Steven Singer nails Rahm Emanuel’s false apology. Rahm claims he is no longer a Reformer yet continues to think he has to get tough on somebody to produce the test scores he wants. When I visited the Washington Post recently, I heard Rahm discuss his great education successes in Chicago, in conversation with the woman he appointed as superintendent of schools (talk about softball exchanges!). Not a word was said about his historic and vicious decision to close 50 public schools in one day, all of them located in communities of color. The gossip was that he was trying out for the next Secretary of Education role. His name will live in education history and it will remind us of his terrible actions as a privatizer, a hater of public schools, and a man who holds teachers in contempt.
Rahm Emanuel’s recent op-ed in The Atlantic may be one of the dumbest things I have ever read.
The title “I Used to Preach the Gospel of Education Reform. Then I Became the Mayor” seems to imply Emanuel has finally seen the light.
The outgoing Chicago Mayor USED TO subscribe to the radical right view that public schools should be privatized, student success should be defined almost entirely by standardized testing, teachers should be stripped of union protections and autonomy and poor black and brown people have no right to elect their own school directors.
But far from divorcing any of this Reagan-Bush-Trump-Clinton-Obama crap, he renews his vows to it.
This isn’t an apologia. It’s rebranding.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Support for neoliberal Rahm is support for Don Trump Jr., who called all teachers “losers” last night in El Paso.
Rahm-BOO is toxic and is all about power … HIS.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-sudden-but-well-deserved-fall-of-rahm-emanuel
Don Jr. calling all teachers “losers” is a WIN for teachers. No sane person wants praise from any person in that DUMP family.
I couldn’t find anything new in the article at all. It was so boilerplate ed reform Betsy DeVos endorsed it.
No one is permitted to even question the rush to privatize and replace all the public schools with contractors or powerful ed reformers like Betsy DeVos and Rahm Emanual will call you mean names, like “brain dead”.
Insults like that are meant to silence any critics or questions and make ed reform even more of an echo chamber than it is now.
Through his specific criticisms Singer makes the best case against Emanuel’s D.I.N.O. agenda. Emanuel has consistently worked against the poor and the working class. He has more in common with Chris Christie than AOC.
“Charter schools drain funding from authentic public schools and give it to private investors. They allow unscrupulous operators to cut services and pocket the profits. They increase segregation, decrease democracy and transparency, give choice mainly to business people who get to decide if your child is allowed to enroll in their school – all while getting similar or worse results than authentic public schools.”
Finally the veil of secrecy surrounding privatization is becoming more apparent to the regular public. They pay taxes and support their local public schools for the most part. What taxpayer in his right mind would willingly opt to undermine his most important public asset? We must thank all those teachers that are fighting back by striking and walking out. They helped to expose the corporate plot against public education. Teachers are public servants, not “losers.” Hopefully, we will see who the real loser is when Mueller completes his investigation.
I want to steal an idea from LA teachers in another blog I read. Rahm governed schools for his shareholders–those who bankrolled his tenure as mayor rather than for the stakeholders–parents, students, and teachers. (LA’s Beutner has brought his business background and total lack of experience in education to his role as Superintendent. He operates to please his billionaire benefactors/shareholders, not the people of LA who have a stake in a good educational system.)
Sorry I didn’t mention in my first comment. Wanted to get the details right. Anthony Cody’s blog, Living in Dialogue. He highlighted the opinion piece of two teachers: Michael Finn and Michael Jones.