Klein, Sharpton, and Obama?

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Chancellor Klein and the Reverend Sharpton have already gotten Senator McCain to sign onto their manifesto advocating a kind of national-scale version of the school policies Mr. Klein has brought to New York City — policies that push to hold teachers to account and close schools that fail to get their test scores up and that favor charter schools as an additional way to whip the system into shape. Now Mr. Klein and Rev. Sharpton have their sights set on Senator Obama. In calling out Mr. Obama the two men — one a hardline Democrat and the other a former Clinton administration official — are actually taking a page from Senator McCain.

Mr. McCain, in a move praised for its savvy, signed onto the manifesto earlier this month, and did it with a jab at Mr. Obama, saying that by failing to sign the document Mr. Obama is failing to put his “change” money where his mouth is. “One name is still missing, Senator Obama’s,” Mr. McCain said. “My opponent talks a great deal about hope and change, and education is as good a test as any of his seriousness. The Education Equality Project is a practical plan for delivering change and restoring hope for children and parents who need a lot of both. And if Senator Obama continues to defer to the teachers unions, instead of committing to real reform, then he should start looking for new slogans.”

Now Mr. Klein and Rev. Sharpton are, in effect, joining Mr. McCain’s call. In a statement sent by e-mail from the press secretary for the city’s Department of Education, David Cantor, the Education Equality Project did not name Mr. Obama. The group did, at an event yesterday at Denver on the eve of Mr. Obama’s emergence as the nominee, call on that party to sign on to its statement of principles. Among their coalition members present were Mayor Booker of Newark and Mayor Hickenlooper of Denver on the eve of the party’s convention — a scene that has traditionally been dominated by teachers unions and that indeed will feature two speeches by the two national teachers union presidents, including New York City’s Randi Weingarten.

Many will applaud Mr. Klein and Rev. Sharpton for taking on the teachers unions, whose contracts are called out directly in that statement of principles as blockers of change. But we are not yet at the stage where it is clear that Mr. Klein’s aggressive policies really deliver on results. Eliminating sub par teachers and failing schools is important, no doubt. But New York is still sorting out whether the tests really work or whether they have merely been dumbed down. We have our own, long-held view as to how to determine whether schools work. That is a system of vouchers to enable even less wealthy parents to send their children to whatever school they want. This is a system on which Mr. Obama once said he would keep an open mind but subsequently, under pressure from the teachers unions, said he wouldn’t.


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