America


Teachers Union Controls Chicago Schools. It’s a


Disaster N


Classrooms are a disgrace that border on child abuse. BY JOHN FUND


ew yorkers need look no further than Chicago for a depressing insight into their future, now that


they have elected socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani. In 2023, the Chicago Teachers


Union (CTU) muscled through the razor-thin election of Brandon John- son, one of its own lobbyists, as mayor. Since then, Johnson has acceler-


ated the city’s decline and given the union unprecedented control over its failed schools. Paul Vallas, a moderate who served


as Chicago’s top school chief from 1995 to 2001 and won 49% running against Johnson, is blunt in his criti- cism of its influence. He says the CTU doesn’t “give a


damn about the kids. The Socialist Party of Chicago is Chicago’s teach- ers union. “They have more nonteaching employees than teachers, and they have almost 11,000 more teaching employees than the city has cops,” Vallas laments.


20 NEWSMAX | DECEMBER 2025 “So this is a union that is taking


an ever-bigger part of the taxpayers’ pie and just delivering abysmal per- formance. And that’s why people are leaving with their feet.” An estimated 116,000 people left


Chicago from July 2023 to June 2024, the latest time frame available. The CTU’s priorities are clear. The


public schools it dominates are a dis- grace that border on child abuse. Chicago’s education system is a case


study of what happens when political power is ceded to special inter- est groups. CTU’s Stacy Davis


Gates, who was first elected president in 2022, has just expand- ed her power by unani- mously being elected head of the Illinois Federation of Teach- ers, which dominates statewide education policy.


UNITY Stacy Davis Gates, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, left, appears with Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson.


But her union dodges accountabil-


JUST HOW BAD ARE SCHOOLS?


of Chicago Public School students are proficient in math and


17% 26%


in reading.


Chicago Public Schools spend nearly


Davis Gates will apparently run both the city and state unions at the same time. She’s already made use of her new statewide platform to call for rais- ing taxes on individuals and corpora- tions “so they can pay their fair share.”


$30,000 per student per year.


ity at every turn. Davis Gates dismisses concerns that Illinois schools are fail- ing. She claims that disastrous test scores are based on “junk science root- ed in white supremacy. You can’t test Black children with an instrument that was born to prove their inferiority.” Without blinking an eye, Davis Gates frequently boasts that “I can’t advocate on behalf of public education without it taking root in my own household.” But she sends


The latest Illinois state assessments reveal only


her own son to a $15,000-a-year private school. At the same time, other parents are denied that right. Last year, Davis


Gates instigated a shutdown of a small existing Illinois school choice program, put- ting the futures of 10,000 low-income students at risk. It’s a closely guard-


ed secret that teacher union leaders who work


to deny students the option of using choice to escape failing schools often exercise that choice for themselves. A decade ago, the late economist Walter Williams noted that 39% of


TERRENCE ANTONIO JAMES/CHICAGO TRIBUNE/TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE VIA GETTY IMAGES


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