CHICAGO — The social science phrase “wicked problem” can denote social dysfunction that is insoluble because those causing it are immovable from power. But America’s worst-governed city has begun breaking the grip of the peculiar political machine driving Chicago’s decline.
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.
Johnson’s guileless candor indicates the CTU’s sense of invulnerability: “I personally don’t give a lot of attention to grades. … My responsibility is not simply to grade the system, but to fund the system.” So, deciding “whether or not our public school system is working” depends not on measuring cognitive outcomes. Rather, it depends solely on the amount of taxpayer money that flows into the system, ultimately to the CTU.
Ninety-three percent of Johnson’s funds came from the CTU and other unions. Davis Gates calls standardized testing “junk science rooted in white supremacy” and designed to fail Black students. CTU placeholders like Johnson are fungible. Electing union ciphers, and passing union-favored ballot measures, is facilitated by Chicago’s scheduling of elections. They do not occur in state and national political cycles. They occur during winter, when the razor blade winds off Lake Michigan discourage participation.
A highly motivated minority can prevail in small turnouts. This is one reason Chicago’s government of, by and for government employees spends more than 22 percent of local revenue on government employees’ pensions.
The CTU’s indifference to norms was displayed on May 1, when Chicago Public Schools staged a “day of civic action,” busing students downtown to attend political events demanding more money for public employees. During the Biden administration’s pandemic spending spree, the number of CPS employees increased more than 19 percent while school enrollments were shrinking 9 percent.
It is, however, a law of political physics: There is some critical mass of corruption, some arrogance so off-putting, some indifference to competence so gross that some reform is irresistible, even here.
In 2024, the CTU and its affiliates squandered $2.1 million of their almost $2.9 million in political contributions to 10 CTU-supported school board candidates, six of whom lost. The union’s request for members to pay higher dues was crushed. The CTU has unsuccessfully demanded that the school district get a $300 million high-interest loan to fund the union’s contract demands. Voters soundly rejected a tax increase that was marketed as spending for the homeless but could have funded housing stipends for CTU members. A poll last month showed that nearly 14 percent of Chicagoans want Johnson to seek reelection.
For decades, a large majority of Chicagoans liked teachers, and hence their union. Now, however, Chicago ranks last among the nation’s four largest cities (the others: New York, Los Angeles, Houston) in fourth graders’ reading and math proficiency (23 percent and 24 percent, respectively).
A Chicago political axiom: “Don’t make no waves, don’t back no losers.” The CTU is losing, inundated by waves of hostility it has created. In 1955, an alderman content with Mayor Richard J. Daley’s machine said, “Chicago ain’t ready for reform yet.” The CTU has made it ready.
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