These Rat-F%$#s Keep Failing Up

Now that education privatization advocate (and general failure) Paul Vallas appears to be on the way out in Bridgeport (background here), it looks like he will land on his feet.

It appears that Illinois Governor Pat Quinn will have Vallas on the ticket as his Lieutenant Governor:

The nation’s largest union panned the Friday afternoon announcement that Illinois’ Democratic governor is tapping an education reform lightning rod to join his reelection ticket.

“We are less than thrilled by the selection of Mr. Vallas,” Illinois Education Association president Cinda Klickna told Salon in a Friday email. “As head of the Chicago Public School System, he was known as a top-down administrator who routinely chose confrontation with the Chicago Teachers Union over collaboration.” Klickna’s comments came in response to an inquiry to the IEA’s parent union, the National Education Association. American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, who leads the country’s other top teachers’ union, sent Salon a three-word comment on Vallas’ selection: “We were surprised.”

As I’ve reported, Vallas is currently serving as superintendent of Bridgeport, Conn., schools, following past stints helming school districts in Philadelphia, New Orleans and Chicago – each marked by conflict with critics of the bipartisan education reform consensus. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported in 2006 that Vallas was “blasted” by the majority of the School Reform Commission, the agency overseeing city schools, for “his handling of a deficit that will force midyear cuts in the school system.” In New Orleans, PBS noted in 2010, “charters have exploded” from 2 percent to a majority of city schools. In Tuesday school board elections framed by activists as a referendum on the education agenda of Vallas and Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch, a dissident faction grew to a bare majority of the board’s nine seats, putting Vallas’ future there in jeopardy.

People of Illinois, missing Rod Blagojevich yet?