The Chicago Teachers Union keeps sending the same message to families: politics first, students second.
Voters are starting to notice.
In Chicago’s 2024 school board elections, CTU and its affiliates poured millions into an aggressive effort to buy influence, and they were decisively rejected. Roughly 75 cents of every dollar they spent went to losing candidates. More than $2.1 million was effectively burned on failed campaigns. One of their top recruits, Rev. Robert Jones, reportedly benefited from over $516,000 in union-backed support and still finished a distant third.
If that were a one-time miscalculation, it would be one thing. It wasn’t.
In Tuesday’s 2026 primary elections, CTU-backed candidates again struggled, trailing in 7 of 13 contested races with nearly 90% of votes counted. The more the union leans into politics, the less voters trust it.
Chicago’s students don’t have time for this.
The academic outcomes are indefensible. On the 2024 Illinois Assessment of Readiness, just 30.5% of Chicago Public Schools students met or exceeded expectations in English language arts. In math, that number drops below 20%. National data tells the same story. On the 2024 NAEP, only 21% of Chicago fourth graders were proficient in math and 23% in reading. Among eighth graders, just 21% were proficient in math and 27% in reading.
These are systemic failures.
At a moment when Chicago students need urgent academic recovery, CTU leadership is focused elsewhere. Campaign spending, endorsements, and political influence. In its 2025 fiscal year alone, the union reported more than $4.2 million in political activities and lobbying.
That figure says everything.
This is no longer a labor organization acting in the interest of classrooms. It is a political operation that happens to exist inside a school system.
Chicago doesn’t need that.
It needs a union that is relentlessly focused on student outcomes—on reading proficiency, math achievement, attendance, discipline, and teacher support. It needs leadership that treats academic recovery like an emergency, not an afterthought.
Teachers deserve better than having their dues funneled into losing political campaigns. Parents deserve better than watching adults fight over power while their children fall further behind. And taxpayers deserve better than funding a system where politics consistently outranks performance.
CTU keeps losing elections because more voters are connecting the dots. Chicago families have understood it for years. When union leadership prioritizes power, students pay the price.
Until that changes, nothing else will.