It’s too bad there is not a transcript of the Aspen video of Stand For Children’s Jonah Edelman’s presentation. It could be studied in every Local and Region in the IEA.
Edelman looks at SB7 as a major victory over the teachers unions. So do I.
In fact, he believes it is a model for doing to schools and teachers in other states what they did in Wisconsin, without the mess.
He believes the catalyst was the IEA’s cave on the Race to the Top grant. So do I.
He says their ability to raise $3 million dollars from the Chicago corporate community allowed them to “jam it down their throats.”
When they met in the lame duck session following their electoral victories, Edelman says that the IEA and the IFT were willing to discuss all the issues they would not discuss just six months earlier. In fact, he says they “gave away” in the first minutes of negotiation what it took the entire struggle in Colorado to accomplish, where they eventually destroyed collective bargaining.
Edelman says the cave-in was led by the IEA. “It has a history of pragmatism,” he says.
Go to the 22 minute mark on the video where he describes, in glowing terms, former IEA Executive Dirctor Jo Anderson, Jo’s son who runs Chicago’s Teach for America and Audrey Soglin.
Soglin is praised by SFC as “very pragmatic.”
Edelman says that when the “collaboration” was done that led to victory, he speculates that Audrey “was happy,” implying her position was always closer to their’s anyway. He had expected the collaboration to fall apart over the Chicago strike issue, was ready to mobilize his corporate supporters and spend his millions on ads. But he was pleasantly surprised when the IEA agreed to everything right away.
Edelman says that the failure of the CTU was that they allowed Edelman to get SFC to split them from the IEA.
The requirement for a 75% vote to strike (which the IEA pushed) meant, according to Edeleman, “in effect they wouldn’t have the ability to strike.”
“We got to decide all the fine print.”
Fred Klonsky 
I’m going to write to his parents, both of whom are alive and still working, and ask them if what their son is helping to do concerning education makes them proud. His mother worked with Dr. King & his father for Robert Kennedy. I can’t believe they could be proud of a son that has turned away from the messages of both of his parents lives and into the corporate creep in foundation clothing that their son has become. I encourage other to do this as well.