{"id":810,"date":"2012-09-12T00:24:03","date_gmt":"2012-09-11T22:24:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/?p=810"},"modified":"2015-04-28T00:16:34","modified_gmt":"2015-04-27T22:16:34","slug":"schools-out-in-chicago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/schools-out-in-chicago\/","title":{"rendered":"School’s out in Chicago"},"content":{"rendered":"

What if your teacher did not come to school? In Chicago, 350,000 students<\/span> at public schools don’t have to ask this question, because it is reality for them: 26,000 teachers across the city are on strike.<\/p>\n

For the teachers and their employer, the city, this is purely a labor dispute. But to onlookers, it raises more general questions<\/a> about the importance of education in America today.<\/p>\n

Are teachers being paid enough? Are they being paid too much? How can the performance of individual teachers be measured? How easy or difficult should it be to fire teachers?<\/p>\n

Should public-sector employees like teachers be allowed to join unions<\/span>? Should this be mandatory<\/span>? And should teachers be allowed to go on strike? What if the strike lasts weeks or months, as some teachers’ strikes in other cities have? What are the consequences for children?<\/p>\n

If restrictions<\/span> are placed on unions, will the profession become unattractive to teachers, leading to a drop in the quality of education? And is the quality of education in America’s inner cities<\/span> anything to be proud of as it is? As George W. Bush put it, “Is our children learning?”<\/p>\n

The strike in America’s third-largest school system began on Monday, but already there are signs that it may not be over soon. The Chicago Teachers’ Union and Chicago Public Schools are arguing over 49 issues<\/span> referring to teachers’ contracts<\/span>. Among them are who is responsible for hiring teachers \u2014 the city or the school principal<\/span> \u2014 and whether teachers who have been laid off<\/span> because of budget cuts should be given priority in the hiring process.<\/p>\n

The union says the strike is necessary because 10 months of negotiations<\/span> had led to agreement on only six of the 49 points.<\/p>\n

Parents are suddenly in a difficult situation<\/a>, having to stay home to watch their children, find day-care accommodation<\/span> or even a private school for their kids, or risk not supervising<\/span> older children during the day.<\/p>\n

Complicating the matter slightly is the high-profile<\/span> role of Mayor Rahm Emanuel<\/b>, who was Bill Clinton’s top adviser and Barack Obama’s first chief of staff<\/span>. Obama has repeatedly said that education needs to be a priority in America and that teachers ought to be paid more. The teachers in Chicago see Emanuel as working contrary to<\/span> those aims.<\/p>\n

Currently, 47 percent of voters in Chicago say that they approve of the strike, while 39 percent oppose it.<\/p>\n

Nationally, however, public support is solidly on the side of unionized public-sector employees. In March 2011, during a highly publicized dispute in Wisconsin, a series of polls<\/a> by NBC News, The Wall Street Journal<\/i>, Gallup, Fox News and others all reflected this. Asked, for example, in a poll for Fox News whether public-sector employees’ unions should be allowed to negotiate for salaries<\/span> and wages<\/span>, health-care benefits, and pension and retirement benefits, 69 percent of respondents said yes.<\/p>\n

About the same number did say that they were concerned about<\/span> the amount of influence unions have on politicians, particularly Democrats. It will be interesting to see whether the opposition of Emanuel, the top adviser to two Democratic presidents, will change this perception<\/span>.<\/p>\n

\n

Update, September 19:<\/b> The strike is over.<\/a> The teachers returned to work today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What if your teacher did not come to school? In Chicago, 350,000 students at public schools don’t have to ask this question, because it is reality for them: 26,000 teachers across the city are on strike. For the teachers and their employer, the city, this is purely a labor dispute. But to onlookers, it raises more general questions about the … >><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,21],"tags":[150,187,41,179],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=810"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1776,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810\/revisions\/1776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}