On September 10th, four hundred thousand public school students in Chicago could not go to school. The nation’s third largest school system was shut down after negotiations between Chicago’s School Board and Chicago’s Teachers Union (CTU) fell apart. Those four hundred thousand students, sidelined from an opportunity for a brighter future, deserve to know who failed them.

The reasons for the breakdown in negotiations were not clear, but Mayor Rahm Emanuel—President Obama’s former Chief of Staff— points towards two main remaining issues: unions are not accepting of principals’ increased independence over hiring, and they are not accepting of using student performance as a part of teachers’ evaluations.

When a business is failing, owners keep managers liable for the company’s performance. It is the responsibility of that manager to hire and train the right employees and get rid of those that are not getting the job done. A public school system is like a business, and the taxpayers—specifically the tax-paying parents of students—are the owners. They allow principals to function as managers, but those principals cannot do their job if they do not have the power to hire and train the right teachers and get rid of those that are not getting the job done. How can we expect to have the best teachers for our students if principals can’t make essential hiring decisions?

Also, in January 2010, the Illinois State Legislature passed the Performance Evaluation Reform Act, which—along with many other things—would require 25% of teachers’ evaluations to be based on student performance. Some teachers argue that focusing on scores takes away from conceptual learning, but the contract asks for only 25% of the evaluations to come from students’ improvement in scores. I understand teaching is a complex process, but these achievement-gain measures allow us to see that our children are actually learning and provide a more standardized method of judging teachers. Regardless of these reasons, the request in the contract is in accordance with Illinois-state law.

Even after the school board provided a 16% raise over four years in the contract, these two issues (one of which is the school board following the law) led 26,000 Chicago Teachers Union members to strike. According to a Chicago Public Schools spokesperson, the average pay for teachers (not including benefits) is currently $76,000—the highest for any city in the entire nation.

I love and appreciate my teachers. They taught me about life and gave me the opportunity to be where I am now. That being said, it is not fair to these 400,000 students to have their futures hijacked by a teachers union who have already received a generous raise (at the expense of already troubled taxpayers) and are receiving the highest pay for teachers in the entire nation. It was President Franklin D. Roosevelt who said the following: “Since their own services have to do with the functioning of Government, a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable.”

Since their own services have to do with the functioning of Government, a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable.

President Roosevelt would not tolerate the actions of the CTU, and neither should we. On Monday, September 10th, four hundred thousand students were abandoned by their teachers, with their parents left struggling to find places for them to stay as they went to work. We, as Chicagoans, have failed these students and their parents because we have not kept teachers liable for their actions, school boards liable for their negotiations, and politicians liable for their special interests.

Karim Lakhani is a junior in the School of Hotel Administration and hails from the Chicago area. He can be reached at kml248@cornell.edu.