In a dispute that cost students seven days of instruction, the major players in the Chicago Teachers strike may well have collaborated to make history. As is true of similar labor actions, the Chicago strike featured a contest of wills between two formidable, and formidably stubborn rivals: Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis, and former member of Congress and White House Chief of Staff under President Barack Obama, Mayor Rahm Emanuel. As with previous teacher strikes, each side endeavored to secure the moral high ground, capture the support of parents, and win the war of spin. And, as is true of most similar disputes, each side brought certain grievances to the table that were not without merit.
Whatever one's posture with respect to teachers unions, one must agree that neither teachers, nor students can be expected to perform their respective jobs when deprived of a basic level of physical comfort. Yet, a significant number of Chicago public school classrooms are housed in non-air-conditioned buildings that were erected in an era when the academic year was considerably shorter and schools remained vacant during the year's hottest months. The union was right to demand change.
Whatever one might think of Mayor Emanuel and the leadership of the school board, the fact that Chicago's public schools maintained the shortest school day of all major U.S. cities can't be viewed as beneficial to students already burdened by low achievement scores and high dropout rates. The mayor and school board were right to demand change.
While oppressively hot classrooms and skimpy hours of instruction were among the bones of contention, the crux of the dispute was to be found elsewhere. Indeed, what made the Chicago teachers strike historic was that in the final analysis, what proved to be most at issue had less to do with wages and working conditions than with a pure education reform issue: the extent to which teacher evaluations should be linked to student achievement outcomes. In the end, the teachers actually traded off a better salary offer for a modest reduction in the weight accorded to standardized test scores in the determination of teacher evaluations.
Illinois state law currently requires that at least 20 percent of the consideration that goes into teacher evaluations derives from information relating to student achievement. Next year, that figure increases to at least 30 percent. Under terms of the settlement agreement, 25 percent of teacher evaluations will be based on test scores and 10 percent will derive from teachers' own evaluations of student achievement. In a typically insightful analysis, Mike Antonucci questions the wisdom of such an arrangement, writing, "...if I read this correctly, [the district is] going to base 10 percent of [its] evaluation of a teacher's performance on that teacher's evaluation of his or her students' performance. Really? Will it go like this?
"Evaluator: 'How are your students performing?'
"Teacher: 'Outstanding!'
"Evaluator: 'Terrific! You get the full 10 percent.'"
Cheekiness aside, the real underlying issue, explains Mr. Antonucci, "...is lack of trust. The district (and by extension, the public) doesn't trust the teachers to give an honest assessment of whether the kids are learning and how well they are teaching. The teachers don't trust the district to give them an honest assessment of how well they do their jobs, fearing they will be judged only on Johnny's latest reading and math standardized test scores, with no allowance for Johnny's home conditions, Johnny's poor work ethic, or even Johnny's attendance record."
That the strike had less to do with pay and benefits than with evaluation issues represents what may prove to be a watershed in the political culture of public education. Indeed, it would have proved difficult for union members to walk out over compensation, given that teacher salaries in the Chicago Public Schools average about $71,000, while the median household income in the Windy City is approximately $47,000. Chicago teachers are among the highest paid in major U.S. cities, while student achievement and graduation metrics are among the worst.
In light of such realities, attempts to generate support for the striking teachers often took the form of an argument whose basic premise consisted of the claim that teachers cannot be held responsible for factors that lie beyond their control. One of many examples can be found in an op-ed piece penned by Eugene Washington, titled, "
Standing Up For Teachers." He writes:
"The fact is that teachers are being saddled with absurdly high expectations. Some studies have shown a correlation between student performance and teacher 'effectiveness,' depending how this elusive quality is measured. But there is a whole body of academic literature proving the stronger correlation between student performance and a much more important variable: family income.
"Yes, I'm talking about poverty. Sorry to be so gauche, but when teachers point out the relationship between income and achievement, they're not shirking responsibility. They're just stating an inconvenient truth."
In Eugene Robinson's view, it is unfair to hold teachers accountable for failure to surmount the basic inequality deriving from the fact that children are born into vastly differing familial and social circumstances. He thus concludes:
"It is reasonable to hold teachers accountable for their performance. But it is not reasonable -- or, in the end, productive -- to hold them accountable for factors that lie far beyond their control. It is fair to insist that teachers approach their jobs with the assumption that every single child, rich or poor, can succeed. It is not fair to expect teachers to correct all the imbalances and remedy all the pathologies that result from growing inequality in our society."
The argument was repeated, albeit more subtly, in a self-congratulatory article by Ms. Lewis and American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, which appeared in the September 24, 2012 edition of the
Wall Street Journal. They wrote:
"Nearly nine out of 10 students in Chicago Public Schools live in poverty, a shameful fact that so-called reformers too often ignore, yet most schools lack even one full-time nurse or social worker."
In my view, the argument in question places already disadvantaged children at even greater risk. Yes, we have known from as far back as the mid-1960s, when James Coleman and his associates conducted their groundbreaking research on equality of educational opportunity, that socio-economic status is the most potent predictor of academic achievement. But one must bear in mind that correlation does not imply causation. Coleman's findings, as well as those of the corroborating body of research that followed emerged from
tendency-type studies that made predictions about
groups rather than individuals. Nothing in these studies diminishes the potential difference a teacher is capable of making in the life of any particular student. The power of effective teaching should never be sold short or written off.
I do not fault Mr. Robinson, Ms. Lewis and Ms. Weingarten for imploring the public not to scapegoat teachers for their inability to accomplish what is clearly beyond their means. While such pleas are not without justification, those doing the pleading should take pains to avoid saddling teachers with the appearance of
irrelevance. It is something of a straw man to suggest, as Mr. Robinson does, that the public expects teachers, "...to correct all the imbalances and remedy all the pathologies that result from growing inequality in our society." If teachers themselves won't make the case that teaching facilitates intended student outcomes, the public will eventually come to regard teachers as little more than babysitters...and wish to compensate them, accordingly.
Surely, that's not what teachers want. It's not what the public wants, either. Beyond the mutual hyperbole generated by a strike, teachers and their employers both wish to map out expectations that are reasonable
and significant, and hope to work collaboratively to realize their achievement. By the same token, neither administrators, teachers, school board members, nor the public at large expect students to flourish in environments marked by mistrust, rancor and confrontation.
In the private school community, one seldom, if ever, hears the relevance of teachers questioned, or qualified by students' circumstances and attributes. And that's a good thing. In fact,
research conducted by the U.S. Department of Education has demonstrated that private school teachers report greater involvement in decision making, enjoy greater degrees of support and encouragement from administrators, receive more frequent recognition for good work, and express higher levels of professional satisfaction than their public school counterparts. To their credit, our teachers typically seek
greater responsibility. They expect to make a difference. And they do...one student at a time, year after year. Our teachers stand at the very core of our enterprise. We can never thank them enough.
Ron Reynolds
With Governor Jerry Brown's signing of 
The legal "window" for the annual filing of the California private school affidavit opened October 1 and extends through October 15. 
