This chapter looks at the economic and political context in which the teachers’ movement emerged, focusing on recent education reforms and the rhetoric that was used to legitimate them. This history starts with the Reagan administration’s employment of alarmist rhetoric in a policy paper entitled “A Nation at Risk,” which claimed that the country was falling behind countries like Germany and Japan in industrial dynamism because of the ineptitude of its schools and teachers. The disciplinary language set the groundwork for education policy that emphasized high-stakes standardized tests as a mechanism to hold schools and teachers accountable over the next few decades. At the federal level, this process culminated in the passing of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top under the second Bush and Obama administrations, respectively. At the local level, Chicago played an especially important role as a laboratory for neoliberal education reforms. This chapter charts these reforms, and highlights how they led to the emergence of the militant Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE) in the Chicago Teachers’ Union, which is focused on addressing the threat posed by choice schools to their job stability and professional autonomy.