Don’t let Obama off the hook

IN AN otherwise useful article about the reluctance of school districts across the country to use $10 billion earmarked by Congress in a recent law to stop layoffs of teachers, Lee Sustar leaves a hostage to fortune. His article "Stealing the money to save teachers?" shines a too-positive light on the Obama administration in championing the legislation.

Given Socialist Worker's criticism of the current administration's "Race to the Top" education program that attacks teachers' unions, its reaffirmation of the Bush administration's "teach to the test" policies, and its support for charter schools, it surprises me that Sustar, who has been one of SW's most trenchant critics of these policies, presents Obama in this article as merely a champion of saving teachers' jobs.

If school districts are, as Sustar shows, planning to use the money to "protect administrators and to push for 'school reform' instead," they are only following the lead of Obama and his Education Secretary Arne Duncan. Given the context, it seems to me that Obama's teachers' jobs bill is more of an election-year maneuver than a real commitment by Obama to teachers.

Of course, teachers should use the bill to pressure states and districts for more jobs and against layoffs. The new law gives the unions an opportunity to show that layoffs aren't necessary or inevitable, as Sustar argues. But we should not let the administration off the hook for its anti-teacher policies.
Paul D'Amato, Chicago