Face the State

By Jessica Peck Corry

Barack Obama wants Western voters to believe he visited an innovative school north of Denver yesterday to highlight his commitment to educational progress. His real purpose: Winning the support of affluent unions seeking to stifle real educational reforms.

At Mapleton Expeditionary School of the Arts in Thornton, Obama was introduced by a giddy former Colorado Gov. Roy Romer, who referred to Obama as the next U.S. president. Excited students eagerly greeted Obama with a chant of "Yes, we can!"

Mapleton, an option school run by a union-controlled collective bargaining agreement, saw all 44 of its high school seniors this year accepted into four-year college programs. This is, indeed, a reason to celebrate. But only momentarily.

With Obama at the helm, it's difficult to know what he is even trying to achieve. He talks about innovation but only introduces ideas that are anything but innovative, with his response to America's education crisis predictably empty. More money. Better resources. And a renewed commitment to special education.

Bursting with emotion, Obama told a packed house, "I think it's time to lead a new era of mutual responsibility in education, where we all come together for our students' success."

In his remarks, Obama offered few specifics of his reform plans, except to attack the politically unpopular No Child Left Behind Act, federal legislation criticized by conservatives and liberals alike for pushing unfunded mandates onto local school districts.

And then there is what Obama failed to mention. As he works toward sewing up the Democratic presidential nomination, he is actively courting the nod of the nation's powerful teachers' unions—bodies that all too frequently stand united in their fight against real reform.

Recently, the National Education Association political action committee council approved a conditional recommendation of Obama. The political endorsement—if you can even call it that—is contingent upon two things happening before the committee meets again next month. Either Obama's primary opponent, Hillary Clinton, will need to withdraw from the race or Obama will need to garner the support of enough delegates to win his party's nomination outright.

So basically, the union will only support Obama if he becomes unopposed or if he wins before the NEA is forced to take a position. Under ordinary circumstances, such a benign backing would be meaningless. But in 2008, no one is taking anything for granted. Especially not Obama. In October, he lost out to Clinton in garnering the critical endorsement by the American Federation of Teachers, a 1.4 million member organization.

As recent political history in the West has demonstrated, union support is essential to winning elections. Gov. Bill Ritter had millions of dollars and thousands of ground soldiers in union support when he beat out former GOP Congressman Bob Beauprez in their 2006 gubernatorial contest. Democrat Mark Udall will bank on union support this November as he takes on GOP opponent Bob Schaffer to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Loveland. In a state where less than 10 percent of all workers are unionized, unions are heavy players in politics.

Obama's conundrum: He cannot take the White House in November without union money, but real education reform cannot happen with unions in control of our schools. For every Mapleton, there are a dozen innovative alternative programs, including charter schools and parent-driven alternative programs, that are stifled by union mandates and control.

Such mandates drive up administrative costs, taking valuable dollars away from teacher salaries. They prohibit competitive hiring of qualified teaching applicants. They make firing bad teachers cost prohibitive. In many cases, they fight efforts to open charter schools with a passion that should only be reserved for teaching. And in Obama's campaign, union leaders will likely focus more on being precinct coordinators than on actually teaching kids.

If Obama really believed in educational reform, he would have cut the platitudes and made one simple pledge. "Yes, we can," he would have said. "We can free our kids from union-controlled schools." But Obama has no intention of taking on unions.

This column originally appeared at The Denver Post's PoliticsWest.com on May 29, 2008. Corry is a policy analyst with the Independence Institute in Golden and an editorial contributor to FaceTheState.com.