Dive Brief:
- Education Week reports more than 40 teachers in Oklahoma are running for state office after being active in policy fights from the outside and developing a strong following on Facebook.
- The larger group of teachers helped prevent former state superintendent Janet Barresi from winning another term in 2014, doomed a teacher evaluation system tied to test scores and kept a voucher expansion from passing, and according to Education Week, they now hope to push the conservative state farther left on education policy from the capitol.
- The powerful Facebook group that has united teachers and parents statewide counts nearly 24,500 members, and while the teachers are being attacked by some groups in the campaign, they argue they have experience with many of the state’s most pressing problems because they touch their classrooms.
Dive Insight:
It may not be common for teachers to take their legislative activism to state assemblies, but it is certainly not unheard of. Dozens of teachers are campaigning in Kansas this year, too, and there are former teachers holding state office around the country. The Every Student Succeeds Act shifts a considerable amount of power over education decision-making from the federal government to the states. Given the amount of control state governments are about to have over the implementation of the law and the responsibility they will take on to properly serve all children, teacher representation in state government may become more common.
In Chicago, the powerful Chicago Teachers Union has also become a considerable force in local elections. CTU President Karen Lewis was poised to mount a 2015 campaign against embattled mayor Rahm Emanuel until she was sidelined by cancer.