“Wealthy Democrats, including Los Angeles home developer Eli Broad and New York investment fund managers Whitney Tilson and John Petry, have found common cause with Republicans in a push to apply principles of the corporate world, including free-market competition, to public education,” Stephanie Simon reports for Reuters. “With teachers unions bitterly opposed to such measures, Democrats in the movement say they must break their party’s ties to the unions if they’re ever to make progress.”
“So they are offering an alternative to the union dollars, spending freely to back fellow Democrats willing to buck the unions and advance their agenda,” Simon reports. “‘Education reform is really a fight for the heart and soul of the Democratic Party,’ said Derrell Bradford, who runs a political group in New Jersey that recently helped elect two union-defying Democrats to the state legislature.”
“The reform movement’s goals include shutting down low-performing public schools; weakening or eliminating teacher tenure; and expanding charter schools, which are publicly funded but often run by private-sector managers, some of them for-profit companies,” Simon reports. “Wealthy Democrats have joined Republicans in pouring millions into political campaigns, lobbying and community organizing to try to advance these goals nationwide. They can count on their side several influential Democratic mayors, including Newark’s Cory Booker and Chicago’s Rahm Emanuel.”
“The tug-of-war between the Democratic Party’s two education camps is playing out now in a heated primary race in the 46th State Assembly District, a sprawl of suburbs outside Los Angeles,” Simon reports. “From a field of five Democrats, teachers unions have backed Andrew Lachman, an adjunct professor of business law at Woodbury University. The California Teachers Association gave him $7,800 directly, campaign records show – and spent more than $130,000 on ads tearing down one of his opponents, Brian Johnson.”
“Johnson, who until recently ran a network of charter schools in Los Angeles, has the full support of the charter industry and the education reform community,” Simon reports. “Contributions from investors, philanthropists and Silicon Valley executives, including Netflix Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings and Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs, have flooded into Johnson’s campaign. Independent groups funded by an overlapping network of donors have blanketed the district with mailers backing him.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
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