In his speech today to the Urban League, John McCain revised his attacks on Obama's education plan, saying he is in thrall to teachers' unions and opposed to "school choice." (Click here to see why this critique is misleading.) McCain also took the opportunity to announce his own support for the Education Equality Project, a coalition of civil rights leaders, big city politicians, and eduwonks who've taken a fairly critical line toward teachers' unions. McCain criticized Barack Obama for not signing the statement, name-checking some prominent people of color who support it, including Newark Mayor Cory Booker, former Congressman Harold Ford Jr., and D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee. Now Booker has responded to McCain in a statement released by the Obama campaign:
In yet another dishonest attack at the Urban League, Senator McCain misled the American people about Senator Obama's record and his own. While Senator Obama has an established history of expanding charter school options for Illinois students and has a plan to recruit an army of new teachers aimed at giving every child in America a quality education from birth to college, Senator McCain has stood against additional funding for early childhood education, college aid programs, hiring new teachers, and has gone so far as to support abolishing the US Department of Education. With that kind of track record, Senator McCain should be the last person lecturing Senator Obama about a commitment to quality education for our nation's children.
What's more, McCain didn't mention that there is a competing education reform coalition recently formed -- the Broader, Bolder initiative, which was founded by the labor liberal Economic Policy Institute and doesn't vilify teacher unions. Obama hasn't signed that statement either.
For more on the two coalitions and how progressives can avoid a schools reform fight between unions and accountability hawks, check out Rick Kahlenberg's excellent TAP story on the subject. In short, the answer is that the unions should accept more teacher and curriculum quality controls, while the education reform community should understand that teachers' unions are very, very low on the list of factors responsible for the sorry state of so much urban and rural education in the United States.
--Dana Goldstein
