There are plenty of canyons running between the Democrats at
this week’s convention. The left is angry at President Obama for
selling them out on a raft of issues. The Blue Dogs (what’s left of
them) are glancing uneasily toward the election calendar. And of
course that tattered emblem of Democrat disunity, Bill Clinton, is
on the speakers’ list.
But there’s something else threatening to disrupt the Democrat
hive mind.
As Jon Ward reported at the Huffington Post,
convention-goers were treated to a special screening of the movie
Won’t Back Down. The film, which stars Maggie Gyllenhall
and Viola Davis, is about a single mother who tries to reform her
daughter’s dismal public school. The villain is the obstructionist
teachers union. It promotes “parent triggers,” which allow parents
to vote to overhaul schools.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of
Teachers, fired off a letter calling the film “divisive” and saying
it doesn’t focus on “real parent empowerment.” (And if anyone knows
“real parent empowerment,” it’s the stridently anti-school-choice
Weingarten.)
But her letter ignores the elephant in the rubber room:
Won’t Back Down director Daniel Barnz is a Democrat. For
that matter, so is reform hero Michelle Rhee and Davis Guggenheim
of Waiting for Superman fame. All three have issued a call
to arms over education that transcends party lines. The reality of
America’s public schools is finally cracking through the liberal
eggshell.
At the state level, Democrat governors and mayors, wrangling
with drained budgets, are battling the education establishment.
Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick backed a law that tied teacher
layoffs primarily to performance rather than seniority. New York
Governor Andrew Cuomo also took on the unions over evaluations and
declared, “It’s this simple: It’s not about the adults; it is about
the children.” And Mayor Rahm Emanuel cranked up his famous
pugnacity after the Chicago Teachers Union refused to budge on
compensation and benefits issues.
That might seem like small comfort to school reformers. And it
should. Most of the clashes between unions and Democrat state
officials have been waged out of necessity. Governors and mayors
must balance their budgets; organized labor won’t give an inch.
But given the Democratic Party’s fundraising, it’s a miracle to
see party leaders taking on the teachers unions at all. The
third-largest contributor to Democrats in 2010, and the
fifth-largest contributor overall, was the National Education
Association (NEA), which spent $40 million to push back the
Republican tide. Add in contributions by AFSCME and the SEIU and
the three titans of organized labor spent $171.5 million
in 2010, more than the dreaded U.S. Chamber of Commerce and
American Crossroads combined.
The Democrats owe the NEA. If not for it, the Republican sweep
might have been even wider.
And yet many Democrats turned around and fought back against Big
Education’s intransigence. It’s created an uneasy imbalance and
it’s sowing discord among the union rank-and-file. The party’s
apple-polishers at the NEA voted to endorse Barack Obama last year.
But the vote count was 72% in favor; a step down from 2008 when 80%
of delegates endorsed Obama, and the vote twelve years ago when 90%
supported Al Gore.
This is the same Barack Obama who made the heinous decision to
shut down the Washington, D.C. school voucher program. But even
he’s committed apostasies that irked the unions.
So why are some progressives changing their tune? Well, it’s not
as if the unions have anywhere else to go. Mitt Romney’s education
plan requires states to offer school choice and many Republicans
want to eliminate the bureaucratic wreck that is the Department of
Education. Democrats must wager that they can nip at the NEA
without losing its support.
But more importantly, the problem with public schools has become
impossible to ignore. Interest-group liberalism requires the left
to support the teachers unions. But more and more, that’s put
Democrats in conflict with inner-city students who need vouchers
for a shot at even a passable education. Confronted with the
evidence, some progressives are finally siding with the
students.
Eventually education may become one of those issues, like the
Second Amendment, on which Republicans extract an all-out
surrender. At this year’s Republican National Convention,
Condoleezza Rice declared that education is the civil rights
movement of our era. Progressives pride themselves on being civil
rights geniuses. Do they really want to be on the wrong side of
history here?
Until they answer that question, there’s still plenty of
hysteria to go around. A smattering of protesters showed up when
Won’t Back Down was shown at the Democratic Convention.
Confirming that the progressive bestiary is running out of
monsters, one left-wing blogger
tried to tie the movie to Bain Capital. Randi Weingarten is
still doing an elaborate dance, talking up reforms while
simultaneously making sure nothing meaningful gets done.
But it’s becoming clear that unions have overplayed their hand.
Mitt Romney should press the advantage when he gets into office.
Perhaps then we can finally energize our classrooms and empty the
rubber rooms.
