Rahm Emanuel will be sworn in today as mayor of Chicago, having campaigned on promises to fix a school system that graduates only half its students. The veteran Democrat talks a good game and has appointed a schools CEO with strong reform credentials. But Mr. Emanuel has miles to go before he proves that his famous political toughness is a match for the unions and bureaucrats who will oppose any reform worthy of the name.
In addressing Chicagoans today, Mr. Emanuel will likely celebrate Illinois Senate Bill 7, which last week passed the state legislature and awaits Governor Pat Quinn's signature. The law is certainly welcome, and Mr. Emanuel was right to support it. But its provisions say less about the boldness of lawmakers than about the implacability of the status quo.
On the plus side, the law ties teacher tenure and layoffs to student performance, not just to seniority. The law also makes it easier to fire ineffective teachers—easier, that is, than the traditional process that in Chicago can include more than 25 distinct steps. And while it's good that the law makes it harder for the Chicago Teachers Union to strike, Illinois remains one of only 11 states to allow teachers to strike at all.
Then there's the provision allowing Chicago to lengthen the school day and year without union approval. This is progress, but from a pathetic baseline: Most Chicago schools are open for less than six hours a day, closing at 2:30 p.m. or earlier. By high school graduation, Chicago students have had four fewer years of classroom time than their counterparts in Houston.
The Illinois bill is far weaker than those recently passed in Ohio (which banned teacher strikes), Florida (which put all teachers on annual contracts, effectively ending tenure), and Indiana (which established a statewide voucher program and empowered parents to "trigger" transformations at failing schools).
To achieve real results, Mr. Emanuel will have to use the autonomy granted him by Chicago's mayoral control system. Here are some ways we'll know if he's serious about making the Windy City—America's third-largest school system—"the national locus for education innovation":
Are charter schools reporting fewer impediments to growth? Do traditional public schools have to compete for students—as in New York, where almost all high-schoolers now attend one of their top five choices? Will Mr. Emanuel follow through on his campaign promise to grant "trigger" power to parents whose kids are stuck in failing schools?
Such school choice measures are central to breaking the education monopoly and serving the poor and minority students most victimized by the status quo. But successful reformers like Michelle Rhee and Joel Klein (who mentored Jean-Claude Brizard, Mr. Emanuel's schools CEO) also spent political capital to reshape bureaucracies. Mr. Klein's Teacher Performance Unit tackled teacher incompetence, while Ms. Rhee built model systems for research and textbook delivery.
As Chicago negotiates a new teachers contract next year, the city will need to insist on an evaluation system akin to Washington, D.C.'s, which provides for the dismissal of incompetent teachers even in the absence of a budget crisis that forces layoffs. For now, Chicago's school budget has a hole of more than $700 million—so Mr. Emanuel has the chance to live by his own dictum and not let this crisis go to waste. (source : online.wsj.com)