In teachers' strike, Emanuel pushing Democrats' new view

(CNN) -- The hard-nosed stance taken by Mayor Rahm Emanuel in the Chicago teachers' strike dovetails with the education goals of his former boss, President Barack Obama, but observers disagreed Monday over how well it serves the city's schoolchildren. Critics such as Fordham University professor Mark Naison say Emanuel is slavishly following the Obama administration's educational policies to the detriment of children and teachers. "It makes teachers look at students as their adversaries," said Naison, who works with public school teachers as part of the Bronx African American History Project and is a professor of African American Studies and History at the university. "It makes teachers hate their jobs and it makes students not want to go to schools, because all you do is study for bubble tests," he said, referring to computer-scored standardized tests. Labor versus politics in Chicago Chicago schools 'fiscally challenged' Chicago mom: School a 'haven' from gangs Chicago teachers on the picket lines But the mayor's supporters see teachers desperately trying to hold on to their jobs amid a challenging environment that mixes rising calls for accountability with falling budgets. "The only negative consequence, if you think about it as negative, is that some people are going to lose their jobs. And maybe rightly so," said Juan Rangel, CEO of United Neighborhood Organization, a nonprofit that manages 13 largely Latino charter schools in Chicago. Chicago's 30,000 school teachers were in the second day of a strike Tuesday after 10 months of negotiations failed to reach a deal. Emanuel came out swinging in his fight with the union -- typically a reliable part of the Democratic base -- saying Monday that educators had opted for what he called an unnecessary strike that could endanger the futures of 350,000 children. The former Obama chief of staff backs Chicago Public Schools administrators who want to evaluate teachers in large part based on student performance on standardized tests and maintain the authority of local principals to hire anyone they choose for job openings. The question of changing how teachers are evaluated -- for the first time in decades in Chicago, according to Emanuel -- has emerged as the central issue of the strike.