Editorial: The Chicago Teachers Union's May 1 walkout puts politics ahead of education

Chicago Tribune Editorial Board, Chicago Tribune on Mar 15, 2026

Published in Op Eds

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Education starts with the basics.

An educated person has core math skills — they can add, subtract, multiply and divide. With a solid education, a person can become a lifelong reader, or at least competently navigate the world and its written cues. A well-educated person can do these things and also think independently.

With their planned school-day protest on May 1, Chicago Teachers Union leaders are demonstrating yet again that they prioritize politics over their principal reason for employment — educating Chicago kids on what they need to know to succeed.

The union on March 11 passed a resolution for a “May 1 Day of Civic Action and Defense of Public Education” — effectively a walkout that could close many classrooms for the day. It’s an odd notion that asking teachers to abandon their classrooms is a logical way to defend public education. More like completely disrupting and undermining public education, using students as pawns to make a political statement.

The union participated in a similar day of action last year, but this year the resolution explicitly calls for “No Work, No School and No Shopping.” Many Chicagoans will recall a similar disruption in 2024, when CPS gave its “CTU partners” a weekday off — paid — so hundreds of teachers could travel to Springfield to lobby for more funding.

The resolution details plans for the day including “engaging our students, their families and our neighbors,” leading voter registration drives and “know your rights” trainings, and conducting “mass resistance training from the beginning to the end of the day.” The resolution continues, taking aim at everything from billionaires to the war in Iran to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Is this what you’re interested in CPS teachers providing your kids, Chicago parents? Mass resistance training? If your kid’s fervent desire is to grow up to be a CTU lobbyist or organizer, that talent will come in handy. Otherwise? Reading, writing and math skills are what we’re guessing most parents would prefer their kids’ teachers to emphasize.

CTU also rails against what the union describes as attacks on public education, and we found it almost comical — though predictable — that the union listed efforts to expand access to private schools as a top grievance. Imagine the awful reality of a world in which classes aren’t shut down on a whim for political “days of action.” Instead, Chicago’s public schools increasingly are shaped by an ideological teachers union that is focused not on teaching students how to think, but what to think. With actions like this one, it’s not hard to understand why CTU has become politically toxic and unpopular — and why a growing percentage of Chicago parents are choosing to send their kids to CPS alternatives.

CTU is also encouraging students to join in their protest and calling upon the Board of Education and Mayor Brandon Johnson to allow middle and high school students an excused absence to do so. That shifts this event from a labor action by teachers to something closer to a school-wide political mobilization. Johnson and the board should, of course, do the opposite and demand teachers and kids be in schools on May 1.

More than 40% of CPS students are chronically absent, missing at least 18 days of school a year — nearly double the rate before the pandemic. And just 30% of third- through eighth-grade students can read at grade level, far below the statewide average of 41%, according to state data.

More than most, CPS kids can’t afford to lose a day of classroom instruction.

We fail to see how another day of learning loss will stick it to the man. The real losers are the kids and their parents, who inevitably will be left scrambling to find a babysitter or forced to miss work. This protest is especially odd given that City Hall is currently led by a mayor who worked for CTU and rose to power with the union’s strong support.

One of the greatest threats to public education in Chicago is the union itself and its wrongheaded insistence that CPS focus on political activism over academics. Regular working people have to show up as a condition of employment — so should the CTU.

Debates about education policy belong in legislatures and elections, not in empty classrooms.

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