Poor Chicago Public School children are systematically and deliberately denied their Constitutional Right to a quality education. It’s time for a Federal Consent Decree to restore this right
It’s time for the U.S. Department of Justice to place the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) under a federal consent decree. Only through a consent decree can the barriers erected by the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and its political allies — barriers that systematically deny poor children, overwhelmingly Black and Latino, their right to a quality education, be dismantled. The objective of a consent decree is clear: To ensure that education funding follows the student, families have meaningful school choices, and local leaders have the freedom to adopt the best models for their communities.
CPS has devolved into a government-sanctioned system of educational apartheid in which poor children, overwhelmingly Black and Latino are, a deliberately and consciously denied a quality education. The CTU’s opposition to reforms that might threaten its power or reduce its membership has had devastating effects. The CTU’s efforts to block poor families from accessing better-performing, publicly funded alternatives to failing schools are discriminatory — if not in intent, then unquestionably in outcome.
The results are plain: Successive CTU-backed contracts have expanded union ranks, raised pay to among the highest in the country, reduced workload, and eliminated accountability. Despite two consecutive $1.5 billion contracts, CPS added neither a single day to the school year nor a single minute to the school day. At the same time, the district reinstated social promotion, removed student performance from teacher evaluations, and stopped publishing school rankings to obscure failure.
The academic record CPS has established is indefensible: Only one-third of CPS students are proficient in reading; just one in six is proficient in math. In 2023, CPS reported a 79 percent graduation rate for Black students — but only 11 percent were proficient in reading and 8 percent in math. Latino students posted an 84 percent graduation rate, but just 18 percent were proficient in reading and 15 percent in math. Since Illinois adopted the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) as its college-readiness benchmark in 2017, scores have plummeted across all demographics — especially among Black and Latino students.
Frustrated with poor outcomes, Chicago families are responding with their feet. Between 2014 and 2024, CPS enrollment dropped by more than 71,000 students. The only reason that decline paused in 2023–24 was an influx of migrant students. Yet the CTU’s answer to falling enrollment isn’t reform — it’s eliminating the competition. That includes not just private-school scholarships, but also the suppression of public charter schools.
It was the CTU that helped gut Illinois’ Invest in Kids Act — the state’s only scholarship program for low-income families. When lawmakers let it expire in 2023, over 15,000 mostly Black and Latino children were deprived of scholarships that had freed them from failing schools. The union’s longer-term goal, however, is the elimination of public school choice itself — beginning with charters.
Today, charter schools pose the greatest threat to the CTU’s monopoly on public education. In a city where most students are Black or Latino, charters offer one of the few viable alternatives to often under-enrolled, low-performing neighborhood schools. Of the more than 54,000 students enrolled in Chicago’s 122 public charter schools, 98 percent are Black or Latino, and 87 percent come from low-income households. Those numbers would be higher but for CPS-imposed caps on both the number of charter schools and their enrollment.
For more than a decade, the CTU has pursued a coordinated campaign to destabilize and dismantle charters in Chicago. Its discriminatory tactics include:
- Capping growth: The CTU contract locks in limits on charter schools and student seats — regardless of demand or waitlists.
- Blocking facilities access: The union has prevented charter operators from leasing closed CPS buildings. Despite educating 15 percent of CPS students, charters receive less than 3 percent of the district’s capital budget.
- Funding disparities: Charter students receive, on average, $8,600 less per year than their traditional school peers. They are excluded from CPS’s annual TIF surplus, which has totaled $1.3 billion since 2019.
- Short-term renewals: Rather than the five- or ten-year renewals allowed by state law, charters now receive just two- or three-year renewals — undermining their ability to plan, invest, and expand.
- Mandated unionization: A CTU-backed “union neutrality” law requires charters to facilitate union organizing, stripping them of the independence they were created to preserve.
The fate of the Acero Charter Schools perfectly illustrate the impact of the CTU on charters. After CTU organizers unionized Acero staff, the union led the nation’s first charter school strike, forcing an expensive contract filled with restrictive work rules. In 2023, CPS granted Acero only a three-year renewal. Facing higher costs and stagnant funding, Acero was forced to close multiple campuses. Once these schools came under union control, the CTU pushed CPS to absorb them into the traditional system — transforming once-effective schools into more union-run failures.
The consequences of the Acero Network is no anomaly. The seven Acero campuses are merely the first wave. The CTU is pursuing a long-term strategy to eliminate public charter schools, even as traditional public schools continue to fail. While cities across the country are expanding both public and private school choice, the CTU is working to close those doors in Chicago.
Charter schools were created to foster innovation, flexibility, and accountability — unbound by the politics and bureaucracy of traditional systems. Nonetheless, CTU-imposed constraints now make innovation nearly impossible. Families who fled failing schools — and the chronic dysfunction of a system marked by strikes and work stoppages — are being dragged back into the very system they sought to escape.
The CTU’s war on choice doesn’t end with charters. It now targets selective enrollment and magnet schools — CPS’s highest-performing institutions. Despite serving student populations that are over 70 percent minority and more than 50 percent low-income, these schools are being branded as “tools of inequality.” The real motive is clear: Eliminate the stark contrast between high-performing and failing schools — not by lifting the latter, but by undermining the former.
The most harmed by the CTU’s campaign to dismantle select-enrollment schools are low-income families of color — the very community that should benefit most from school choice. Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) recently released its third national study on charter schools, covering over 2 million students in 29 states. According to its findings, charter students — especially Black and Latino students — make significantly more academic progress in math and reading than their peers in traditional schools.
Economist Thomas Sowell’s 2020 book Charter Schools and Their Enemies found similar results in New York City. In buildings housing both charter and traditional schools, just 14 percent of traditional classrooms had a majority of students proficient in reading — compared to 65 percent for charters. In math, it was 10 percent versus 68 percent.
Catholic schools also consistently outperform public schools. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) — the “Nation’s Report Card”— shows Catholic schools leading across nearly every category. According to the Manhattan Institute, if Catholic schools were a state, they’d be the highest-performing in the country. Furthermore, the U.S. Department of Education’s own data confirms that Black, Latino, and low-income students in Catholic schools outperform their peers in both traditional public and charter schools.
Yet in Chicago, Catholic schools are now off-limits to most low-income families. Their tuition remains modest, but the elimination of scholarship support — thanks in part to CTU President Stacy Davis Gates and Illinois Education Association lobbyist Sean Denney — has cut off access. Both Davis Gates and Denney send their own children to private schools, even as they fought to block the Invest in Kids scholarships that once helped nearly 10,000 low-income children do the same.
Every family deserves the right to choose the best school for their child — regardless of income or zip code. Chicago’s working-class families aren’t asking for special treatment. On the contrary, Chicago’s parents want the same options already exercised by wealthy families and CTU members — through private schools, elite magnets, or suburban districts. Surveys have found that 30–40 percent of CTU members send their own children to private schools, while others leverage political and professional networks to secure magnet placements.
School choice is the civil rights battle of our time — and Black and Latino families in Chicago are on the front lines.However, too many parents remain unaware of the CTU’s coordinated campaign to block reform and limit opportunity. The union’s grip on CPS has already damaged two generations. If action isn’t taken soon, a third will be lost.
As long as the CTU holds unchecked political power, school choice will remain a privilege reserved for the well-connected, and poor families will continue to be denied the opportunity for something better. CPS leadership and the union protect one another: District officials preserve the CTU’s privileges in exchange for peace and political support, growing the union’s size and benefits while shielding it from accountability.
Governor J.B. Pritzker could intervene and bring relief to Chicago’s beleaguered students. He could reestablish a Chicago School Finance Authority, modeled after the oversight board created in 1985 to prevent the district’s financial collapse. This time, its charge should go beyond financial solvency to include expanding school choice and enforcing educational equity.
Pritzker has so far shown little interest in improving Chicago’s failing schools, preferring to indulge the CTU at the expense of the education of students. Pritzker sided with the CTU and allowed the Invest in Kids program to expire, he backed the elimination of the State Charter School Commission, and signed legislation restoring the CTU’s ability to strike for virtually any reason.
Crises reveal the character of institutions. During the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers unions exposed their priorities. Rather than put children first, they entrenched the broken status quo — one already failing poor children. Their refusal to adapt to an unprecedented emergency laid bare their institutional commitment to protecting power, not serving students. And the communities that suffered most were the ones with the fewest alternatives.
The teacher unions wrap themselves in the rhetoric of progressivism, but preserving the status quo is the very opposite of progress. Those familiar with civil rights history recognize this for what it is: Educational redlining. Denying poor families — disproportionately Black and Latino — access to high-quality education during and after a global emergency amounts to state-sanctioned segregation. A system of separate and unequal, defended by those claiming to fight for equity.
The path forward is clear: School reform advocates must demand a federal consent decree to break the CTU’s stranglehold on education policy. Such a decree should ensure that funding follows the student, families are empowered with real school choices, and schools have the autonomy to innovate and improve.
The evidence is overwhelming: school choice works. The CTU knows this — which is precisely why it’s working to destroy it. Reformers must act before yet another generation of Chicago children are left behind.
