CHICAGO -- The teachers' strike that went through
its second day Tuesday highlights tensions between public schools and
the federal government, unions and administrators, and teachers and
their bosses.
It's a trend that began under
President George W. Bush with No Child Left Behind, which required
states to test students to qualify for federal funds, and continues with
President Obama's Race to the Top, a federal grant competition that
pushes schools to use standardized test scores to retain and reward
teachers.
"We are at a critical moment," says
Kevin Kumashiro, a University of Illinois at Chicago education
professor. At stake, he says: Whether unions can resist a nationwide
shift toward the use of test scores to evaluate teachers, the spread of
charter schools that hire non-union teachers and the erosion of
teachers' job security.
About 26,000 members
of the Chicago Teachers Union walked out Monday, locking more than
350,000 students out of schools. Contract negotiations continue.
In
the past, says Joe Williams of Democrats for Education Reform, a New
York-based group that has pushed for new teacher tenure laws, teachers'
strikes have "been about the numbers -- pay and benefits. You don't tend
to get these larger existential battles."
This
strike is different. Foremost among the disputes: How much weight
should schools give to student test scores when evaluating teachers?
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, following the lead of the Obama
administration, wants to make test scores represent as much as 40% of
evaluations.
The union says many other
factors, including a student's health, family situation and the stresses
of poverty, make test scores less relevant.
Schools
across the nation are wrestling with the same issues, which have
long-term political repercussions that could undermine the longstanding
bond between Democrats and unions.
"This
strike brings to the surface a tension that has been brewing in the
Democratic Party for the last few years between the old guard of
teachers unions and a generation of hard-charging education reformers,"
says Michael McShane, an education policy fellow at the conservative
American Enterprise Institute.
"The issues are
pretty much the same all over the country," says Dean Vogel, president
of the California Teachers Association. Finding common ground on the
teacher evaluation issue is the only solution, he says. "Any time you
stand up to defend the rights of teachers and kids, that's to our
advantage," he adds.
State lawmakers in 2010
unanimously approved a change in the Illinois teacher evaluation law in
order to qualify for millions in federal funding through Race to the
Top.
"We're creating a culture where people are held accountable for their results," said Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a Democrat.
Richard
Kahlenberg, author of a 2007 biography of teachers union pioneer Albert
Shanker, says years of tough rhetoric about public schools in general
-- and teachers in particular -- have had an effect.
"Teachers
have come under such a beating over the last several years that, to my
mind, it was only a matter of time before someone somewhere would stand
up and say, 'This has gone too far.'"
Others
see the strike as a union's last stand in an education landscape
increasingly dominated by outside forces such as hedge-fund financiers
and private foundations that have pushed for market-based changes to
public schools and are behind the steady growth of privately run but
publicly funded charter schools, where few teachers belong to unions.
Daniel
DiSalvo, a labor specialist at City College of New York, says Emanuel's
confrontation with the union highlights a shift in union-government
disputes.
Last year in Wisconsin, Republican
Gov. Scott Walker won a bitter battle and ended collective bargaining
rights for most state workers, including teachers.
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