The Chicago Teachers Union is shutting down school choice by attacking charter schools, hurting Black and Latino families who rely on them. Their actions put power over student success.
Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates is in the Chicago Tribune this week saying, “The wheels have come off Chicago education reformers’ charter school experiment,” pointing to 15 charter school closures in six years.
Yes, the wheels have come off and it’s because the Chicago Teachers Union is deliberately steering off the road.
The union has always viewed charter schools as its greatest threat and has acted accordingly. For over a decade, the CTU has worked relentlessly to destabilize, defund and delegitimize public charter schools in Chicago. Their attacks have undermined charter schools’ ability to function, grow and succeed. Charter school closures are a direct result of CTU actions because union leaders fear any kind of competition.
Yet charter schools provide tens of thousands of Black and Latino families with their only viable alternative to underperforming neighborhood schools. Davis Gates frequently invokes racial inequity, but the facts tell a different story: of the 54,000 students enrolled in Chicago charter schools, 98% are Black or Latino and 86% come from low-income households. CTU tactics should be recognized for what they are: deliberately discriminatory.
Here’s how CTU has worked to undermine charter schools:
Capping growth regardless of demand:
Through its collective bargaining agreement, the CTU forced Chicago Public Schools to cap both the number of new charter schools and total enrollment, even when thousands of students sit on waiting lists.
Blocking access to facilities:
The CTU has opposed leasing closed CPS buildings to charters and has restricted facility support. Though charters enroll 17% of CPS students, they receive only about 2.3% of the capital budget.
Underfunding charters:
On average, Chicago charter schools receive $8,600 less per student than traditional CPS schools and are excluded from the nearly $1.3 billion in Tax Increment Financing funds allocated to CPS since 2019.
Short, destabilizing renewals:
While state law allows renewals up to 10 years, CPS leaders — under CTU pressure — have recently switched to granting charters only two- or three-year extensions. This makes long-term planning nearly impossible.
Forcing union mandates:
With the support of Gov. J.B. Pritzker, the CTU succeeded in passing a “union neutrality” law that compels charter operators to effectively assist union organizing efforts, gutting the autonomy charters need to innovate.
Stripping managerial flexibility:
Through contract provisions, CTU imposes rules that deny charter leaders and Local School Councils authority to design school operations or curricula in ways that differ from CTU priorities.
The case of Acero: A cautionary tale
Acero Schools, once the largest charter network in Chicago, illustrates exactly how the CTU’s playbook works.
After successfully unionizing Acero’s staff under the CTU umbrella, they staged the nation’s first charter school strike, imposing an expensive labor contract with restrictive work rules. In 2023, the CPS Board of Education granted Acero only a three-year renewal, creating enormous uncertainty. Eventually, the combination of rising costs, shrinking flexibility and overall hostility forced the network to close multiple campuses.
Because these were now unionized schools, the CTU successfully pressured CPS to reabsorb them as traditional district schools — schools that will quickly fall into the same dysfunction that plagues many CPS-run campuses. This was not an accident; it was a strategy, one that turns away from innovation and option toward monopoly and control.
Eliminating alternatives, competition
CTU’s agenda does not stop at charters. The union has encouraged CPS to eliminate high-performing selective enrollment and magnet schools, while low-performing schools are shielded from scrutiny.
They pushed the General Assembly not to renew the Invest in Kids tax-credit scholarship program, which gave low-income families the chance to attend private schools.
Inside CPS, they push the so-called “Sustainable Community Schools” model. While marketed as a community-centered approach, in practice community schools represent a union-driven structure designed to expand CTU membership, protect jobs, and eliminate competition.
The results of these schools are abysmal; campuses not only underperform district averages in proficiency, but they also suffer higher rates of chronic absenteeism all while costing more per student. Families have voted with their feet; many of these schools are chronically under-enrolled.
The cost: families with no options
The CTU has effectively taken poor children hostage to advance its political agenda.
National research shows students in charter schools make superior academic gains. A series of studies by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes tracked just under 2 million charter students in 29 states during 15 years, and found charter students outperformed their peers in both reading and math, even though they are more likely to come from challenging circumstances
Let there be no confusion about who bears responsibility for the decline of CPS charters: the CTU leadership. Their policies — blocking high-performing charters, ending scholarship programs, erasing accountability and elevating political power over student needs — have transformed children into pawns in a power struggle.
The victims are overwhelmingly poor, Black, and Latino families who are stripped of their right to choose better schools for their children. The CTU’s vision is not about equity; it is about monopoly. And under President Davis Gates, that vision isn’t just destructive, it is devastating the very students CPS is supposed to serve.
