Making sense of the Chicago teachers’ strike (where the two sides were reportedly moving toward resolution on Friday) is like trying to understand the failure of a friend’s marriage. You can’t help speculating about who’s to blame, but you’ll never really know. In truth, it doesn’t matter. Many countries have revolutionized their education systems in recent years, but not one of them has done it through strikes, walkouts or righteous indignation.
Just about every country in the developed world has a teachers’ union, so the mere presence of a union doesn’t determine the quality of a country’s schools. There is, however, a significant relationship between the professionalism of the union and the health of an education system. The all-important issue is not how easy it is to fire the worst teachers; it’s how to elevate the entire craft without going to war with teachers.