Chicago Teachers Union Joins Opposition to Common Core

Opposition to Common Core education policies is creating strange political bedfellows. Now, even the Chicago Teachers Union is joining conservatives in opposition to the top-down education standards.

On its blog, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) published a new resolution announcing that it had joined the opposition to the "deeply flawed Common Core standards."

"Now that the resolution has passed," the union said in its statement, "the CTU will lobby the Illinois Board of Education to eliminate the use of the Common Core for teaching and assessment; and be it further and will work to organize other members and affiliates to increase opposition to the law that increases the expansion of nationwide controls over educational issues."

Unlike conservatives whose opposition is based on a desire to maintain local control of education policy, many teachers unions stand against both the testing requirements and the plans to use the standards to evaluate teachers. However, unions also say that teachers lose their autonomy in the classroom because of the standards. On the latter, conservatives fully agree.

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