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How will the clash over education reform between neoliberal democrats and teachers unions play out in the presidential elections?

Cory Booker, Chris Christie, and Mark Zuckerberg had a plan to reform Newark’s schools. They got an education.

Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis specifically said the union is willing to consider reducing benefits for those who still are working, although she emphatically ruled out changes for members who already have retired. But such compromise wont come until the city and the school board agree to contribute more to pensions each year in order to at least partially make up for a contribution shortfall that occurred during much of the past two decades.

Critics say that charter schools—publicly funded but run by private organizations—are being used as a means to privatize public education at the expense of the vast majority of students. They say the charter movement is a Trojan-horse riding under the guise of school choice, used as an instrument to break teachers unions.

For New Orleans, the debate over charter schools and teachers unions has always been an either-or proposition. The Orleans Parish School Board voided the city’s union contract after Hurricane Katrina, and charter schools began taking over rapidly thereafter. Now, New Orleans is beginning to find out if this hard divide between charters and unions is really necessary, or if the two can somehow learn to coexist.

Facing reduced membership, revenue and political power in the wake of 2011 legislation, Wisconsin's two major state teachers unions appear poised to merge into a new organization called Wisconsin Together.

The American Federation of Teachers was the donor behind One Boston, a PAC that paid for a $480,000 television commercial supporting Mayor-elect Martin J. Walsh during the final days of the Boston mayoral race.

Teachers unions are facing tumultuous times, grappling with financial, legal and public-relations challenges as they fight to retain their clout and build alliances, and deal with declines in membership.

In April, the union included four billionaires on its “watch list” of money managers that support groups the labor organization said are hostile to traditional public pensions. The groups included StudentsFirst, an organization that backs eliminating tenure and funding charter schools at the same level as public ones. Daniel Loeb, founder of Third Point LLC, an activist investor is the only one of 33 managers targeted by the AFT to push back publicly against the union.