Touching upon Race to the Top, the Chicago teachers' strike and the privatization of public education, Smiley and West's conversation with Diane Ravitch points out that the struggles in public education--the "civil rights issue of our times"--are not just about race but also about class.
http://www.smileyandwest.com/this-weeks-show/the-conversation-diane-ravi...

Letters to President Obama
by Diane Ravitch
Great news! Anthony Cody, experienced middle school science teacher and fabulous blogger, has offered to coordinate our campaign to write President Obama on October 17.
We call it the Campaign for Our Public Schools. Anthony previously ran his own campaign called “Teachers’ Letters to Obama.” He is a champion for teachers, kids, and public education.

by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon - BlackAgendaReport.com

Polls say that most Chicagoans support the striking teachers. Mitt Romney says he supports Rahm Emanuel. But why do so many who say they oppose charters, educational privatization, the drive to demonize teachers and make them temps fail to connect these policies with the Democratic president who has been their most outspoken champion the past four years?

Chicago School Strike is Against Obama “Race To The Top” Agenda of School Privatization and Corporate Education Reform – Not Against the Republicans

by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

Despite what CNN, MSNBC and other national news outlets, and the Obama re-election campaign want you to believe, Chicago's public school teachers are not out on strike against Republican education policies. There have been practically no elected Republican officials in Chicago in more than sixty years. Chicago's mayor and the US Secretary of Education are both Democrats, picked by a Democrat president, also from Chicago. When it gets close to election time, Barack Obama is known to say a soothing word about respecting teachers and protecting public education, to keep from driving away traditional Democratic voters. But four years of Obama's corporate-style school reform speak louder than a little timely campaign rhetoric.

From day one, the Obama administration joined and has helped co-ordinate the all-out assault on public education. Obama's campaign pockets are flush with contributions from what Glen Ford called the “charter school sugar daddies,” at whose behest he and Arne Duncan
“...spent their first year and a half in office coercing states to expand charters or lose out on more than $4 billion in federal education moneys. Obama's allies on Wall Street invest heavily in charter schools, tapping into the public money stream to build their own vision of corporate education.”

By HOWARD BLUME - Los Angeles Times - Published: Friday, Aug. 17, 2012
From: SacBee.com

LOS ANGELES -- The meeting at Crescendo Preparatory South was progressing as usual when the acting principal dropped a bombshell: She had been given copies of the upcoming standardized tests. The teachers were to study them, take notes - and make sure the kids got it.

Some of the eight instructors were troubled by what seemed to be an order to cheat. One burst into tears.

So began one of the most brazen cheating scandals in the nation. Ultimately, all of Crescendo's schools in South Los Angeles and nearby Gardena and Hawthorne were shut down, its teachers let go and 1,400 students forced to find new schools.

Only the rough outlines of the 2010 scandal were made public, but dozens of interviews with former Crescendo employees and officials - as well as a review of previously unreleased documents - portray an environment so poisoned by demands to excel on state proficiency tests that many submitted to a plan to boost the scores of schools that were already doing well.