The Chicago Teachers Union Strike and What Came out of It

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On September18th, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) voted to end its strike. After seven days of rumbustious protects, the CTU accepted the suggestions made by the city of Chicago. And there are many things we can think about through this strike. First of all, many national debates get involved this strike. In the surface, the CTU declared that this strike is a labor dispute over job security, in which way laid-off teachers would be hired back according to their seniority-pay, merit-pay and in some ways surprise me, they wanted to connect teacher evaluation to student achievement as test scores just like China. In some aspects, this strike was just part of the battle across the entire country between teachers unions and education reformers. It was a battle for who can control the schools and classrooms. It is not hard to find out that the reason why CTU resist tying evaluation to student achievement has relation with money. Federal government dangled a suggestion about $4.35 billion financial support will be given to enact reforms, especially related to improving teacher performance (Hetzner: para 7). Of course, most states would propose plan tying teacher pay to student achievement in order to get his prize, but because the influence of teacher unions, only 11 states end up with money for this program. In this strike, the clash about teacher evaluation was main point in a contract dispute between Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and CTU. It is hard to say whether or not tying teacher pay to student performance is good or not. On one side, if there is no certain standard to distinguish between low-performing and high-performing teachers, it can protect ineffective teachers being fired, but it may lower the motivation for hard working ... ... middle of paper ... ...t will lead to a more powerful union. At the end of this strike, September 18th, CTU House of Delegates voted 98% to 2% to accept the most recent contract draft and suspend the strike. In my opinion, I think the resulting contract is a mixed victory. It can satisfy both Mayor Emanuel and CTU leader Lewis, even though there are more work needs to be done. This contract gave victories to both sides. It gives annual raises to teachers, increases the length of school day and allows teachers to be evaluated, in part, with student test scores. The school system would also guide laid-off teachers who have high rating into new school which can solve the unemployment problem in some extent. References Greenhouse, S. (2010, April 12). Union Chief Said To Be Quitting. The New York Times. Retrieved May 4, 2014, from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/us/13union.html?_r=0

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