Tuesday, September 11, 2012
In teachers' strike, Emanuel pushing Democrats' new view
(CNN) -- The hard-nosed stance taken by Mayor Rahm Emanuel in the Chicago teachers' strike dovetails with the education goals of his former boss, President Barack Obama, but observers disagreed Monday over how well it serves the city's schoolchildren.
Critics such as Fordham University professor Mark Naison say Emanuel is slavishly following the Obama administration's educational policies to the detriment of children and teachers.
"It makes teachers look at students as their adversaries," said Naison, who works with public school teachers as part of the Bronx African American History Project and is a professor of African American Studies and History at the university.
"It makes teachers hate their jobs and it makes students not want to go to schools, because all you do is study for bubble tests," he said, referring to computer-scored standardized tests.
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But the mayor's supporters see teachers desperately trying to hold on to their jobs amid a challenging environment that mixes rising calls for accountability with falling budgets.
"The only negative consequence, if you think about it as negative, is that some people are going to lose their jobs. And maybe rightly so," said Juan Rangel, CEO of United Neighborhood Organization, a nonprofit that manages 13 largely Latino charter schools in Chicago.
Chicago's 30,000 school teachers were in the second day of a strike Tuesday after 10 months of negotiations failed to reach a deal.
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