Charles Edward Miller
Are charter schools the solution to the teachers strike currently gripping Chicago? Jonathan Butcher seems to think so.
In an October 28 op-ed published in the Chicago Sun-Times, Butcher frames the Chicago Teachers Union strike, which kicked off on October 17, as an ongoing inconvenience to the city’s public school families. “With traditional schools open but no teachers present,” he writes, “few families have sent students to district schools, and most are scrambling to find help while parents continue to work.”
His advice? Look to the city’s numerous charter schools, which have remained open while striking district teachers attend bargaining sessions, marches, and rallies. Charters are “public schools where families can choose to send their children,” and, in Butcher’s view, they are ideal, mostly union-free zones where the moral high ground is firmly in place.
Chicago teachers and their union are petty, he seems to imply. They are on strike to “demand more money” while simultaneously thwarting the growth of charter schools by insisting—as the Chicago Teachers Union did in 2016—on a charter school moratorium.
It’s worthwhile to note that Butcher is a senior education policy analyst with the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing Washington think tank. It has an annual budget of around $80 million, thanks in large part to deep-pocketed donors affiliated with the Koch brothers and the Mercer family, among others.
In 2018, the New York Times noted that Heritage Foundations staffers are deeply embedded in the Trump Administration, moving to fill posts “in just about every government agency.” Heritage’s policy goals are classic right-wing fare, from opposing action on climate change to ripping apart Obamacare. A recent blog post on the group’s website has a Red Scare feel to it, warning readers of a creeping, fantasy-laden threat posed by socialism.
It makes sense, then, that Butcher’s piece in the Chicago Sun-Times neatly side-steps all of the fundamental issues that underlie the Chicago teachers’ strike, and insteads frames it as greedy union teachers vs. noble, free-market charter school operators. One party is selfish; the other is only interested in educating kids. Can you guess which is which?
From Butcher’s perspective, the declining enrollment numbers for Chicago’s public schools and the resulting plethora of vacant school buildings are simply evidence of the district’s failure to thrive. But he neglects to mention that school closures in the city—overseen by mayors from both political parties—have been used as a tactic to force a free-market solution (charter schools) upon Chicago’s most vulnerable communities.
In 2018, Chicago public radio station WBEZ produced a documentary on the school shuttering, noting that the city’s residents have been subjected to a “generation of school closures.” In recent memory, WBEZ reporters found, “city leaders have either closed or radically shaken up some 200 public schools — nearly a third of the entire district,” under the guise of leveling the educational playing field.
The result has been a systematic dismantling of neighborhood schools, primarily those attended by children of color. This was all done with the assumption that the schools and the teachers and students within them are the source of failure and inequality, and not society at large.
This has led to a refreshed school system in some ways, WBEZ reporters point out, with the creation of a slew of new high schools in particular. But it has also “torn neighborhoods apart” and destabilized already struggling communities.
Butcher’s line of argument appeals to those with little understanding of who gets left behind when school choice schemes take over.
There is no sense of this in Butcher’s critique of the Chicago teachers’ strike. He offers readers no analysis or perspective beyond the plutocrat-supported idea that school choice is the right way to reform public education.
Instead, the Chicago Public Schools is nothing but a “persistently low-performing district” whose teaching staff is beholden to a special interest—their union. Butcher reserves particular disdain for unionized charter school teachers in the city, implying that those who walked off the job recently at Passages Charter School and demanded better pay are somehow betraying the cause.
And what is that cause, again? Selfless, non-union teachers and underpaid school support staff working to single-handedly eradicate poverty and inequality, perhaps, while Chicago continues to rank as one of the world’s wealthiest cities. Is it even necessary to point out that this wealth has not been evenly distributed among the city’s nearly three million residents?
Butcher’s line of argument appeals to those with little understanding of who gets left behind when school choice schemes take over. Chicago teachers have refused to accept blame for the city’s persistent problems, including the rising numbers of homeless families they work with, or the prevalence of gun violence and trauma among Chicago’s youth.
Chicago’s teacher strike may well be an inconvenience for the city’s families, as Butcher points out, although he doesn’t seem to consider or acknowledge that many parents are also walking the picket line. Still, by pitting charter schools, where teachers are supposed to be too noble and self-sacrificing to go on strike, against traditional public schools, Butcher purposefully reduces the city’s struggles to a battle against power-hungry unions.
But it doesn’t take much digging to see that the teachers union in Chicago is actually attempting to push back against the austerity measures and slow-drip, up-by-the-bootstraps approach to societal change that the city’s elites prefer. And maybe that is why Butcher is so offended by the sight of thousands of Chicago school employees marching in the street, clad in union-red shirts and inspiring everyone from Chance the Rapper to local high school students to join them in “fighting for the schools all students deserve.”
Update: The Chicago Teachers Union announced on October 31 that they have reached a tentative agreement with Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot. Teachers have not returned to the classroom yet, however, citing an ongoing dispute with the mayor over whether or not instructional days missed during the strike will be restored, per the union’s request.