Education, Teacher Evaluation | featured news

Thousands of striking Chicago teachers will march again on Saturday to keep the pressure on Mayor Rahm Emanuel to wrap up an agreement with their union so they can end a strike that has closed the nation's third largest school district for a week.

Chicago teachers were resigned to finishing this school week still on strike, but both sides in the labor dispute were pushing hard to reach a deal by Friday afternoon in hopes that more than 350,000 students could return to class on Monday.

Teachers unions argue that doing so ignores too many things that can affect a student’s performance, such as poverty, the ability to speak English or even a school’s lack of air conditioning. Or as said by an incredulous Dean Refakes, a physical education teacher in Chicago, ‘‘You are going to judge me on the results of the tests where there could be some extenuating circumstances that are beyond my control?’’