The Chicago Teachers’ Strike: A Just Conflict? | Capital Commentary

The Chicago Teachers’ Strike: A Just Conflict? | Capital Commentary by Brian Dijkema.  MGB: I completely disagree about the justice of the Chicago teachers' strike.  It is all about justice - as the Chicago teachers are being held to account for the poor performance of students when such performance is highly correlated with the family economics of the students.   To put in plainly, unless we also teach the parents and pay them for their educational time (to cover their opportunity costs) it is certainly possible to train the children, but it is most difficult.  There is also some question as to how such standardized tests are conducted.  For example, in Virginia, the learning objectives for the math test were not released until March.  The Reading objectives for the May test for next year will not be released until next March.  These are hardly fair tests and some of us believe that this is done to sabotage union pay to make up for budget shortfalls.  Such subterfuge is not worthy of either a free society or an ostensibly Christian one, especially if the goal is to move people to for-profit charter schools.