There are reformers who are going to argue that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s victory in tonight’s runoff election for a second term is an absolute mandate for his entire agenda. Not so fast. Any situation in which an incumbent mayor wins less than 50 percent of the vote in an official election and worse, forced into a runoff, makes such a statement pure hogwash. This isn’t to say that there aren’t Second City voters supporters who back the systemic reform efforts Emanuel and predecessor Richard M. Daley have overseen for three decades. But given that the mayor is responsible for far more than public education — and in light of dissatisfaction over Emanuel’s and Daley’s efforts on that as well as other quality-of-life issues — Emanuel can’t claim a mandate. [Not that mandates exist the way ideologues, partisans, and pundits ever think.]
At the same time, traditionalists and teachers’ union bosses, along with their allies among progressives, are forced to admit this reality: That their campaign to halt the path of systemic reform — and force centrist Democrats to adopt their agenda — has all turned out for naught. Especially for the American Federation of Teachers and its Chicago Teachers Union, which (along with other AFT locals) have spent $1.2 million during this election to unseat Emanuel, this defeat should prompt plenty of soul searching about their embrace of failed policies and practices that voters have soundly rejected.
As your editor predicted on Friday, AFT declined to throw more money at Cook County Commissioner Jesus (Chuy) Garcia’s campaign to unseat Emanuel once the latest round of polls showed him trailing the mayor by as much as 28 percentage points. Even as its Second City local desperately issued press releases — including a particularly sleazy flack piece attempting to link Emanuel’s reform efforts to the guilty verdicts against 11 teachers and school leaders involved in the Atlanta test-cheating scandal — AFT refused to infuse Garcia’s campaign with more cash and didn’t do any public relations on his behalf. By Tuesday morning, it was clear that AFT was wiping its hands of the debacle, leaving CTU (along with the Service Employees International Union and its affiliates) with the job of cleaning up the mess.
Ultimately, Emanuel won by 11.4 percentage point margin. AFT President Randi Weingarten attempted a positive spin on the failed effort up by proclaiming that the runoff sent a message that Emanuel’s “education policies have to change.” But when you look closely at Emanuel’s victory, the message for reformers and traditionalists is far different than what Weingarten and her allies want to claim it to be.
As I have noted, Emanuel didn’t win an overall mandate. Certainly crime has declined under Emanuel’s watch. But Chicago’s homicide rate remains three times higher than that of New York City, while its police department’s tactics (including mislabeling of homicides as anything but and alleged torture of suspects done at a warehouse on the city’s West Side) have been generally ineffective in addressing violence in the city’s poorest neighborhoods. If Emanuel had done a better job on the crime front (and had less of an Adrian Fenty-ish demeanor to boot), he wouldn’t have ended up in a runoff in the first place.
But at the same time, the majority of Second City voters clearly showed that they were satisfied with Emanuel on other fronts. This includes his battle with public-sector unions over addressing Chicago’s massive defined-benefit pension insolvencies. Public-sector unions, especially CTU, along with the Service Employees International Union and the city’s police union, thought they could use class warfare rhetoric to win voters over to their side. But as it turned out, voters realize that the city faces a fiscal crisis — including a teachers’ pension busted to the tune of $12.3 billion (based on a preliminary Dropout Nation analysis that will be published on Friday) — that cannot be addressed by continuing the status quo. On this front, Emanuel’s pugnaciousness serves him well, especially compared to Garcia’s position as the standardbearer for public-sector unions.
As for Emanuel’s school reform efforts: Voters made clear that they should continue apace. This became clear late last month, when a Chicago Tribune poll revealed that likely voters sided with Emanuel’s efforts over those proposed by Garcia by as much as 14 percentage points.
Certainly there is plenty of divide over Emanuel’s approach and ire over his move two years ago to shut down 47 half-empty traditional district schools. As Dropout Nation noted last November, Emanuel should be even more aggressive on the reform front, especially in passing a Parent Trigger law allowing families to take over failing district schools. But voters have a hard time arguing with improved student achievement. Given that the city’s high school graduation rate increasing from 39 percent to 66 percent between 2005 and 2013, and the percentage of Second City fourth-graders reading Below Basic on the National Assessment of Educational Progress declined from 60 percent to 49 percent within the last decade, the reforms Emanuel (and before him, Daley) have undertaken are helping more kids. Add in the evidence that the school closings have actually helped more kids get into better-performing schools, and it is hard to argue that the reform efforts aren’t working.
This isn’t to say that Chicago doesn’t have more to do to improve its traditional district. Emanuel should immediately order his schools czar, Barbara Byrd Bennett, to put additional focus on improving achievement for the city’s young black men; the failure of the district on this front is simply unacceptable. Emanuel should also continue the city’s efforts to reduce overuse of harsh school discipline, which would keep more Second City kids off the path to poverty and prison. — will help even more kids succeed. As a study released last month by the University of Chicago’s Consortium on Chicago School Research has shown, reducing out-of-school suspensions along with over reforms can lead to schools actually being safer; if anything, overuse of suspensions is clearly tied to low student achievement resulting from laggard teaching and curricula.
AFT’s Chicago local boss Karen Lewis spent four years battling Rahm Emanuel’s reforms. Now she must figure out how to deal with her union’s big loss.
The success of Emanuel’s and Daley’s reforms even extend to the expansion of public charter schools, which now serve 15.2 percent of Chicago’s school-aged children. As a study released last month by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Educational Outcomes has shown, poor kids attending Second City charters gained 35 additional days of learning in reading over peers in the traditional district’s schools.
This isn’t exactly unqualified success; as CREDO also shows, Chicago’s charters have to do better in improving achievement on other fronts. The fraud scandal that has engulfed the UNO chain of charter schools is a clear sign that Emanuel must overhaul how the district authorizes and oversees charters; in fact, given that Chicago city government has a conflict of interest on this front, Illinois state officials should end the city’s status as an authorizer and put that role into the hands of either the University of Chicago or another outfit. But the study bears out evidence in other studies — including Rand Corp.’s 2010 study of charters in Chicago and other locals — that expanding choice is helping more Second City kids succeed in school and in life.
In the face of all this evidence, there was no way Garcia could convince voters that his sparsely-detailed proposals on education would work better. Garcia couldn’t even prove that he would act in the best interests of Chicago’s children and families. After all, he proved through word and deed that he would only do the bidding of CTU and the national AFT; given that his bid for the mayoralty wouldn’t have happened without CTU’s early and enthusiastic endorsement (over the opposition of hardcore traditionalists who preferred Ald. Bob Fioretti for the challenger’s spot), there was no way Garcia could distance himself from the union. By be so wedded to CTU’s agenda (as well as that of other public-sector unions), Garcia proved to voters (with the help of Emanuel’s ad blitz) that he was bought by the union for a few shekels.
But Garcia isn’t the only one who lost this election. As Dropout Nation noted last week, Emanuel ‘s victory is also an embarrassing defeat for CTU and its ailing president, Karen Lewis. After spending four years challenging Emanuel’s reforms, and arguing alongside hardcore traditionalists that it was better to go radical than to embrace the triangulation previously championed by Weingarten, CTU and Lewis could do little better than garner support for its agenda from two out of every five voters in both the general election and the runoff. That CTU couldn’t even muster much support from poor and minority communities — especially black voters — is especially telling.
Because Emanuel has won this tough fight, he will now be politically invincible. Not only will the mayor remain in office for another four years, he can choose to remain in office as long as he wants the same way Daley pere (and his legendary father) were able. Without an ally in the top job, Lewis finds herself in a tough spot. Continuing her hardcore traditionalist approach will not win her any more victories; in fact, it will merely give Emanuel an even freer hand to do as he please on the education front. But if Lewis embraces the go-along approach taken by Weingarten for most of her career in the AFT, she will end up getting the business end of the hardcore traditionalist ire she has fanned since becoming the union’s boss four years ago.
But none of this should be shocking. As I noted two years ago, CTU’s biggest victory — a two-week strike that led Emanuel to back off of some of his reforms — was merely defensive. The deal Emanuel struck with the union still allowed him to increase school days, angering Lewis’ allies; that the strike couldn’t stop the use of student test score growth data in teacher evaluations mandated under state law also made the strike little more than just one overgrown tantrum. For all of CTU’s bluster, it has little support from families who have suffered the most from the failed policies and practices it (along with the national AFT) have long defended.
As for AFT? Emanuel’s victory is also a sobering moment. For all of Weingarten’s bluster last night, even she realizes that the union (along with its traditionalist, progressive, and public-sector union allies) has lost big. AFT local bosses duplicating the approach taken by Lewis in Chicago — and championed by Weingarten to satisfy the hardcore activists within national’s ranks — now know they will not succeed. Centrist Democrats, especially those in big cities, now have evidence that standing strong for school reform (as well as addressing virtually-busted pensions) will not result in political defeat. In short, they no longer have to fear losing the backing of AFT and NEA affiliates who have been the most-prominent players within Democratic Party politics.
The fact that AFT and NEA have done little to cultivate ties to Republicans (who aren’t a presence in most urban communities anyway) means that they (along with their public-sector union brethren) are isolated and, thus, have less influence than they have had in the past. This reality has been clear for some time. But Emanuel’s hard-fought victory adds the proverbial exclamation point. The ramifications of the mayor’s victory will be reflected in next year’s race for the White House; likely Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton could easily toss a few bones to AFT and NEA and still embrace a strong systemic reform agenda. Given that likely Republican candidates such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin have strong reform bona fides, Hillary will have almost no choice but to do so.
Even worse for AFT is that Emanuel’s victory will continue to raise questions among the rank-and-file as to whether the grand bargain struck with the union long ago is worth the money they are (often) forced to pay. With nearly a million dollars wasted on a political campaign that only resulted in defeat, and with reformers encouraged to continue efforts to overhaul the traditional teacher compensation deals that have made teaching the most-comfortable profession in the public sector, Baby Boomers likely wish they can get those dues back. Younger teachers, who want to elevate the profession, have already raised that question. And if the U.S. Supreme Court decides to overturn its four decade-old Abood decision allowing public-sector unions to compel workers to pay dues regardless of membership status, expect more teachers to flee AFT and NEA ranks.
All in all, Emanuel’s victory is a resounding defeat for AFT and its fellow traditionalists.
