A great op ed in the WSJ by Juan Williams:

'Get off the bench."

That was Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's message to his state's business executives in January as he sought to rally support for his education reform agenda at a breakfast meeting in Baton Rouge. "Many of us in this room have the means to afford [school] choice. Why shouldn't everyone in this state, regardless of income level, have that choice?" the governor asked. "We can't afford to lose another generation of children so that we can satisfy the coalition of the status quo."

Gov. Jindal is part of a surprising development in American politics this past year: Elected officials from both parties are so fed up with the status quo of failing schools that they're abandoning the politics of left-right polarization and challenging the entrenched power of teachers unions. Republicans like Mr. Jindal and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie are fighting for school reform on parallel lines with Democrats like New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

On the other side are the teachers unions, which have proven to be formidable opponents willing to fight even modest efforts to alter the status quo. With one hand, they dangle a carrot before politicians in the form of campaign money from union dues, which are mandatory in many states. With the other, they threaten them with strikes, protests, negative ads and litigation that will make them—especially Republicans—look like enemies of public schools.

As a result, politicians from both parties are too often cowed into accepting a status quo that produces one million high-school dropouts a year and a graduation rate of less than 50% for black and Hispanic students.

But now, with Democrats and Republicans alike increasingly challenging the status quo, they need reinforcements. That's why Mr. Jindal, Mr. Emanuel and other education reformers have begun to actively recruit business leaders.

The logic of reaching out to the business community is simple. For decades the unions' strategy has been to simply outlast any one mayor or governor. But the business community is not going away with the next election.

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