If it is benevolent to support the most vulnerable among us, then it is shocking that the Chicago Teachers Union continues to fight for the status quo in inner city public schools.
Their obstruction du jour is the protest of a vote the Chicago Board of Education will hold Wednesday on whether to close or turn around 17 failing schools.
Closing a school never sounds nice, but when considering the sad state of Chicago’s 675 public schools, restructuring less than 3 percent of them is only a small step in the right direction.
A 2006 study of Chicago Public Schools by a University of Chicago group discovered that only six in 100 high school freshmen will earn a bachelor’s degree by the time they are 25. Of CPS graduates who attend college, just 35 percent will graduate within six years, compared to 64 percent nationally. In Chicago, dropout rates are higher, achievement is lower and needy children are trapped in a cycle of poverty with no means of escape.
We also know that restructuring failed schools or sending underprivileged students to more successful schools can help. In a 2009 study, the same University of Chicago group found that restructured schools mostly catered to the same students as before, and those kids often improved in math and reading scores. Students sent to different schools after theirs were closed saw more protracted gains within a year.
And most importantly, when students in failing schools are given the choice to attend innovative schools (including charter schools, which are public schools stripped of stringent top-down regulations like hiring and pay restrictions), their chances of achievement and graduation really begin to improve.
So why would a teachers union defend a status quo that permanently sentences needy students to environments of failure?
A quote attributed to Albert Shanker, former president of the United Federation of Teachers, provides a clue: “When school children start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of school children.”
Though teachers care deeply about the plight of students, teachers unions – especially those who get their dues coercively through government collective bargaining agreements – are political organizations that pursue very narrow, material interests.
That’s why it’s no surprise that despite the miserable performance of its public schools, the CTU last week requested a 30 percent pay raise over the next two years.
Furthermore, it’s no surprise the CTU spent innumerable funds to petition against a CPS decision to hire 715 teachers based on personal qualification after previously firing nearly 750 tenured teachers for financial reasons. The legal challenge went all the way to the Illinois Supreme Court, which rejected the union’s claim last Friday.
Thus, in just the past week the CTU has achieved a dubious trifecta of opposing reorganizing failing schools, protesting merit-based teacher hiring and asking for a 30 percent pay raise as student achievement suffers.
Of course teachers unions will continue to argue that we don’t spend enough money on public education as an excuse. Notwithstanding the fact that Chicago pays its teachers a $75,000 salary (excluding lavish benefits) and spends over $13,000 per student, America as a whole spends a lot on public education and sees few results.
Real expenditures on public education per pupil have grown 140 percent since 1970, but test scores have actually declined slightly. Even more telling is the fact that the United States spends the second most on K-12 education per pupil in the world. And in spite of this, American schoolchildren rank 48th globally in math and science testing and only slightly better in reading scores, according to the World Economic Forum.
Clearly, problems lie elsewhere. The structure of our public school system is ultimately what ails us. Consider that in no other area of American life are providers forbidden to reward successful workers or dismiss failed ones. In no other area of our society are the recipients of a service forbidden to take their business from an abysmal provider to a better one. And in no other place are unsuccessful producers of a good so often protected from failure.
Fundamental reform is needed to dismantle what the former New York City school boss calls the “government-run monopoly” of public education. That not only requires dismantling the collective bargaining contracts that give teachers unions unlimited political leverage from taxpayer-funded mandatory dues. It requires a positive direction as well.
Underprivileged kids, like the 87 percent of CPS students from poor households, deserve the same amount of choice as more affluent children.
At a minimum, that requires lifting limitations on charter schools, which will provide many disadvantaged students unique opportunities for long-term success.
At best it includes the implementation of voucher programs like the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program canceled by President Obama, which give families portable funding to attend elite private schools.
Despite its historical performance, Chicago is moving in the right direction, as evidenced by the recent stands being taken by Mayor Emanuel and the CPS system.
Chicago charter schools like Urban Prep Academies, run by Northwestern faculty member Tim King, have even achieved 100 percent college acceptance for their mostly poor and entirely minority student body.
But of course there is still a lot of work to do, and the Chicago Board of Education should begin with a positive decision today.
Ryan Fazio is a Weinberg senior. He can be reached at [email protected]
All opinions expressed in this column are solely the opinions of the columnist and do not reflect the views of The Daily Northwestern. If you would like to respond to the column, you may comment below, email the columnist or submit a 300-word letter to the editor to [email protected].
