Politics: Education counter-reform has arrived
Last week Congress approved an administration proposal to roll back the essential aspects of the 2013 reform that were designed to free the public education system of decades of corporatist political rule in which the teachers' union had come to exert control over most of the system. The core element of that reform – making educational quality the system’s guiding principle and introducing a universal system for evaluating each teacher’s professional and academic qualifications as part of a broader effort to raise educational standards – provoked the ire of union leaders, whose lucrative control over many aspects of the system was threatened.
Their roughly eight-year fight against that reform effort, mostly led by the radical CNTE faction of the union, largely prevailed with last week’s counter-reform, to the detriment of students nationwide. The autonomous body that was established to conduct teacher evaluations and generally improve the education profession, is now history. Once again, many crucial decisions will be made less with a focus on how to assure students are getting the best education possible and more based on issues of economic and political control.
The union and its main factions are now in a position to recoup a good part of the power they exerted over the public education system, as well as some of the political power they lost after 2013.
Now read on...
Register to sample a report