Free Strike for America by Micah Uetricht

not only the Republican Party but also the Democrats. The movement to transform public education is often seen as a phenomenon pushed by the right. But the right-wing agenda for education reform—the emphasis on privatizing and deregulating schools, crushing teachers unions and stripping educators of collective bargaining rights, “value added” assessments of teaching, and a general embrace of free market reforms as a panacea for all that ails students—is also, in large part, the Democratic Party’s agenda for education reform.
    The Democrats have seen the rise of a strong neoliberal wing over the last several decades, and an increasing number of Democrats no longer even pretend to placate unions—once seen as a central constituency for the party—or to concern themselves with a broader agenda of equality andsocial justice. The party’s policies look more and more like those of the Republicans. This is particularly true in the case of education reform, where Democrats have swallowed the right’s free market orthodoxy whole. Much of the party appears to have given up on education as a public project.
    Education policy’s hard tack to the right under Ronald Reagan was continued by his former vice president, George H. W. Bush; Bill Clinton and the New Democrats behind him were happy to follow suit. Today, the Obama administration’s policy proposals embrace the kinds of free market reforms and philosophies that were first introduced by the right. Central to Race to the Top, the president’s signature education reform program, are cash incentives for states that allow students’ performance on standardized tests to be tied to teacher evaluations, and a push for merit pay for teachers.
    Democratic mayors around the country have gone even further in their embrace of free market reforms. In June 2012, the US Conference of Mayors unanimously endorsed “parent trigger” laws pushed by the right that would, should a majority of parents vote in favor, allow public schools to fire teachers and further privatize schools by turning them over to private operators. 7 Antonio Villaraigosa, the Democratic mayor of Los Angeles, has publicly defended the parent trigger and pushed for near-total power over Los Angeles schools in order to institute corporate reforms with little publicoversight—winning him support from then Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Cory Booker, Democratic mayor of Newark, New Jersey, actually explicitly sided with his Republican governor, Chris Christie, on a similar policy agenda, including charter expansion and increased use of standardized test scores for teacher evaluations; he persuaded Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to donate $100 million to Newark schools to be used in an introduction of merit pay for teachers. The two Democratic mayors in charge in Chicago for the last quarter-century have also been national leaders in pushing a neoliberal education agenda.
    Democrats have embraced the major philanthropic foundations and their agenda as well. Gates, for example, invested $90 million in Chicago’s Renaissance 2010 program, which was overseen by former CEO of Chicago Public Schools Arne Duncan under Democratic Mayor Richard M. Daley. The program became the basis of the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program, overseen by Duncan, who is now secretary of education. As education writer Joanne Barkan has said, Duncan made “the partnership with private foundations the defining feature of his [Department of Education] stewardship.” In their foundation’s annual report, Eli and Edythe Broad write:
    [The] appointment of Arne Duncan … as the U.S. Secretary of Education marked the pinnacle of hope for our work in education reform. In many ways, we feel the stars have finally aligned. With an agenda that echoes our decades of investments—charter schools, performancepay for teachers, accountability, expanded learning time, and national standards—the Obama administration is