(Image source: Washington Post )

BY STEVEN SPARKMAN

The Chicago teachers strike continued into its third day Wednesday. Union leaders are set to discuss a comprehensive proposal from the district, but Democracy Now! reports at least one major issue remains unresolved.

“A key point of contention is the district’s proposed method for evaluating teachers, which the teachers’ union says relies too heavily on standardized testing and could soon result in thousands of job cuts.”

The district wants standardized test performance to account for 40 percent of a teacher’s evaluation by 2016. The teachers say that will promote teaching to the test and give less time for fuller education. But many news organizations say the unions are just entitled.

An editorial in USA Today says “The teachers' main beef is about accountability. They don't want it, at least not the measurable kind.” And Fox News’s Greg Gutfeld added :

“The teachers fear what they impose on students: grades, evaluations, standards. ‘How dare you expect me to do better? You must be racist or something.’”

The district says it needs some metric to figure out which teachers are performing well and which ones aren’t. That way schools can reward and punish teachers accordingly.

A writer for Chicago Now boils the issue down to accountability, saying: “If test scores are what determines whether a child is learning or not, then teachers must be evaluated on them.”

But the teachers say that’s the real question: Is evaluating teachers by students’ performance on standardized tests an accurate picture? Radio host Bill Press says, scores leave out much of the story.

“They don’t tell you all the other great things the teacher is doing: the long hours, the lesson plans, the private encouragement. They don’t tell you all the other factors that could influence a student’s test scores.”

The union estimates 6,000 of its members could lose their jobs under the new evaluations. A DePaul University professor tells WTTW — it makes sense the teachers would be concerned about losing their jobs due to a bad measurement standard.

“How do we define good teaching? How do we measure good teaching? … I’m sure the teachers are concerned ‘The test score as a number is insufficient to determine whether I’m doing the good job I think I’m doing.’”

But an editorial in the New York Times says tying teacher evaluations to standardized tests is a nationwide trend which is not going away. The paper adds the disagreement is no reason to keep 350,000 Chicago students out of the classroom, as it does under the current strike.

“If the union has legitimate suggestions for how to improve the fairness and accuracy of the evaluation system, in particular, it needs to bring them forward in a way that does not involve holding the city hostage.”

Last year, a National Academy of Sciences group found incentive programs centered on standardized testing result in almost no improvement.