The Chicago strike and what's a stake for teachers

Make no mistake, the Chicago strike is one of those crucial moments in history. It will determine, like my colleague Claudio Sanchez of NPR says in his story here, the relationship between the Democratic party and teachers unions for years to come.

We may not have seen this battle unfold locally, but it's coming. The Obama administration has been demanding states implement some sort of evaluation for teachers' performance. The fight to find one in California is alive and well, and it will eventually trickle down to the districts.

More importantly, and something that's not mentioned in my tocallo's piece, or anywhere else, is reformers efforts to de-couple student achievement from economic status. By trying to link teacher's performance to student's performance, the reformers want to say: no matter how poor a child is, no matter how horrible his home circumstances are, he or she can achieve on par with everyone else. How can this be possible?

From where I stand, that's the real fight, but nobody talks about it in this terms.