With Chicago’s ugly strike behind them, teachers unions are regrouping with a public relations blitz, meant to both repair a tarnished image and rally members who are under more fire than ever.

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the parent organization of the Chicago Teachers Union, will hold town halls, workshops and other events in the coming weeks in New York, Philadelphia and nearly a dozen other major cities, the labor group announced Friday.

The move, analysts say, shows that unions aren’t backing down after the Chicago strike, which lasted more than a week and grew out of a bitter battle with Mayor Rahm Emanuel over teacher evaluations, salaries and other issues.

Rather than unions’ Waterloo, the Chicago walkout likely was a precursor of things to come.

“Unless the balance of power changes, there will be another strike,” said Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform and critic of teachers unions. “Just because [Chicago] was the first strike in a while does not mean they’re less interested in sticking to their guns. It’s not yet to the point where there’s outrage [among the public] to spark a revolution against this.”

The strike was first time in more than 25 years that Windy City teachers walked off the job. The standoff with Mr. Emanuel, a former chief of staff for President Obama, was resolved with concessions from both sides.

Teachers will get an average 17.6 percent pay raise, significantly less than the 30 percent hike initially sought, over the next four years. The union successfully fought off Mr. Emanuel’s efforts to have student test scores count for as much as 45 percent of teacher evaluations, negotiating the number down to no higher than 30 percent, according to terms of the deal.

Teachers also succeeded in resisting merit pay and maintaining seniority systems, while Mr. Emanuel pushed through an extended school day and year.

Labor may not have gotten all it wanted in the deal, but it still views the outcome in Chicago as a victory and an opportunity to reinforce its control over public education.

“What’s happened in Chicago has changed the conversation and shown that, by communities uniting and acting collectively, we can transform our schools and guarantee every child the high-quality public education he or she deserves,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten. “Now let’s hope this turns the page to a new chapter in education reform.”

Building public support is crucial to teachers unions’ long-term strategy for two reasons. One, states and local governments simply can’t afford to push through controversial reforms — such as Mr. Emanuel’s teacher evaluation effort, backed by the Obama administration — by offering lucrative pay increases.

Two, the Democratic Party now includes a number of voices openly opposed to the power of unions.

“People have short memories. Everybody will get over [the Chicago strike]. The problem is, this is just a terrible time for unions,” said Terry M. Moe, an educational policy scholar and senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. “The financial crisis has made life very difficult for them because districts and states are strapped. But the deeper thing is a reformist movement within the Democratic Party. The fact is, there are a number of Democrats who are increasingly willing to stand up to these unions.”

Los Angeles Mayor and Democrat Antonio Villaraigosa, for example, offered strong words of support for Mr. Emanuel during the strike. Former D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, also a Democrat, did the same.

At the federal level, President Obama, while still relying on the AFT and the National Education Association for grass-roots political support and organization, has taken steps opposed by labor.

The president’s signature Race to the Top initiative promoted teacher evaluation methods tied to student test scores. Unions have vehemently opposed such efforts.

Groups such as Democrats for Education Reform continue to grow in stature and influence, and are among the loudest critics of the power that teachers unions have over education policy in the U.S.

Public-sector labor groups also have come under attack by governors, most notably Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, a Republican. He successfully eliminated most of the collective-bargaining rights for teachers, though a judge has thrown out most of those changes. Mr. Walker has vowed to appeal.

As a place to make a stand against that tide, labor saw Chicago as a natural choice, said Justin Wilson, managing director of the Center for Union Facts.

“You’ve got a different set of facts on the ground there. Chicago was the best place for this to happen because there’s an expectation that unions are treated well in that town,” he said. “There are a lot of other cities where it’s unclear if unions could gain the upper hand.”

But whether it be in Chicago or elsewhere, reform efforts will continue — and will continue to meet stiff resistance from labor, Mr. Moe said.

“Moving forward, they will continue to resist reform and undermine it to the extent that they can,” he said. “Then the question becomes, how powerful can the reformers be?”

Are we in Russia??

I thought the strike was bad enough. Thousands of children out of school who are already 2-3 years behind on average, if not 5 or 6! Parents with no power, staff at failing schools who continue to get paid in spite of it all.

But the contract outline prepared by the Chicago Teachers Union really takes the cake:

“Our brothers and sisters throughout the country have been told that corporate ‘school reform’ was unstoppable, that merit pay had to be accepted and that the public would never support us if we decided to fight. Cities everywhere have been forced to adopt performance pay. Not here in Chicago! Months ago, CTU members won a strike authorization vote that our enemies thought would be impossible-now we have stopped the Board from imposing merit pay! We preserved our lanes and steps when the politicians and press predicted they were history. We held the line on healthcare costs. We have tremendous victories in this contract; however, it is by no means perfect. While we did not win on every front and will need to continue our struggle into the future.”

Their struggle? For what? To ensure that they always come first over kids? That they control the education system and not the results?

They might as well have said “Dear Comrades!”

Pity the highly successful teacher who was on the picket line due to no fault of her own. Becoming a teacher in most public school systems today comes with mandatory membership in the union. Oh sure, technically you can choose not to join the union, but making that choice will mean getting harassed by the leadership and still paying agency fees for the bargaining they do on your behalf.

That bargaining resulted in the strike that ended last night. Not only did the union not want to accept some very basic, and hardly substantive evaluation components, but they were aghast at the notion that their members should work longer days or weeks and accept more professional development. You can read it for yourself, as well as background on the strike and various opinions on our Unions & Education Establishment page. I just wanted to touch base with each and every one of our followers directly on this issue and remind you of three key things that should guide your every decision on education reform going forward:

• You can’t work with the unions. Anyone who tells you otherwise – be they Secretary Duncan, President Obama or Governor Christie – is either wrong or misinformed. Besides the modest gains made in Washington, DC, there is no current law or contract today that, across the board, treats teachers like professionals and ensures that children come first.

• The unions have co-opted the language of reform. Too many reformers have bought into the notion that the union leaders are finally coming around. When they speak on Morning Joe or at conferences and express agreement with teacher evaluations, they always qualify their remarks. Still, some reformers get giddy and think they’ve succeeded when they exact such “concessions” from union representatives. They haven’t.

• The national leadership walks in lockstep with the locals and vice versa. Sure the language may be different and the locals may be less sophisticated, but whether the nationals agreed a Chicago strike was a good idea or not, there is no union leadership in this nation that would work to ensure that student success be the leading factor in their evaluations. That, my friends, is the truth.

Best Regards,

Jeanne Allen

The teacher evaluation piece in the Chicago contract negotiation is so weak to start that it’s almost unfathomable that the union would waste political capital on this piece. Have you looked at what the evaluation language of the new law and the Mayor’s demands actually say? It is not, as some have reported, about finite test scores. The 25% now and 40% later of evaluations that are said to be determined based on test scores are not based on one formula, yet. It’s fuzzy, as it has been in most laws recently passed and most contracts. Evaluations can include test scores, but how and who decides is still up in the air. This is not unusual in any case today, but it is underreported.

Take DC, for example. Teachers are evaluated against an average composite of predicted scores for certain kids. The extent to which their kids, over time, meet or exceed the predicted scores for similar kids is PART of their overall evaluation. “Performance” in IMPACT also includes peer, principal and some district observations, as well as factors relating to the school as a whole. And that’s only part of it. The comparisons are done by the research organization, Mathematica – externally evaluated – not a principal reviewing individual test scores.

These factors – who evaluates, how, based on what, over what time, and what the 25% of evaluation actually means (!!) has yet to be determined.

The union is not striking against evaluations, but they are using it to incite their members without informing them it has yet to be determined. They are striking against the notion that ANY evaluation is on the table, that they won’t have as many sick days, that they aren’t getting more of a pay increase, and, frankly, that failing schools with lower enrollments, regardless of their teachers, will be shuttered.

Some unions are getting too much credit for embracing evaluations. It has been smart — and easy — for unions in other states to “embrace” evaluations. The New Jersey Education Association is claiming that Gov Christie’s new law is “Our Law.” The much fabled New Haven contract is something to which Randi Weingarten points often. New York’s agreement was much ballyhooed last year but no agreement on evaluation has even occurred after the Governor demanded inclusion of performance in all contracts! Other union leaders have their own list of places showing how well they get along on this issue when they are “at the table.”

But none of these cases represent real performance evaluation efforts for teachers. They either drive bonuses to teachers whose average scores across schools — determined by a number of factors of which test scores are minor (New Haven) OR they leave evaluation development up to school districts, where unions have the most power (NJ).

So of course Chicago’s opposition looks extreme — their “counterparts” in other states have seemed to walk the walk.

The reality is none of them are really walking the walk, and even the sheer mention of evaluations, like the sheer mention of school choice, is enough to incite the old guard, even if there is very little meat to the threat at this point in time.

A judge declined on Monday to immediately order Chicago public-school teachers back into their classrooms, rebuffing Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s efforts to end the six-day strike on the grounds that it is illegal.

The Chicago school district filed suit Monday morning asking Cook County Circuit Court Judge Peter Flynn to prohibit the union from striking, arguing that Illinois law bars the teachers from striking over noneconomic issues, such as layoffs, teacher evaluations and the length of the school day. It also said the strike, which it called a “weapon,” is a “clear and present danger to public health and safety” by keeping students out of school.

After a brief meeting with a school-district lawyer later Monday morning, Judge Flynn, a Democrat first appointed in 1999 and up for a retention vote in November, said he needed more time to look over materials before issuing a ruling. He scheduled a hearing for Wednesday.

The lawsuit came a day after the Chicago Teachers Union’s governing board declined to call an end to the strike, the first teacher walkout in the city in 25 years. The union delegates said they wanted more time to look over a tentative deal that was finalized just hours before a meeting Sunday afternoon. They also voiced unhappiness with the agreement.

The battle has catapulted Chicago into the national debate over teacher evaluations, job security and the power of labor unions and pitted Mr. Emanuel, a Democrat and former chief of staff for President Barack Obama, against organized labor.

Union leaders said the delegates would meet again Tuesday—there were no meetings Monday because of Rosh Hashana—to discuss the district’s latest contract offer, meaning classes couldn’t resume until Wednesday at the earliest. The city was hoping to force teachers back into the classroom Tuesday.

Chicago students must, by state law, attend 176 days of school, and district officials said it isn’t clear how students would make up for the missed time.

“We believe our kids should be in the classroom learning from their teachers, and we are doing everything we can to get them back there as soon as possible,” said Sarah Hamilton, a spokeswoman for Mr. Emanuel. The lawsuit says the district didn’t try to halt the strike earlier because it hoped to resolve the dispute via negotiations.

Stephanie Gadlin, a union spokeswoman, said teachers have the legal right to strike over evaluation procedures, compensation and classroom conditions. She said the city was trying to “trample free speech” and collective-bargaining rights.

While compensation isn’t the main sticking point now, pay raises were among the issues being negotiated, union officials point out. The tentative, three-year agreement calls for a 3% pay raise the first year and 2% the following two years with an option to extend, by mutual agreement, to a fourth year with a 3% raise.

Legal experts were divided over whether the Illinois law would permit a strike, noting the decision would be based on how the union argues its case. The Illinois Labor Relations Act doesn’t allow teachers to strike over some aspects of teacher evaluations, such as whether to use student test scores as a factor, but it could allow a walkout over more “procedural” issues, such as the specifics of observations by principals in the classroom, said Robert Bruno, a professor of labor and employment relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

He said it is less clear whether teachers can hit the picket lines over layoffs and would depend on how they argue that in court. “It’s complicated law, and the judge will have to sort it out,” he said.

But as the strike reached its sixth day, parents were becoming frustrated with trying to find child care and with their kids’ loss of learning time.

“Kids are supposed to be in school,” said Mohamed Kallon, who was dropping off his two children at a North Side school that was offering meals and other services Monday morning. “I don’t know how they are going to catch up. I mean, are they going to recover the material?”

But the strike also seemed to be wearing on teachers. Last week, many of the picket sites had a festive atmosphere, with teachers enthusiastically marching in front of schools and chanting. On Monday, it seemed more solemn.

“Teachers are not as enthusiastic today,” said Stephanie Davis-Williams, 50, a first-grade teacher as she picketed in front of a school. “They are tired. They’ve been beating the pavement, and with all the marches and all the striking, we hope it pays off.”

The district lawsuit notes that about 84% of the district’s schoolchildren are poor and receive free or reduced breakfast and lunch at school. It also notes that students, many of whom live in dangerous areas, are at risk of violence when they aren’t in class.

The students “face the all too real prospect of prolonged hunger, increased risk of violence, and disruption of critical special education services,” according to the complaint. “A vulnerable population has been cast adrift by the CTU’s decision to close down the schools.”

Union president Karen Lewis has contended that teachers are fighting for students by pushing the district to cap the growing class sizes, air-condition schools and add more social workers, counselors and school nurses to campuses. She also argues that Mr. Emanuel extended the school day this year without any attention to making the longer day more academically enriching for students.

Chicago public-school teachers went on strike Monday, canceling classes in the nation’s third-largest school system, after marathon contract talks with city officials ended Sunday night without a deal.

The teachers’ strike is the first in Chicago in a quarter-century and the first in a big U.S. urban district since one in Detroit in 2006. It follows months of acrimony between the Chicago Teachers Union and Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

The city has canceled classes for some 350,000 students, though about 144 of its 681 schools were scheduled to open Monday, staffed by district workers, to provide breakfast, lunch and basic activities.

Karen Lewis, head of the Chicago Teachers Union, said it was a “difficult decision and one we’d hoped to avoid.”

She said the two sides weren’t far apart on wages but said they couldn’t agree on other issues, including health benefits and the new teacher-evaluation system.

David Vitale, president of the Chicago Board of Education, who was at the negotiating table, said the city offered teachers a 3% raise the first year and 2% annually for the next three years—which would cost about $400 million.

“We believe we have been as responsive as we know how and within our financial capability,” he said during a late-night news conference. “This is not a small commitment at a time when our financial situation is challenged.”

The conflict comes amid broader tension during the economic downturn between public-sector unions and state and local governments trying to plug budget gaps.

The Chicago battle has pitted Ms. Lewis, one of the country’s抯 most vocal labor leaders, against Mr. Emanuel, one of its most prominent mayors and the former White House chief of staff for President Barack Obama. The Democratic mayor has made efforts to overhaul the city’s public education a centerpiece of his administration.

This is “a fight between old labor and new Democrats who support education reform, and it has been brewing for a long time in cities across the country,” said Tim Knowles, director of the Urban Education Institute at the University of Chicago, which conducts research on Chicago schools.

The two sides have negotiated for months over issues including wages, health-care benefits and job security.

The union didn’t publicly state its recent salary demands but had initially asked for 19% in the first year. The average Chicago teacher salary is about $70,000.

Chicago teachers were slated to receive a 4% raise last school year, but the school board rescinded it, noting the district’s $712 million deficit.

Despite that move, Chicago teachers received total wage increases of 19% to 46% during their 2007-12 contract, depending on factors such as how long they had served, according to an independent fact finder’s report issued in July.

CER News Alert
Washington, D.C.
September 10, 2012

The teacher’s union leaders have, for the last few years, worked hard to correct the impression that their focus is on job protection, and that they, too, like the rest of the nation, are frustrated with the slow pace of school improvement. The alleged willingness of the unions to engage in conversations about teacher quality and to call for an end to failing schools has all been interpreted as a sign that they have turned the corner. Some of us have remained unconvinced, recognizing that many often confuse action with rhetoric. The Chicago teacher’s strike of 2012 settles the issue once and for all. Parents and students are left without the education their taxes support. Taxpayers in general are beholden to union demands that are focused on rights and protections, not on kids. Chicago remains among the worst performing school districts in the nation, yet instead of embracing the mayor’s rational, modest proposals to begin instituting limited performance evaluations, union leaders begin acting more like the Chicago thugs of old than the leaders they want to be considered today.

At a time when everyone in this nation is tightening belts, and with education the key to economic solvency, educators should be encouraged to stand up for accountability not ordered to strike over it.

This move by the American Federation of Teachers-affiliated Chicago Teachers Union proves the point that has been written about often: the fancy public relations ploys and rhetoric about quality is no substitute for action. The unions are thwarting even the most modest efforts to measure teacher quality. We said last year that New York’s much praised performance agreement with unions was unlikely to result in any substantive change and we were right. Just today it was reported that districts in New York still have not created the “required” evaluations and that little progress is being made. The same will likely happen in New Jersey where a new law is intended to ensure quality teaching gets rewarded but leaves the method and substance to districts and unions to develop.

Parents are powerless in the educational development of their children when adult rules are permitted to thwart the learning process. Rather than continue to let unions drive the education agenda, it’s time for policymakers to protect parents by enacting serious, substantive laws that remove tenure protections, abolish seniority as a condition for working and pay teachers more for doing well. At the same time, states must adopt school choice programs that provide high quantities of high quality schools so that parents have the power to make their own decisions about the education their children need.