The Chicago teachers strike has gotten national attention, much of it presuming that the biggest issues are pay and evaluation. But the Chicago Teachers Union has stated that the two sides have been very close on pay. And union members have no objection to evaluation; they just want a system not so skewed to standardized, high-stakes testing. These tests aren’t particularly good ways to measure teacher performance and, even worse, have the perverse effect of forcing teachers to teach kids to take tests rather than to love learning. But the big issues for these schools and for the teachers aren’t …
