Teachers Strike Hurts Kids  (Gary Bauer) 

The teachers' strike in Chicago is a perfect example of everything that is wrong with teachers' unions. Trust me -- as a former Under Secretary of Education, I know! Once again, the union heads are putting their own interests ahead of the children they claim to care so much about.

What is the issue here? It's not salary. According to various reports, Chicago teachers are the highest paid in the country, earning on average $76,000 a year, not including benefits. Washington Post columnist Charles Lane reports that approximately 85% of Chicago public school students live at or near poverty level, roughly $27,000 for a family of three. Unbelievably, the union rejected a 16% pay raise.

The real issue is the union's opposition to teacher evaluations and pay raises based on performance rather than tenure. Don't the taxpayers have a right to know what they are getting for their money?

The sad reality is that nearly 40% of Chicago public high school students drop out. Terry Jeffrey at CNSNEWS.com reports that in 2011, "79 percent of 8th graders in the Chicago Public Schools were not grade-level proficient in reading and 80 percent were not grade level proficient in math."

If anyone should be in the streets making demands it ought to be the parents and taxpayers of Chicago!

When you look at Chicago, you see the fulfillment of the modern liberal agenda. Too many children raised in broken homes without fathers. Rampant crime. Overpaid, incompetent bureaucrats who can't be fired. Why would the citizens of Chicago find any of this appealing? But they keep electing the same left-wing politicians over and over again, and the results speak for themselves.

Speaking of left-wing Chicago politicians, this is all being set up for another Obama rescue. Why do I strongly suspect that in the days ahead we will learn of a midnight call by President Obama to the mayor of Chicago (his former chief of staff) and to union leaders (his biggest political contributors), which resolves the whole thing?

The media will hail the president's intervention as an example of how Obama can get things done. But we already know that he can get things done when he's dealing with a room full of lefties and progressives. That's how we got Obamacare!