Chicagoans are getting fed up with the city’s teachers union
The Chicago Teachers Union’s cupidity in enriching itself, and the dismal results of Chicago’s public schools, have drained the public’s reservoir of goodwill. Among the reasons for the CTU’s downfall is a school named for someone who, as a slave, taught himself to read — a skill poorly imparted by Chicago teachers, when they teach.
The indispensable Illinois Policy Institute says the Frederick Douglass Academy, whose 47 classrooms were built to accommodate 1,008 students, has 27. But the CTU has seen to it that it has 28 full-time staff. So, in the 2023-2024 school year, Douglass spent $93,000 per pupil.
But Douglass is not entirely an outlier. At more than 50 Chicago schools, the percent of students who achieve math proficiency is 0. The 20 lowest-enrollment schools, spending $33,500 per student, have an 11 percent average reading proficiency. Students graduate unprepared for flourishing; the CTU thrives. The adjective “wicked” should be used sparingly in political discourse, but it fits the CTU’s ongoing child abuse.
Last year, 43 percent of the city’s teachers were absent 10 or more school days. Students similarly negligent produce the phenomenon called “chronic absenteeism.” A quarter of Chicago high-school students missed more than a month of school, and 100 percent of Douglass’s seniors were chronically absent. Yet the graduation rate remains high, at about 83 percent.
The CTU’s president, Stacy Davis Gates, who likes her son’s private school, vows to “create the crisis by which the boss … the government can no longer ignore you.” But the CTU is the government’s boss, having engineered the election of a former CTU organizer, Brandon Johnson, as mayor.
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A Facebook fight unfolding between SEIU’s Anthony Driver and CTU’s Jackson Potter over CPS budgeting
