The IEA leadership that appears to have been snookered or worse by Stand For Children’s Jonah Edelman has responded to the video and the Edelman apology to this blog’s readers.
Despite building the state’s largest political war chest and suggesting his organization had the power to “potentially jam this proposal down [the education unions’] throats,” SfC failed to get its bill passed. Instead, SfC was forced to collaborate with a coalition of education employee unions, lawmakers, school administrators and other education stakeholders who had been working together for years, on comprehensive reform package that puts students first.
Senate Bill 7 (SB7), the bill that emerged from the talks, differed greatly from the SfC proposal: It maintained the right to strike, due process rights (tenure) and retained seniority as a component in personnel decisions. The bill passed with the overwhelming support of both political parties and cited as a model for reform.
Once you strip away the arrogant tone of Edelman’s presentation, “If it can happen in Illinois, it can happen anywhere,” it is clear that Edelman got the IEA leadership to agree to exactly what Edelman wanted, either through incompetence or connivance.
Fred Klonsky 
What happened in Chicago is not some isolated event. The war chest of the reformers is extensive and legislation was pased in Michigan so that Bob Bobb, the Broad’s Emergency CFO was given total control of the Detroit School District the same way, the former governor of California with Eli Broad’s “assistance” turned California into charter school country and in our state of Washington we had a very close call fighting off Gates backed alliances, Stand for Children being part of that unholy alliance, when they attempted three times in one session to push through ed reform bills.
If the IEA, CTU, IFT, and Sen. Lightford knew about SfC and their pay to play stance, then why would they sit at the table with them? The political atmosphere has changed and though there may be a time to “sit at the table”, this was not it. Why has standing up for ourselves and thinking independently become a bad thing? My heart aches for the current teachers. I hope the Board remembers that the retirees came through for them on these bills, and the next time a vote comes up to take away pension benefits at the IEA RA and at the IEA Board, they support us, despite recommendations from IEA leadership. We supported them! This incident makes it look like the leadership was scammed, despite their response. This is a hard lesson to learn, and I hope they learned it. Thank you Fred, for exposing this.