Now that the teacher strike in Chicago has ended – and the city’s schoolchildren have returned to school – one thing seems unavoidably clear: despite the agreement, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his city’s public school teachers will remain deeply divided, deeply mistrustful of one another, and deeply entrenched for the foreseeable future.
The good news is that the rest of us can learn something from the mistakes both sides in this particular drama have made. In fact, there are cities out there that have actually transformed their school systems for the better, and done so in a way that left everyone feeling good about (and committed to) the changes. To bring about such a shift, however, the central figures of reform in places like Chicago – elected officials and teacher unions – must start thinking very differently about how transformational change occurs, and what it requires.
