By JAMES WARREN
Published: September 9, 2011
Given the well-orchestrated hoopla over how they circumvented their union and voted for a longer school day, you might think that teachers at STEM Magnet Academy were Chicago’s version of the workers at the shipyards in Gdansk, Poland, who fought Communism 30 years ago.
The Gdansk workers inspired the Solidarity movement, led by Lech Walesa, a modestly educated electrician who had been fired from his job at the shipyards. The movement was central to the coming of the former Communist bloc’s first non-Communist government.
Last Friday, teachers at STEM and two other schools took votes — “organically,” as one teacher put it — that neatly fit the brilliantly managed, if necessarily blunt, strategy of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a k a the Missile, to increase the length of the day and year in an underachieving system.
STEM was praised by the Missile and graced by his presence on a balloon-filled opening morning on Tuesday. The deficit-challenged Chicago Public Schools then announced a not coincidental offer to elementary school teachers systemwide: follow in those schools’ footsteps and pocket the same 2 percent bonus. On Thursday, a fourth school followed suit.
The staged rollout again left the impression that Mr. Emanuel was playing 3-D chess while his union opponent was playing checkers. It even included a title for a new program cum campaign of persuasion: the Longer School Day Pioneers Program.
Pioneers. The word harks back inadvertently to the old Soviet Union and dictators who hawked the illusion of community and economic equality while crushing dissent. It has distinct historical links to schoolchildren.
The Soviets had the Communist Party and, under that, the Komsomol, or Young Communists, a junior varsity for future party members. And at the grade school level were, yes, the Pioneers, a Soviet version of Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, both of which were illegal.
They attended meetings, held jamborees, wore uniforms with red scarves and frolicked at summer camps, where they were indoctrinated in the Soviet way of life. Maybe there were balloons too. Thankfully, all that ideological craziness came crashing down.
The mayor, our Pioneer-in-chief, is physically lithe but practices a muscular democracy. There’s a bit of arrogance, a thin skin and political genius. He plays to win, driving a wedge into opponents and stomping them by guile, hard work and force.
The teachers’ union looks unsteady by comparison. It now says it wants a longer day, but it wants time to hatch a comprehensive plan.
That “organic” STEM faculty elected a union representative, opted to extend the day and devised straightforward curriculum changes in what is claimed to have been a mere three hours.
One implication of the union’s chagrined response is that the union does not trust its members to make such expeditious choices.
Mr. Emanuel’s decisiveness initially seems apt for a beleaguered urban America. And, as opposed to political leaders elsewhere, Mr. Emanuel is not out to bust organized labor or lower members’ pay.
Given time, the union may coalesce to play its own hardball. The mayor beat it to the punch. Four schools constitute a pebble in the ocean of a huge system, yet Mr. Emanuel is on course to weaken union leverage in bargaining a new contract and to achieve his end.
We have a short school day, high dropout rates and poor outcomes. We have to do something. If you doubt the challenges, consider the 25 percent absenteeism at Marshall High School despite heroic efforts at improvement, as chronicled by The Wall Street Journal.
Chicago faces daunting social, cultural, economic and demographic complexities. A longer school day is needed but in tandem with many changes. Studies of nations outperforming us aren’t definitive on a link between hours and results.
By comparison, here’s the third-grade day at one elite private school: 8:30 a.m. to 3:20 p.m., with a 30-minute recess. On Tuesday and Friday, the students get out at 2:20 p.m.
That’s more than what my 7-year-old son gets — 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., with a 10-minute recess — at his Chicago public school. But it’s no great shakes.
The elite private school is the University of Chicago Lab School in Hyde Park. That’s where the Emanuel children are new students.
The mayor need not lobby there for a longer day. Lab School is stellar, but in no small measure that’s because so many children get wonderful starts to their learning lives at home and are nurtured yearlong by families.
A very smart mayor surely knows that, amid an admirable full-court press on behalf of my son and other public schoolchildren.
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