The Chicago teachers’ strike, which is now entering its second week, represents more than a simple dispute about pay and benefits, as many observers have noted. It’s more like a gauntlet thrown down against the entire education reform agenda—the broad centrist policy movement that seeks to bring merit pay, metrics, pink slips for underperformance, and other business school concepts to the American schoolhouse. Indeed, one of the main sticking points in the dispute is Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s desire to tie a substantial part of teachers’ professional evaluations—as much as 40 percent—to their students’ performance on standardized tests.
The debate between education reformers and their opponents is often painted as a battle between hard-headed proponents of business rationality on one side, and entrenched, complacent, soft-headed teachers on the other. Much of the discussion of the strike has followed this pattern. “They don’t have the sword of Damocles hanging over them,”wrote David Brooks in his New York Times column about the striking teachers, comparing them to businesspeople honed by accountability mechanisms and competition. “Rigorous teacher evaluations will give reformers a profound measuring tool.”