Which Democrats Are Hostile to Teachers?

As a historian, I can assure you that the roots of the current “reform” movement are on the far right. Vouchers began with Milton Friedman in 1955; charters began in 1988 with liberal origins, but were quickly adopted by the right as a substitute for vouchers because voters always defeated voucher proposals. The attacks on teachers’ unions are out of the rightwing playbook. The demands for test-based accountability did not originate in the Democratic party. The effort to remove all job protections–seniority, tenure, the right to due process–did not originate with liberal thinkers or policymakers, but can be traced to the Reagan administration and even earlier to rightwing Republicans who never wanted any unions or job protections for workers. The embrace of privatization and for-profit schooling is neither liberal nor Democratic.

How this happened is a long story.

No matter who supports this agenda, it is not bipartisan. It originated in the ideology of the rightwing extreme of the GOP. Its goal is privatization.

This reader notes the long list of Democrats who have adopted the rightwing GOP agenda:

It’s not just right wing states and politicians that want to harass teachers.

Plenty of Dems are in on the fun.

Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado is a nominal Democrat who never saw a teacher he didn’t look upon with suspicion or a test company he didn’t want to give a contract to.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel is leading the charge in teacher demonization efforts in the Midwest, and I would argue that his anti-union, anti-teacher track record is beginning to rival that of his brethren to the north, Scott Walker and Paul Ryan.

more . . .http://dianeravitch.net/2012/09/03/which-democrats-are-hostile-to-teachers/