Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, will tout their education policies to the nation this week at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Walz, a former teacher married to a former teacher, speaks often about his time in the classroom. But anyone curious about the future of education under a Harris-Walz presidency would learn more by looking outside the convention than inside it.
Chicago schools will be almost completely empty this week. That is by design: This year, district leaders pushed the usual start of the school year back by a week to help the city "accommodate an estimated influx of 75,000 visitors" and "[allow] time for students to attend, volunteer, and participate in the civic process of hosting the Convention."
That’s right: 320,000 students are being kept out of school so they can watch a political party talk about the importance of education. Teachers are still expected to report to work for professional development days, and the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is busing teachers to Soldier Field on Thursday night to watch Harris’ acceptance speech on the big screen.
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It is hard to imagine that Chicago Public Schools (CPS) or the CTU would have been quite so accommodating for any other party. Plus, such concern over a 75,000-visitor event seems suspect when the school district has no such concern over the city’s annual St. Patrick’s Day festivities, which attract hundreds of thousands of revelers.
This is far from the first time Chicago students have been kept out of school for political reasons. The city’s public schools did not completely reopen from COVID-19 until late August 2021, a full year after many other districts had successfully brought students back into classrooms. The CTU, an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers, called reopening efforts "rooted in sexism, racism, and misogyny" in a since-deleted tweet.
Even if schools were in session this week, one wouldn’t have to look far to see the failures of union-controlled schooling. A five-minute walk away from the United Center sits William H. Brown STEM Magnet School, where English Language Arts (ELA) and math proficiency rates are under 10%.
At Robert Nathaniel Dett Elementary School, less than half a mile from the convention site, fewer than 1% of students are proficient in ELA and more than 60% are chronically absent. Just one mile north of where Harris and Walz will speak, proficiency rates at Talcott Elementary are below 30% in both key subjects. These schools are not one-off examples; reading and math proficiency rates are under 30% district wide.
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Even when schools are open, many of them are mostly empty. Enrollment has declined by more than 50,000 students between 2018 and 2023, and 181 district schools were operating at less than 50% capacity last school year. Douglass High School and Manley High School were 96% and 95% empty, respectively.
Local leaders could not close the emptiest schools even if they wanted to. A 2021 state law that was applauded by CTU precludes CPS from closing down any schools until early 2025. A bill has been proposed to extend the moratorium to 2027.
Don’t worry about these schools going underused. The CTU is demanding that vacant floors of school buildings be converted into shelters for unaccompanied migrants as part of its new contract, which it is currently negotiating with CPS. The union's $50-billion slate of demands would cost taxpayers, over time, more than triple the amount the mayor proposed for the entire city's budget for 2024.
The conversion of school facilities is only one part of a long list of wants, which includes across-the-board raises not tied to performance and lower standards for teacher evaluations.
The state of education in Chicago exemplifies what happens when a teachers union runs a city. Chicago’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, was hand-picked by the CTU and propelled into office by union dollars. Johnson appointed all but one member of the school board (though the board will switch to a hybrid appointed-elected board in January). Both Mayor Johnson and CTU President Stacy Davis Gates spoke from the main stage at the American Federation of Teachers convention last month.
In school, CPS students are unlikely to learn reading and math. Outside of school, they barely stand a chance. But they will learn the sad lesson that, for education bureaucrats and union bosses, learning comes second place to politics.
