Did the Chicago Teachers Union Win?
Choice Media
September 20, 2012
The great Chicago teacher strike of 2012 has ended, and it’s time for Ed Reformers to look back and decide what really happened. We know kids didn’t go to school for 7 days. We know the union extracted a 17.6% raise from Mayor Rahm Emanuel and succeeded in getting merit pay dropped from consideration.
The Chicago Sun-Times today said the Union President Karen Lewis won congratulatory messages from the likes of Gloria Steinem, as well as supporters in Australia, France, Italy & Canada. It also says she basked yesterday in what some say is her new status as a union rock star.
With all this, how are prominent education reformers summing up the results of the Chicago strike?
Jeanne Allen is with the Center for Education Reform.
“Sure the Chicago unions won. They got even more that wasn’t on the table to begin with. They threw an additional time off for professional development days. There were some healthcare benefits they had. I mean they loaded this thing, and yet at the end of the day, Rahm Emanuel still declared victory. Strange how he can declare victory when 350,000 kids were out of school for more than a week and the unions won.”
“Yeah, I think one of the more interesting and quieter points that was covered in the media was when they reported that AFT President, Randi Weingarten, was on the phone with Secretary Duncan over the weekend, discussing how they could have an end to the strike, and yet at the same time she kept distancing herself and saying, ‘This is a local issue.’ So this was absolutely about politics. At the end of the day, just deal with it. Make it go away. ‘Make it go away Rahm,’ is I’m sure what happened. Plus, ‘Rahm, don’t you want to be something some day?’ It was political.”
