Striking Chicago teachers take on national education reform

Chicago teachers walking picket lines are taking on not just their combative mayor but a powerful education reform movement that is transforming public schools across the United States.
The new vision, championed by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who used to run Chicago's schools, calls for a laser focus on standardized tests meant to gauge student skills in reading, writing and math. Teachers who fail to raise student scores may be fired. Schools that fail to boost scores may be shut down. The monopoly that the public sector once held on public schools will be broken with a proliferation of charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately run - and typically non-union.
To reformers, both Democrats and Republicans, these changes offer the best hope for improving dismal urban schools. Many teachers, however, see the new policies as a brazen attempt to shift public resources into private hands, to break the power of teachers unions, and to reduce the teaching profession to test preparation.
In Chicago, last-minute contract talks broke down not over pay, but over the reform agenda, both sides said Sunday. The union would not agree to Emanuel's proposal that teacher evaluations be based in large measure on student test scores.
Nor would the union accept his push to give principals more autonomy over hiring, weakening the seniority system that has long protected veteran teachers. Already, the demographics of the teaching profession in Chicago have notably shifted, as the private managers who run charter schools tend to favor rookie teachers who are younger and far less likely to be minorities, studies have shown.
In Chicago, last-minute contract talks broke down not over pay, but over the reform agenda, both sides said Sunday. The union would not agree to Emanuel's proposal that teacher evaluations be based in large measure on student test scores.
Nor would the union accept his push to give principals more autonomy over hiring, weakening the seniority system that has long protected veteran teachers. Already, the demographics of the teaching profession in Chicago have notably shifted, as the private managers who run charter schools tend to favor rookie teachers who are younger and far less likely to be minorities, studies have shown.
In the past three years, at least 20 state legislatures have passed bills setting up new teacher evaluation systems; many require student test scores to be the primary factor. (Teachers are typically rated not on how many students pass the test, but on how much growth students show from one year to the next.)
In some cities, teachers have worked with politicians and administrators to design evaluation systems they feel are fair. AFT President Randi Weingarten has praised that approach, which she calls "solution-driven unionism."
In Chicago, though, negotiations went nowhere.

(Reuters, by Stephanie Simon and James Kelleher; Editing by Ta Yp'opsin)