Coming Attractions

Next Wednesday I’m moderating a session (online webinar) for NACSA about the role of charter school authorizers in the larger education reform conversation. Register through that link. Guests include John Deasy from LA and Jonah Edelman from SFC.  And next Thursday, Progressive Policy Institute event in Washington about scaling high-performing charter schools. Register through that link.  PPI has an interesting new paper coming on the issue (and here’s a link to a Bellwether analysis of one network published this week).  I’m on the panel along with Bryan Hassel, Eva Moskowitz,  and Brooks Garber.

And tomorrow, if you’re at the TFA mob scene Summit, I’m moderating a session about getting things done in a complicated political environment with former DC Mayor Fenty, former Baltimore Mayor Schmoke, Steve Barr, State Senator Mike Johnston from Colorado, and Andres Alonso, superintendent in Baltimore.  Stop in if you’re around.

2 Replies to “Coming Attractions”

  1. Jonah Edelman gave a great presentation at the AspenIdeas Festival 2 weeks ago.
    http://aifestival.org/session/if-it-can-happen-there-it-can-happen-anywhere-transformational-education-legislation#
    In the video, he explains how he, with the support of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Arne Duncan’s senior advisor Jo Anderson (former Executive Director of the IEA) out foxed the CTU, the IFT and the IEA’s Ken Swanson and Audrey Soglin into agreeing to Senate Bill 7.

    He believes it is a model for doing to schools and teachers in other states what they did in Wisconsin, without the mess.

    He believes the catalyst was the IEA’s cave on the Race to the Top grant.

    He says their ability to raise $3 million dollars from the Chicago corporate community allowed them to “jam it down their throats.”

    When they met in the lame duck session following their electoral victories, Edelman says that the IEA and the IFT were willing to discuss all the issues they would not discuss just six months earlier. In fact, he says they “gave away” in the first minutes of negotiation what it took the entire struggle in Colorado to accomplish, where they eventually removed collective bargaining.

    Edelman says the cave-in was led by the IEA. “It has a history of pragmatism,” he says.

    Edelman says that when the “collaboration” was done that led to victory, he speculates that Audrey Soglin “was happy,” implying her position was always closer to their’s anyway. He had expected the collaboration to fall apart over the Chicago strike issue, was ready to mobilize his supporters and spend millions on ads. But he was pleasantly surprised when the IEA agreed to everything right away.

    Edelman says that the failure of the CTU was that they allowed Edelman to get SFC to split them from the IEA.

    The requirement for a 75% vote to strike (which the IEA pushed) meant, according to Edeleman, “in effect they wouldn’t have the ability to strike.”

    “We got to decide all the fine print.”

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