New poll reveals what voters really think of America's most powerful teachers union

Few organizations hold such legendary power as Chicago’s Teachers Union (CTU), but the people have finally had enough. An October poll conducted by Echelon Insights on behalf of the Illinois Policy Institute found that only 37 percent of registered Chicago voters have a favorable view of the CTU, with 46 percent reporting an unfavorable view.

These results represent a significant plunge in support for the CTU since February, when the same pollster found that 44 percent of respondents had a favorable view of their group, with 42 percent reporting an unfavorable view. In other words, CTU’s net favorability among Chicago voters dropped to negative nine from positive two – an 11-point plummet – in just eight months. This experience offers a preview of what could happen nationally as unions continue to overplay their hands – and a warning to legislators who keep deferring to their short-term power. If the CTU can lose its grip, no union stranglehold can last forever.

Republicans and independents are particularly unimpressed with the CTU, now reporting net favorability levels of -52 and -20, respectively. And voters of all political backgrounds say the CTU has "too much influence over the City of Chicago." But even 40 percent of Chicago Democrats say CTU has "too much influence," with 28 percent reporting the "about the right amount of influence," and only 14 percent indicating "too little influence."

In Chicago, voters have clearly reached a breaking point. Since the last poll, it was revealed in September that CTU president Stacy Davis Gates chose to enroll her child in a private school after she called school choice racist just last year. The latest poll showed that nearly half of Chicago voters now know that Ms. Gates sends her son to a private school – and they aren’t happy.

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Making matters worse, CTU also spearheaded the effort to kill the Invest in Kids Tax Credit Scholarship program, ripping scholarships away from 9,000 low-income kids to protect their monopoly. This was a greedy (and unpopular) move, as the latest poll showed 65 percent of Chicago voters supported the program, with support over 62 percent among Republicans, Democrats, and independents.

Adding insult to injury, CTU snuffed out this program after being one of the worst actors in the nation when it came to fighting against reopening public schools during the COVID-19 era. One of their board members was caught vacationing in Puerto Rico while claiming it was too unsafe for teachers to go back to work in person. In late 2020, the union posted and later deleted a tweet claiming, "The push to reopen schools is rooted in sexism, racism and misogyny." CTU voted to strike again in 2022 using COVID-19 as an excuse. Harmed the most were the low-income students whose chance to attend other schools CTU just extinguished.

CHICAGO TEACHERS UNION BOSS WHO DENOUNCED SCHOOL CHOICE AS RACIST HAS SON IN CATHOLIC SCHOOL

CTU is fighting to trap low-income kids in the same union failure factories that their own president avoided for her son. The latest Illinois state assessments reveal only 17 percent of Chicago Public School students are proficient in math (and 26 percent in reading). Illinois Department of Education data showed that not a single student was proficient in math or reading in 55 Chicago Public Schools in 2022. All that failure comes at a steep price tag. Chicago Public Schools spend nearly $30,000 per student per year.

The union’s political spending has yielded far more success – at least for now. The latest filing with the U.S. Department of Labor shows that CTU spent a record $3 million on politics in the 2023 fiscal year, just about tripling its political spending from the year before. That’s compared to just 17 percent of their spending that went toward representing teachers in 2023, a 2-point drop from the year before.

CTU successfully dragged one of their own handpicked employees – Brandon Johnson – across the finish line to become mayor in April. As its largest backer, CTU funneled more than $2.6 million to the Johnson campaign, and Johnson received more than $6 million from teachers unions altogether. This poll found that Mr. Johnson’s approval rating is now just 28 percent, which is unprecedented for an incoming mayor. The unions, as in most states, have nearly unlimited resources to force their favorites into power, but this poll shows that this power may soon be fleeting.

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The state’s biggest free market think tank – the Illinois Policy Institute – showed the power of pushing back in the court of public opinion, releasing an hour-long documentary in February that has already garnered nearly 650,000 views on YouTube alone. Across the country, unions operate in private far differently than their public image would suggest. Chicago’s experience shows what happens when people find out the truth.

If voters in deep-blue Chicago can wake up to the disastrous effects of the teachers unions, it can happen anywhere. Parents can hope that Chicago Teachers Union is just the first domino to fall in the public’s eye. If voters continue to realize that the teachers unions don’t have the best interest of kids or their families in mind, we might just save our country from decline and defeat the power-hungry unions once and for all.

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