Teaching by example

Applying business school principles to the education of young children, Emanuel and his wealthy supporters favor firing teachers based heavily on student test score results and deregulating education by expanding the number of charter schools. But while much of the press equates standing up to unions with education reform, key reforms that unions opposed have not worked out as planned. Although 88 percent of charters are nonunion, giving principals in those schools the flexibility that reformers prize, the most comprehensive study of charter schools (backed by pro-charter foundations), concluded that charters are about twice as likely to underperform regular public schools as to outperform them. During the strike, nonunion charter schools have bragged that they remained open, but the lack of teacher voice in these schools helps explain why charters nationally have extremely high rates of teacher turnover.

The theory that a nonunion environment, which allows for policies like merit pay, would make all the difference in promoting educational achievement never held much water. After all, teachers unions are weak-to-nonexistent throughout much of the American South, yet the region hardly distinguishes itself educationally. Indeed, the highest performing states, such as Massachusetts and New Jersey—and the highest performing nations, such as Finland—have heavily unionized teaching forces.

To some teachers union skeptics, like the New York Times editorial page, the very fact that Chicago teachers decided to go on strike was itself evidence that they did not care sufficiently about children. “Teachers’ strikes, because they hurt children and their families, are never a good idea,” the Times opined. But this attitude displays a stunning ignorance of the way collective bargaining works: If teachers unilaterally disarmed, saying they would never go on strike, they would lose all leverage and go back to collective begging rather than collective bargaining.
Of course, teacher strikes should be a last resort—extended strikes do harm the children’s learning—but sometimes teachers must assert themselves, particularly as they fight for greater resources and reduced class size for themselves and students. Moreover, a brief strike can have its own educational value for children. As labor attorney Moshe Marvit told me, “In Chicago, 350,000 public school students are experiencing, first-hand, how workers can band together and demand a voice in the workplace.” Noting the many children present on picket lines, Marvit suggests, “These teachers are teaching their students, through action, the power of collective action and solidarity.” And according to Reuters, a poll earlier this week found that 66 percent of parents with children in the Chicago Public Schools supported the strike.