Union Vote Ends Strike by Teachers in Chicago

CHICAGO—Chicago teachers union officials voted to end a strike that halted classes for 350,000 students in the nation's third-largest district and illustrated the bitter national struggle over changing how teachers are evaluated, hired and fired.

Teachers-union members demonstrate Tuesday afternoon outside the Chicago Public Schools headquarters.

Classes are expected to resume Wednesday, city officials said, bringing a close to the seven-day strike. Tuesday's vote by the union's governing board came days after the city and the teachers union reached a tentative deal on a three-year contract. The union's full membership must now ratify that deal in a vote that union leaders said would come within the next couple of weeks.

Tuesday's voice vote by the governing body, with what union President Karen Lewis said was an "overwhelming" majority approving an end to the strike, came after the approximately 800 members of the body, known as delegates, had voted Sunday to continue the strike into its second week to give teachers time to study the tentative deal.

The deal for the first time links teacher evaluations to student test scores, giving city officials what they say is a more rigorous system to identify the worst-performing teachers—and fire them if they don't improve. And the deal lets the city lay off teachers based on performance, rather than simply based on how long they have served.

Chicago Teachers Union members celebrate the end of their strike in Chicago Tuesday.

But it still gives preference to tenured teachers in that process, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel had to agree to conditions that make it hard to fire some teachers who receive weak evaluations, and to limit some of the power of school principals to choose their staff. Unions failed to gain new concessions they sought on issues like reducing class sizes.

Union officials didn't predict certain passage of the contract by members, but Ms. Lewis defended the deal.

"There is no such thing as a contract that would make all of us happy," she said. "But the other issue is, do we stay on strike forever until every little thing that we want is capable of being gotten?"

"I feel today that people are accepting the reality that we got as much as we could get," said Sharon Schmidt, a high-school English teacher and delegate as she walked into the meeting.

Chicago's teachers strike—the first in a major urban center since Detroit's in 2006—has focused on issues at the heart of fights over education policy, including the use of test scores to evaluate teachers and fire poor performers, and job guarantees for laid-off educators in urban districts hemorrhaging students. The battle over those issues has grown increasingly intense in recent years, thanks in part to the embrace of such initiatives by a group of Democratic mayors, such as Mayor Emanuel, seeking new ways to address long-standing urban-education problems while also grappling with budgetary woes.

Both advocates of school overhauls and labor leaders nationwide have been watching the Chicago fight, and perceptions of its outcome could strengthen the hand of like-minded politicians or embolden unions to take a more defiant stand.

Mr. Emanuel billed the outcome as "an honest compromise." He trumpeted the contract's incorporation of a longer school day—although that was required by a state law passed last year. "This contract is a break with past practices and brings a fundamental change that benefits our children," he said.

Some aspects of the tentative Chicago deal don't go as far as recent deals done in other big cities. It gives the city less room than a deal in Washington, D.C., in 2009 to move out struggling teachers, and it doesn't match a Denver contract signed in 2004 when it comes to awarding raises, in part, based on performance.

"This is what happens in a negotiation—you sometimes have to split the baby," said Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, an advocacy group that pushes for better teacher evaluations. "There are some clear wins for kids, but there are also some notable setbacks."

Shay Porter, a teacher at Hendricks Academy and a union delegate, said he was happy to be going back to the classroom—but also gratified with the outcome of the strike. "We reunited the labor movement," he said, and "we got most of what we wanted."

Mr. Emanuel, former chief of staff to President Barack Obama, has earned a reputation for driving hard bargains, and several factors seemed to favor him going into the contract fight. He won election last year without the support of the teachers union so wasn't beholden to it for political support. The state legislature last year pushed through measures that helped his agenda by making it tougher for Chicago teachers to strike and giving the mayor the power to lengthen the school day. And he boasted solid public support: a Chicago Tribune/WGN-TV poll in May showed 52% of Chicago voters saying they approved of Mr. Emanuel's job performance, compared with 29% who disapproved and 20% who had no opinion.

But Mr. Emanuel also faced a teachers union whose resolve he appears to have underestimated. Ms. Lewis rallied union members around resentment over what they believed was unfair blame for education ills they believed are caused by poverty and poor policies. Teachers are also frustrated by the increasing reliance on student test scores to evaluate them and schools.

The draft contract calls for a 3% raise the first year and 2% raises the next two years. The two sides can agree to extend the contract to a fourth year with a 3% raise. Mr. Emanuel had wanted to replace the "step and lane" raises that teachers get for years of service and extra credentials with merit pay. But the union blocked that. District officials say the total pay increases in the deal would average 4.4% annually over four years, and cost an additional $295 million for a district that faces an estimated $1 billion deficit in 2015-16.

The deal calls for student performance on tests to make up 25% of teachers' evaluations—which previously have been based on principals' observations—this year and next, and to make up 30% in year three, in line with state law. That figure will rise to 35% in the fourth year, marking a victory for Mr. Emanuel.

Under the deal, teachers would be ranked into four categories. Those in the lowest tier, "unsatisfactory," could be fired in 90 working days if they don't improve—although they can appeal their evaluations. Teachers in the second-to-lowest category, "developing," would be moved to the "unsatisfactory" ranking after two years unless they gain at least one point annually on the evaluations, which have a 100-to-400-point scale.

A pilot study conducted last year in about 100 schools showed that about 2% of teachers fell into the lowest rating, and 28% into "developing." Ms. Lewis said as many as 6,000 teachers could face dismissal under the city's original plan.

Tim Daly, president of the New Teacher Project, which supports tougher evaluations to improve teacher effectiveness, called the provision "twisted" and said it allows a teacher to "stagnate at a mediocre" level forever. "This policy makes no sense if you are trying to reassure parents that the district can consistently hold a high standard on teacher quality," he said.

The proposal also institutes a new policy that, for the first time, would base layoffs partly on performance. If layoffs occur, teachers rated "unsatisfactory" would be the first to go. Nontenured teachers would be laid off next, even if they had a better rating than a tenured teacher.

The union also won a provision that gives teachers displaced from closed schools first dibs on jobs at the schools where their students move—provided those teachers are ranked in the top two categories. The union has said as many as 100 of the city's 681 campuses could be shut for low-performance and under-enrollment, though the city won't confirm that figure. Since the mid-1990s, Chicago principals haven't had to choose from a pool of laid-off teachers—a prerogative Mr. Emanuel vowed to protect.