By Ben Velderman
EAGnews.org

CHICAGO – As the teacher strike drags on, it’s become obvious to many onlookers that the main objective of the red-shirted Chicago Teachers Union demonstrators is to prevent teacher job evaluations from being tied to student achievement, in even the slightest way.

CTU President Karen Lewis has stated that poor kids can’t be expected to learn and that Chicago teachers shouldn’t be held accountable for their students’ lack of success.

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That thinking is behind the union’s effort to stop the implementation of a 2010 Illinois law that requires all teachers and administrators to be rated using one of four performance categories: Excellent, Proficient, Needs Improvement or Unsatisfactory.

The new evaluation system was to take effect on September 1, 2012.

The CTU is also trying to kill part of the state’s 2011 education reform law that mandates student academic growth to account for 25 percent of a Chicago teacher’s rating initially, and ratchets it up to 40 percent in five years.

A new Chicago Tribune editorial says such education reforms are inevitable, and chides the CTU for “denying the arc of history.”

“ … (T)eachers — all Chicagoans — need to understand: CPS isn’t pushing the envelope here. It is playing catch-up,” the editorial reads.

“Those vital reforms — evaluations tied to student growth and empowering principals to hire the best — aren’t a whim of Mayor Rahm Emanuel or the Chicago Board of Education. These principles are set in law, federal and state. They’re at the heart of the Democratic education reform agenda championed by the Obama administration in its Race to the Top challenges.

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“They’re at the crux of a sweeping 2011 Illinois education reform law. That law breezed through the Illinois Senate 54-0 and the Illinois House 112-1.”

The Tribune editorial urges CTU President Karen Lewis to “look around” and realize that “nationwide this fight is over. Reforms that hold teachers and principals accountable for student growth won.”

“Some 30 states require that teacher evaluations be tied to student growth,” the editorial states.

We love the Tribune’s optimism, but fear the union may be holding a trump card. A few years ago, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten observed, “Implementation … is where reform dies.”

In other words, Weingarten is saying that until education reform policies actually take effect, they’re just words on paper. Lewis understands this, which is why her CTU is out in the streets.  The AFT is the CTU’s national parent union.

The CTU strike is designed to put pressure on Emanuel to back down over the tough new evaluation system. If the mayor blinks first, the system will either go away or it will be watered down to the point of being unrecognizable and meaningless.

If Emanuel prevails, the CTU will almost certainly take its fight from the streets to the courthouse in hopes of getting the new evaluation law ruled unconstitutional. And considering how many left-leaning activist judges populate our legal system, that’s not a bad strategy for the CTU.

Lewis couldn’t care less about “the inevitability of education reform” or the public wrath that may result from this teachers strike. As long as there’s a chance the teacher unions can retain control of public education and avoid accountability, Lewis is willing to risk it all.