Chicago teachers' union strike, a vote for charter schools

Could this be the fatal "unintended consequence" of the Chicago teachers union strike?

Excerpt: Talk about unintended consequences. Has anything ever – ever - generated more positive publicity for school choice than the teachers strike in Chicago? For charter schools especially, the strike is the gift that keeps on giving. They’re open. The traditional public schools are not. Meanwhile, the framing of the strike in the mainstream press dovetails with the parental empowerment rumble from Won’t Back Down. But don’t take my word for it. Check out the ABC News clip above and the snippets below.

New York Times: “Sharonya Simon was looking for a better fit for her son when she pulled him out of a gifted program in a traditional district school five years ago and enrolled him — and later her daughter — in Chicago International Charter School Bucktown, on the Northwest Side. At the neighborhood school, “I did not feel like he was being challenged,” she said during a parents’ meeting at the school on Wednesday. Ms. Simon also said that teachers spent too much time disciplining troubled students, and that many of her son’s classmates came from families with uninterested parents.  At the charter school, she said, “you have a different group because of what we have to go through to get our kids into a charter school. You have more involved parents here.””

Read full report here.