This Chicago teacher sees a sinister motive in the avalanche of hostility to teachers. Teachers were always considered admirable even though teaching was not well paid and not very prestigious. But these days, teachers have become “enemies,” who soak up money and do little work, who get “paid for breathing” and “tenure for life.” None of this is true. This teacher sees a dark side:

The teacher bashing was key to changing public perception about teachers because in order to squeeze money out of cash-strapped districts, you have to cut personnel. It certainly was unfair and hurt, but it was just a tactic in a larger war to privatize a public good.

This is about Rupert Murdoch’s Wireless Generation and Apple iPads delivering online tests 4 or more times a year to every child K-12 in Chicago. And re-selling student data to CPS to evaluate every teacher.

This is about a brutal teacher eval methodology based on junk science. It is imposed at the same time as tough common core tests that most believe children will do poorly on. And all to provide an excuse to fire roughly 6,000 CPS teachers and vastly increase class sizes.

This is about remaking the 3rd largest school district in the nation as a scalable market for Rupert Murdoch’s and Apple’s benefit. This is about hedge fund managers placing their bets on these companies getting huge contracts in the largest school districts — that is why they have flooded Chicago with tv and radio ads demonizing teachers.

And this is about Democrats raising billions of dollars in campaign funding.