, and arguably is the biggest single reason for our ongoing economic weakness.

Krugman provides several examples of the Republican obstructionism including:

“The most important consequence of that stonewalling, I’d argue, has been the failure to extend much-needed aid to state and local governments. Lacking that aid, these governments have been forced to lay off hundreds of thousands of schoolteachers and other workers, and those layoffs are a major reason the job numbers have been disappointing. Since bottoming out a year after Mr. Obama took office, private-sector employment has risen by 4.6 million; but government employment, which normally rises more or less in line with population growth, has instead fallen by 571,000.”

Krugman’s conclusion:

“And what happens if the strategy of obstruct-and-exploit succeeds? Is this the shape of politics to come? If so, America will have gone a long way toward becoming an ungovernable banana republic.”

Tony