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.””

Education Week: “Broy (Andrew Broy, the president of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools) said his organization has received three times as many inquiries as normal about charter schools from parents and others over the past few months, as news of the impasse between the district and the union has spread. "There's no doubt that over the past two months there's been an increase in the amount of interest charters have received," he said. He suspects that interest has spiked in recent days. "A lot of parents are seeing their neighbors sending their kids to a charter school and are saying, 'Why are you still in session?'" Broy added.”

Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass: When Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis led her members out on strike this week, she said real school would be closed. "Negotiations have been intense but productive," she said. "However, we have failed to reach an agreement that will prevent a labor strike. Real school will not be open (Monday)." Real school? You mean that public system where four of 10 students don't graduate? Since real school wasn't open, I was compelled to visit an unreal school. A South Side school where 100 percent of the students graduate, and 100 percent are accepted to college. A Roman Catholic all-boys school that draws from poor and working-class neighborhoods, a school where there are no cops or metal detectors, no gang recruitment, no fear.”

Huffington Post: “With the strike having an adverse affects on those students who are already the most disadvantaged, parents are now questioning what they can do to get their children off the streets and back into school. Akers (Beth Akers, fellow in the Brookings Institution's Brown Center on Education Policy) believes having options in public schools would help these students. "Unfortunately they don't have a lot of options right now," Akers said to The Huffington Post. "That's the issue with k-12 education right now and why we believe in the notion of introducing choice in this market. Right now it's sort of a monopoly that these teachers are all part of the union and students don’t have the option of selecting into another school." “ (more…)

There’s a ton of coverage of the teachers strike in Chicago today, but as we scan the headlines, it’s clear some education observers see plenty of upside for school choice.

More than 350,000 Chicago public school students were left without teachers, but not the 52,000 enrolled in the city’s charter schools.

Here’s the lead to a piece about that in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune:

Leslie Daniels enrolled her son in a Chicago charter school three years ago because she didn't like the education he was getting in his local neighborhood school.

In the back of her mind, she also knew the school was less likely to be affected by labor problems because its teachers are not members of the Chicago Teachers Union. That's an added benefit now that the union has called for its first walkout in 25 years. All of the city's charter schools will remain open Monday.

"I'm glad I made the switch," said Daniels, 55. "I feel for the other parents because a lot of them are working. What are their children going to be doing?"

Bloomberg editorial writer Tobin Harshaw picked up on that theme:

The charter schools are at the heart of the Chicago strike. For the union, a big sticking point has been the school board's insistence that teacher assessments be used for merit pay and to make it easier to fire bad teachers. (This summer the city had to return a $35 million federal teacher-incentive grant because union officials wouldn't agree on an evaluation system.)

Rewarding good teachers with financial bonuses and increased freedom in the classroom is a central tenet of the charter movement. It's a concept that will likely have new appeal to Chicago parents missing work today and sitting at home with idle children.

The Chicago Tribune editorial board, meanwhile, juxtaposed striking teachers with the new Brookings Institution study that found higher graduation rates among black students who received vouchers. Here's the full editorial. Here's the kicker: (more…)