The Chicago Teacher Union vs. Charter Schools

This is the second week of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) strike. It’s the second CTU strike in less than 10 years, and it’s having wide and far-ranging repercussions.

Even worse, if the strike persists for a few more days, thousands of CPS students will not be able to participate in the upcoming Illinois high school playoffs. This is especially unfortunate because these postseason athletic tournaments are prime opportunities for CPS students to showcase their athletic abilities and receive scholarship offers from college scouts and recruiters, who routinely attend such athletic extravaganzas.

Another huge consequence of the current strike is a death blow to charter schools in the Windy City. Although CTU and CPS officials are still negotiating issues involving teacher compensation, more support staff, and smaller classroom sizes, it seems as though both sides easily and eagerly agreed on one thing: a moratorium on new charter schools in Chicago.

This is an alarming development. CPS and CTU are more interested in protecting and even expanding their monopoly on public-school education than they are helping children escape failing schools. Chicago is a city that desperately needs more, not less, school choice. This commonsense notion is shared by Chicago residents, especially those stuck in dangerous and poorly performing schools, who overwhelmingly support school choice.

For years, the “public school industrial complex” and its minions have tarred and feathered charter schools. However, despite this concerted campaign, the evidence shows charter schools are hugely beneficial.

As the Illinois Network of Charter Schools (INCS) notes, “Charter schools are free, independent neighborhood public schools open to all children, including students who are English language learners and students with special needs. Charter schools do not have special entrance requirements and have the freedom to be innovative, while being held accountable for advancing student achievement.”

Unlike the hopelessly outdated one-size-fits-all public-school model, “Each charter public school is unique -- both inside and out. Some may focus on college preparation, math and science, and others integrate the arts into each subject. While the possibilities are endless, charter public schools aim to provide a range of options so that parents can choose the school that best fits their child’s needs.”

Further, school choice programs, including charter schools, have a proven track record of success. According to EdChoice:

“Given enough time, school choice programs create small, positive test score gains for participating students. Of the 18 random assignment studies conducted, 13 have found positive outcomes for either the full sample or at least one sub-sample of students studied.”

“School choice programs appear to increase graduation rates for participating students. Three studies have examined these effects so far and found positive effects on educational attainment for at least one subgroup of students.”

“There is virtually no evidence that school choice harms neighboring public schools. In fact, students tend to experience small gains on test scores there. And school choice programs achieve these benefits with fewer public resources. Of the 33 studies that examine the competitive effects of school choice programs, 31 found positive effects, one saw no visible effect and one found negative effects. Moreover, 40 fiscal analyses have been conducted on school choice programs. All but three found these programs generated net fiscal savings overall for taxpayers, and three found the programs were revenue neutral for taxpayers.”

“Similarly, we see no evidence that students who participate in school choice programs are alienated from their communities or show less public-spiritedness than their public school-educated peers. In fact, research too appears to show the contrary. Of the 12 studies looking at civic values and practices outcomes, eight found positive effects. Four found no visible effect, and none found negative effects.”

“School choice ameliorates segregation. It does not exacerbate it. Of the 10 studies that have examined school choice’s effect on integration in schools, nine found positive effects. One was unable to detect any effects, and none found negative effects.”

This last point is especially relevant to charter schools in Chicago. Chicago has 121 charter schools serving 57,000 students. Of these 57,000 students, 98 percent “identify as students of color” compared to 87 percent in CPS. Moreover, 88 percent of Chicago charter school students “receive free or reduced lunch,” compared to 75 percent in CPS. Chicago charter schools also enroll a higher percentage of special-needs students.

INCS also shows Chicago charter school students routinely outperform their CPS peers. Charter school students in the Windy City have “higher college and university enrollment rates” (7.2 percent compared to 2.2 percent). Charter school students have higher standardized test scores, based on PLAN and ACT tests. Charter school students complete more college coursework (21 percent compared to 13 percent). And last but not least, Chicago charter schools have higher attendance and classroom engagement rates than their CPS peers.

There is a treasure trove of empirical evidence showing school choice is unequivocally a net positive. Taking politics out of the equation, using simple logic, it seems like a no-brainer that more education options (private schools, charter schools, homeschooling, etc.) equals more opportunities for students to attend the best school that fits their unique needs and circumstances.

Unfortunately, CTU and CPS officials have conspired to suspend the expansion of charter schools in the Windy City. Sadly, union bosses and far too many CPS teachers are putting their lust for more money and power first and foremost, thus preventing thousands of Chicago students from having the opportunity to escape Chicago’s terrible public schools for much greener pastures in charter schools.

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Kamala Wants to Lock Up Your Kids in School All Day

Kamala Harris has found the perfect way to disprove accusations that she's a cop. She wants to lock up your kids all day!

Kara Voght, Mother Jones:

The mismatch between the school day and work day presents a real burden to working Americans with families. And Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) has a new bill that seeks to correct it...

Her plan: A pilot program that gives money to 500 schools that serve a high proportion of low-income families to develop a school schedule that better matches the work schedule. Each recipient school would receive up to $5 million dollars over five years to keep their doors open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., with no closures except for weekends, federal holidays, and emergencies...

Harris’ plan takes pains to ensure school staff wouldn’t be overburdened by her vision, a key concession in an environment in which teachers have taken to the picket lines to protest long hours and low pay. Teachers and administrators would not increase the amount of time they work unless they volunteer additional hours and are compensated fairly for them.

So schools would be open longer, but nobody would have to work more. Presumably this will involve some sort of magic wand.

"After-school programs are good. If something is good, the government should make it compulsory." That's how Dems think.

As you may recall, Harris supported a California law that punished parents of truant children. Some parents were arrested and even jailed because their kids missed school. She's been known to laugh about it in public:

Well, if you increase the number of hours a day that a child can be considered truant, you can increase the number of parents you throw in jail. The kids are more miserable. The parents are more miserable. Everybody loses. Which means Kamala wins!

These days, Kamala is in fifth place in the polls, trailing Mayor Pete by a wide margin. The more I learn about her, the less I like her. I was hoping for a Trump/Harris debate, just for the chaos. Imagine him calling her "Brown Sugar" and then jumping 10 points in the polls. But the more she talks, the less likely it is. Beto finally wised up. Maybe she'll be next.

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Kapow! Take that, campus feminists!

By Bettina Arndt, writing from Australia

Great news - Senator Amanda Stoker has fired another round. I reported last week on her blast at TEQSA, our university regulator, for failing to protect the legal rights of people, usually men, accused of sexual assault on campuses. Last night she was speaking to Peta Credlin on Sky News and brilliantly exposed many of the flaws in the appalling university regulations governing this issue.

Here’s the link to the Sky program - https://www.facebook.com/SkyNewsAustralia/videos/986580348360639/

Please help me circulate this, particularly to people working in higher education and those who can spread the word about what’s happening here.

Amanda Stoker is a former barrister and criminal prosecutor and was able to spell out the lack of procedural fairness in current regulations, explaining that the basic rights of the accused person are being “completely squashed” under the current system which offers none of the normal protections available in criminal law courts.

Stoker listed those missing protections, namely that the accused had no access to evidence against them, there was no effort to ensure the reliability of that evidence, no power to call evidence in their own defence, no legal representation, no presumption of innocence, no right of appeal.

A secretive, unsupervised committee would determine guilt on the balance of probabilities with power to impose serious penalties including expulsion from the university. As Stoker pointed out this means students thus punished have wasted money and time invested in their degrees and are likely to be excluded from chosen professions – all penalties not found in the criminal justice code.

We should be really troubled by this, said Stoker explaining that universities established these unjust rules in an effort to make sure women feel safe. But the resulting one-sided procedures are resulting in gross injustice, she said.

She added an extra serve for TEQSA which is supposed to be responsible for making sure universities are well governed. “They have entered the fray ..gone out on a limb to endorse a set of processes that are really unbalanced.” And they have done this “in circumstances where it is their job to ensure they are delivering balance and fairness as the corollary of public funding and public support that goes to our universities.”

TEQSA is supposed to provide the checks and balances but instead “they are jumping on one side of the argument to the unfairness of others. That’s just not right.”

Wow, those squirming bureaucrats must be still smarting from Stoker’s treatment last week and now she piles on this lot.

Well, as you can imagine I am absolutely delighted to have Stoker out there fighting the good fight on the issue I have spent the last year trying to get onto the public agenda. My campus tour was aimed at drawing public attention to this feminist tilting of sexual assault regulations to favor the victim and ensure more rape convictions.

My only concern is Stoker is offering to help TEQSA “work through the principles of natural justice….and deliver fairness.”  But how will we ever know whether these unsupervised, secretive committees of untrained people are offering fairness to the accused?

It’s far better that we persuade universities to get out of the rape adjudication business and leave that to the criminal courts. No doubt this former criminal prosecutor is capable of getting the higher educator sector to see reason and vacate the territory.

Via email from Tina: Bettina@bettinaarndt.com.au