CHICAGO – The new documentary film is called “A Tale of Two Missions,” and it’s focused on current conditions in Chicago Public Schools.

One “mission” is led by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who is working hard to provide fresh opportunities for kids stuck in failing city schools.

The other is led by Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, who is determined to kill the expansion of school choice in the city, so her union can keep students (and the tax money attached to them) trapped in subpar neighborhood schools.

And now, just as the documentary is released to the public, Emanuel, Lewis and their respective teams have started negotiating a new labor contract that will go a long way toward determining the future of Chicago Public Schools.

The current teachers union contract expires June 30. Negotiations on a new pact are expected to take months, perhaps even beyond the expiration date of the current contract.

Lewis had made it clear that teachers want higher salaries and more expensive benefits, despite the district’s estimated $720 million budget deficit and the continued threat of layoffs for young teachers and cancellation of student programs.

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“A Tale of Two Missions” – a film by Juan Williams and Kyle Olson (and directed by Chicago-based Andrew Marcus) – tells the story of competing cultures in American education through examples from Chicago.

See the internet-only abridged version here:

While the fight for school choice rages across the nation, perhaps no better example exists than that of the Windy City.  Traditional alliances are breaking down.  Both political parties are pushing for education reform and expanded school choice.  The status quo is under attack, because most reasonable people understand that thousands of Chicago students are trapped in failing schools.

But the education establishment, led by the radical Chicago Teachers Union, is not willing to give an inch to allow better choices for underserved students. And the union still has enough money, influence and legal standing to make reform efforts difficult to implement.

The film features the Noble Street College Prep charter school and the amazing results its teachers and leaders are delivering for students and parents of Chicago.  It also exposes the entrenched educational establishment bent on stifling school choice options and preserving its monopoly on state education dollars.

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CHICAGO – If well-known people want to avoid controversy, they should avoid making ugly comments about respected citizens and public officials, particularly in public.

That’s a lesson Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis has yet to learn.

Last week, while researching footage of Lewis for a documentary project, we at Education Action Group came across a YouTube video of Lewis giving the keynote address at the recent Northwest Teaching for Social Justice Conference in Seattle.

During the course of her remarks, Lewis attempted to draw a few laughs by making fun of U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s speech impediment.

“Now you know he went to private school ’cause if he had gone to public school he would have had that lisp fixed,” she said.
Lewis went on to laughingly talk about her former marijuana use during her college days.

“I spent those years smoking lots of weed – self-medicating,” she said. “Self-medicating – thank you! Sounds like you all did, too. Oh, I’m sorry, there’s kids here. I wasn’t supposed to say that, right? Too late!”

We thought Lewis’ comments were highly inappropriate for the leader of one of the nation’s largest teachers unions, so we released the pertinent clips of the video to the media.

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Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis called a press conference yesterday to go on the offensive and attempt to blame our organization, Education Action Group, for the ugly words she recently uttered at a conference for union activists.

On Monday, EAG released a video of three extended excerpts from her October speech, which included her ridicule of U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan over his speech impediment.  It created a media firestorm.

In an attempt to do damage control, Lewis said, “…I implore you to look at the entire 35-minute video and to listen to the entire speech so you can make a decision for yourself without the filter of right-wing pundits and anti-public education, media-savvy operatives.”

We did and it’s just as ugly as what has already been highlighted.

At the 12:31 mark of the original video, she attempts to smear Chicago school board members Henry Bienen and Penny Pritzker. She said Bienen, a former president of Northwestern University, was on the board of Bear Stearns “when it crashed.” She said Pritzker owns Hyatt hotels, a chain she claims “won’t pay her cleaning ladies a living wage.”

“These are the people we’re dealing with,” Lewis said about the board members.

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Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis recently appeared before the Northwest Teaching for Social Justice group and laid it on thick.

Lewis, who is also a vice president of the American Federation of Teachers, leveled a cheap personal attack at President Obama’s Education Secretary Arne Duncan.  See it, courtesy of EAGtv.

Speaking with a manufactured speech impediment in order to mock Duncan, Lewis said:

“‘Education is the civil rights issue of our time.’  Now, you know he went to private school ‘cause if he had gone to public school he would have had that lisp fixed.  I know – that was ugly wasn’t it?  I’m sorry.”

I thought we taught children not to mock or make fun of others.  Apparently the teachers are exempt from such lessons.

It is interesting to witness the vitriol from union leaders aimed at Democratic leaders who have proposed tepid, incremental education reform and school choice.

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We’ve always assumed that public schools exist, first and foremost, to benefit the students of a community. But that’s clearly not the case in Chicago. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has been pushing the idea of adding 90 minutes to the school day to improve learning for children in the city’s deeply troubled school district. He has managed to convince teachers in 13 schools to accept the longer day in exchange for cash bonuses, but the radical Chicago Teachers Union doesn’t like this idea. Union President Karen Lewis and her comrades have been going around trying to convince teachers to reject the proposal, according to a story in the Chicago Tribune.

When that strategy didn’t work, the union complained to its friends at the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board. In a quick decision, the board ruled 5-0 that the city was violating labor law by “luring teachers with inducements and hampering the efforts of union representatives… Because of this irreparable harm, it is necessary to immediately restore the status quo,” the board wrote in its ruling. The board will not seek to have the longer days cancelled in the 13 schools, but it has asked the Illinois attorney general to go to court to seek an injunction to prevent more schools from extending the school day.

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Karen Lewis of the Chicago Teachers Union is angry.

There’s a gross injustice being perpetuated in Illinois’ public schools, and the CTU isn’t going to take it anymore.  In fact, the powerful teachers union is considering a strike in hopes that it would create so much public pressure that the Powers That Be have no choice but to correct this outrageous injustice.

Like many Illinois citizens, the CTU has seen reports that three out of four state high school graduates are not ready for college.  And the union’s response has been, well … the CTU hasn’t really said anything about it.

You see, the fact that students are leaving Illinois’ K-12 public education system totally unprepared for college, the workplace or life in general – that’s not really the CTU’s thing.

Instead, the union is “upset” and feeling very “disrespected” because the Chicago Board of Education doesn’t have the money to pay CTU members the four percent pay raise they were promised in their contract.

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After years of obstructing efforts to reform public education, the nation’s teacher unions are using this week’s national education conference in Denver to push for a spirit of “collaboration” among education reformers and teacher unions.

It’s too bad that the unions’ new-found interest in “working together” has not been reflected in very recent teacher union behavior.

In a recent radio interview, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said, “Let’s solve problems for kids rather than making them pawns in an economic austerity budget.”

In a recent press release, Weingarten said, “When collaboration trumps conflict, it helps create the conditions for teachers to teach and students to learn.”

Such happy talk makes for a good press release, but it does not match reality. Across the nation, teachers unions are attacking reformers and have not resisted the temptation of using children as political pawns.

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Somewhere back in our school days, we all had a special teacher who made learning fun or who pushed us into achieving more than we thought possible.  If you were lucky, you had several teachers like that.

But we’ve all had that certain teacher who liked to show videos on Friday while he sat in the back of the room grading papers, or reading Sports section of the newspaper.  He was more concerned with getting on early start on his weekend than he was about what (or if) the students were learning.

The majority of public school teachers are dedicated and hard working. But a certain percentage of teachers are just going through the motions, putting in their time until their pension kicks in.

Watch ‘Unions vs. Good Teachers’ – Episode 3 – “Kids Aren’t Cars”

Even though experience tells us otherwise, teacher unions want schools to treat teachers as interchangeable and indistinguishable. The unions want the marginal teachers to be paid the same as the good teachers.  How does that make any sense?

Consider a survey by the Association of American Educators, an organization for teachers that actually has the interest of children at heart.  It found only 32% of teachers felt they should be judged based on the number of years they’ve been in the system.  Likewise, contrary to what unions would have us believe, AAE found 81% of teachers disagreed with the notion that “tenure is necessary for an educator to properly perform his or her job effectively.”

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Americans are beginning to understand that the government-run assembly-line education system is not working.  As I point out in the upcoming “Kids Aren’t Cars” film series, thousands, of not millions of kids are being failed by a system that is geared more towards satisfying adults than educating children.

How else can a recent Detroit Public Schools graduate be unable to read her own diploma? How else can tenure – the job security law for unfit teachers – be explained?  How else can budget busting pension systems be explained?

When collective bargaining was brought into American schools in the 1960s, it was a revenue stream and power base for Big Labor.  Suddenly, union bosses became more interested in building political muscle than educating children.

At that point the battle between unions and school boards became more focusing on salary, benefits,  pensions and working conditions for adults, and less about students.

Kids are only pawns in the self-serving union game.

As we point out in “Kids Aren’t Cars,” this has poisoned the education environment.  We witness ugly fights in communities during union contract negotiations.  Unions lead recall campaigns against school board members who don’t vote the union way. Teachers throw up their hands because the union will take their money by hook or by crook, while showing no interest in their input.

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There’s a weird thing happening in public education.  Hardcore unions are attempting to rebrand themselves as “professional organizations.”  In fact, the American Federation of Teachers bills itself as “A union of professionals.”

Both the AFT and the larger National Education Association attempt to portray themselves as associations yet negotiate collective bargaining agreements and oftentimes act like their brethren in the industrial unions – hardly white-collar professionals.

So with the increasing call for more professionalism in the teaching ranks – and less of a collectivist mindset – conflict arises.

Consider these two recent statements by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis.

Conventional wisdom would tell us that Lewis would be demanding that teachers be treated like professionals.  Think again.

It’s clear that Gov. Christie supports the professionalism of teachers more than the teachers’ elected leader does.  That doesn’t speak well for those wishing to increase the professionalism of the career.

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When EAGtv’s reporting team got back from covering a school choice rally in Chicago, they mentioned how impressed they were by one of the event’s speakers – a Father Michael Somethingorother.  They appreciated Father Michael’s no-holds-barred support for school choice, but being journalists, they were especially grateful for his colorful sound bites that could be used to spruce up their story.

Intrigued by reports of the crusader’s fiery performance, the EAG staff gathered around to watch the video.  It only took a couple of seconds for the most politically aware members to recognize the speaker as Father Michael. . . . Pfleger!

You remember him, right?  It was Father Pfleger (Barack Obama’s other nutty “pastor”) who said this about Hillary Clinton during the 2008 presidential campaign:

“I believe she always thought, ‘[The Democratic presidential nomination] is mine.  I’m Bill’s wife, I’m white, and this is mine.  I just gotta get up, and step into the plate.’  And then out of nowhere came, ‘Hey, I’m Barack Obama,” and she said, ‘Oh damn! Where did you come from? I’m white!  I’m entitled! There’s a black man stealing my show!’”

It’s all coming back now, isn’t it?  Well, imagine our surprise when we heard Pfleger say this about school choice at last week’s rally:

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The power to make money, and the ability to receive a reward for assuming risk, have been cornerstones of America’s economic success.  A free-enterprise system made the U.S. the world’s only remaining superpower.

Sadly, all of the above are foreign concepts to the government-run public education system.  Karen Lewis, the new president of the Chicago Teachers Union, recently fired this shot across the administrators’ bow:

I’m giving notice to [Chicago Public Schools’ CEO] Ron Huberman and the board: you’ve met your match.  We will no longer be played.

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We’re going to put business in its place: out of our schools.  These corporate heads and politicians seem willing to trade off our childrens’ and educators’ futures to pad their bottom line.

Her speech goes on with one-liners that would make Mao Tse-Tung (and Karl Marx) blush.  Anita Dunn, call your office!  This is the type of person we should expect to teach students an appreciation of what’s made America great?  Perhaps Ms. Lewis would fit better in the Havana Education Association than any teacher group in America.

The National Education Association recently considered a New Business Item at its annual convention which called for bouncing Education Secretary (and former CPS CEO) Arne Duncan and replace him with “a person who is aligned with the interests of the NEA, its members, and especially the students it serves.”  The reason?

The D.O.E. must be led by someone who sees all students as deserving of an excellent public school and the federal funding it requires, not just those in states that can win resources by best adopting  Sect. Duncan’s competitive philosophy.

Leaving aside my quibbles with the reform competition known as “Race to the Top,”  what has made it successful is the fact that states have had to one-up each other in terms of legislating reforms to in order to compete for the money.  I can see why that wouldn’t fly in the public schools of say, Cuba.  But apparently it’s just as unwelcome in the union halls of Chicago and elsewhere in America.

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