The week-long teachers’ strike in Chicago has drawn national attention because it affects 350,000 children and pits two Democratic forces against each other. But it also represents a broader struggle over education reform and union power, and the results could reverberate elsewhere.

If the Chicago Teachers Union wins enough concessions, then it’s a victory for the labor movement and a potential guide for similar battles underway in other parts of the country.

If Mayor Rahm Emanuel emerges with enough of his demands intact, then it’s another setback for labor and validates the push to impose stricter measures of teacher accountability.

“This is being looked at very carefully by school districts across the country,” said Kathleen Hirsman, who teaches education and labor law at the Loyola University School of Law. “There’s the issue of the diminishing strength of teachers unions and who is going to come out the winner. And how the Chicago Public Schools resolves this will be very instructive to other school districts now looking at implementation of state laws requiring teacher evaluation based on student performance.”

All over America, states and cities are trying to figure out how to respond to federal initiatives aimed at improving the public school system. They come down to a series of carrots and sticks. There’s money for districts that implement the Obama administration’s ideas on teacher evaluations and testing, and there’s the threat of closure or other sanctions for underperforming schools.

That challenge has resulted in elected officials trying to impose new standards for teachers, who resist having to give up control over their work.

“It comes down to who’s going to decide how kids are educated,” said James Wolfinger, an associate professor of history and education at DePaul University. “Who is the expert? Who should have the greatest voice?”

Chicago is just the latest of several big cities - including New York, Los Angeles, Boston and Cleveland - where that tension has come to a head.

Illinois lawmakers have set a schedule to implement new teacher evaluation methods, and Chicago must start making those changes this year. Illinois also happens to be a state that allows teachers to strike.

That makes the four-day-old walkout, which has captivated the country and could impact the presidential election, an ideal opportunity for labor to show that it’s no pushover.

“This is a very important strike for the teachers union,” said Richard Kearney, a political scientist at North Carolina State University. “If they can come out of this thinking they’ve made up some ground, that should give some encouragement to teacher’s unions elsewhere who are facing similar situations.”

Then again, Emanuel could end up on top.

Or: each side will concede, ending the strike in a draw.

What then?

“Then the fight just goes on elsewhere,” Kearney said. “And none of this meant a great deal.”

UPDATE: Judge Holds Off Order to End Teacher Strike

The first Chicago teacher strike in 25 years entered its second week Monday, pushing students' earliest return to class to Wednesday.

Union delegates on Sunday deferred its vote to end the strike and asked for more time to review a proposed teachers' contract drafted last week by school officials and the Chicago Teachers Union. The decision prompted an angry Mayor Rahm Emanuel to file an injunction that could force the teachers back into class.

"I will not stand by while the children of Chicago are played as pawns in an internal dispute within a union," Emanuel said in a statement. "This was a strike of choice and now a delay of choice that is wrong for our children."

The mayor instructed the city's top lawyer to work with Chicago Public Schools' general counsel to file an injunction Monday asking a judge to immediately end the strike, now in Day 6.

In a statement, Emanuel called the strike illegal and said there's no reason why teachers can't return to work while the rest of the contract is ironed out.

"This continued action by union leadership is illegal on two grounds," he said. "It is over issues that are deemed by state law to be non-strikable, and it endangers the health and safety of our children."

But union president Karen Lewis said the deal isn't sitting well with many of the teachers.

"Our members are not happy, and they want to have the opportunity to talk to their members," Lewis said. "They want to know is there still anything more they can get." 

The union delegates aren't scheduled to meet again until Tuesday, in part out of respect for for the Jewish holiday Rosh Hashanah, which began at sundown Sunday.

"If the agreement is not good, if the members reject it and think it won't improve conditions in their schools and classrooms, then we want the board to listen to those concerns before we would go back to school," CTU chief of staff Jackson Potter told NBC Chicago Monday.

School board president David Vitale said Monday the two sides are done negotiating and CPS is waiting on the union.

"We've done as much as we know how to do," Vitale said. "We reached an agreement with their leadership, we think it's a good agreement. It's time for the teachers to get back in school."

Potter said it's worth the wait.

"People have to live for three years under the terms of this agreement, and so it has to be a good agreement, it has to reflect the concerns that we brought to the table all along."

NBC Chicago has an array of reporters and producers covering the Chicago teacher strike. Check our live blog for continuous coverage and updates throughout the strike.

A Cook County Circuit Court judge on Monday shot down a request to hold a same-day hearing for an injunction to immediately end Chicago's teacher strike.

During a short meeting, Judge Peter Flynn postponed the requested hearing until Wednesday, city law department spokesman Roderick Drew said. That comes after the Chicago Teachers Union's delegates are scheduled to meet and vote on a proposed contract.

Earlier in the day, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel made good on promised legal action to try and end the city's first teachers strike in 25 years, instructing his corporate counsel and the attorney for Chicago Public Schools to file an injunction to get kids and teachers back in class.

"I will not stand by while the children of Chicago are played as pawns in an internal dispute within a union," Emanuel said Sunday in a statement. "This was a strike of choice and now a delay of choice that is wrong for our children."

Emanuel added that the continued strike was illegal on two grounds: "It is over issues that are deemed by state law to be non-strikable, and it endangers the health and safety of our children."

Union delegates on Sunday deferred their vote to end the strike and asked for more time to review a proposed teachers' contract drafted last week by school officials and the Chicago Teachers Union.

"Our members are not happy, and they want to have the opportunity to talk to their members," union president Karen Lewis said. "They want to know is there still anything more they can get."

The union's chief of staff Jackson Potter told NBC Chicago that "if the agreement is not good, if the members reject it and think it won't improve conditions in their schools and classrooms, then we want the board to listen to those concerns before we would go back to school."

School board president David Vitale said Monday the two sides are done negotiating and CPS is waiting on the union.

"We've done as much as we know how to do," Vitale said. "We reached an agreement with their leadership, we think it's a good agreement. It's time for the teachers to get back in school."

Potter said it's worth the wait.

"People have to live for three years under the terms of this agreement, and so it has to be a good agreement, it has to reflect the concerns that we brought to the table all along."

Union delegates aren't scheduled to meet again until Tuesday out of respect for the Jewish holiday, Rosh Hashanah, which began at sundown Sunday.

Emanuel has no scheduled events Monday.

More than 26,000 teachers and staff walked out last Monday, leaving more than 350,000 students unattended. For five days, thousands of teachers picketed outside schools and twice converged on the Board of Education headquarters downtown.

The strike follows months of slow, contentious negotiations over salary, health benefits and job security after the school board unanimously voted last year to cancel teachers' 4 percent pay hike in the final year of their contract.

California's public colleges and universities are in a very public budget pickle. But thousands of the students asked to pay more for tuition are attending school despite not meeting minimum academic and other enrollment standards, according to Bay Area News Group.

These students -- some are athletes, some are musicians, and some come from overseas where high schools don't adhere to the American system -- are "admitted by exception," the newspaper reported. The University of California's 10-campus system boosted the admission of such students by 60 percent in the current freshman class, according to the newspaper, with 780 students statewide admitted by exception.

California State University's 23-campus network, however, is admitting fewer and fewer students who don't make the grade: CSU had 2,276 excepted students enrolled in the 2010 incoming freshman class, down from 5,300 two years before, the newspaper said.

Campus admissions offices do have leeway when weighing to admit an out-of-state or foreign student who does not meet the enrollment requirements over a California resident who does. Admissions officers say that they only admit students who have a chance at earning a degree -- and some UC campuses shy away from the practice almost entirely. UC San Diego, for example, admits only three excepted freshmen in each of the past two years.

"We had so many students who meet minimum eligibility that it just wasn't fair to admit exceptions," Mae Brown, UCSD's admissions director, told the newspaper. "We turn away thousands and thousands of qualified California residents, so we're very careful."
 

In the greatest threat yet to the state's delicately balanced budget, the California School Boards Association and Association of California School Administrators are suing the state for underfunding public education by $2.1 billion for the current fiscal year.

That amount is the difference between what the legislature allocated and the 40 percent of the general fund required for public education constitutionally required under Proposition 98.

If the administrators win, the entire state budget will be thrown out of whack.

Democratic Governor Jerry Brown and the Democratic majority in the state legislature have said that they couldn't afford to provide the necessary funding this year because of pressing local government needs to fund programs such as state prisoners in county jails. Thus, they suspended the full amount due to K-12 public education.

The administrators and board members might have looked the other way, given the state's budget difficulties, except for the side deal that Brown and the Democrats cut with the California Teachers Association. In order to get the CTA's cooperation on a deficient education budget, the Democrats passed a law that keeps districts from laying off teachers this year, even if the state education allocation is reduced because of revenue shortfalls.

Inasmuch as educators are by far the largest portion of the education budget, the deal has put administrators in a tough spot. It means that they must cut elsewhere--non-teaching personnel, equipment, services--anything and anyone but teachers. No wonder administrators are fuming. At a time of great economic uncertainty, it's hard to imagine any group other than teachers so well-protected.

The law suit also reveals the chasm in the education community. More than ever, teachers and administrators are on different sides of the budget issue at a time when the education establishment might be more successful by closing ranks.

As for the CTA, the deal may well cost the organization prestige and public support as people become more aware of its implications. When all is said and done, some may wonder whether the job preservation guarantees were worth all the bad press because of mangled district budgets.

Do you care about the funding of the schools that your children or your neighbors' children attend?

Would you like to change it? If the answer is yes, let me just say you: it's awfully nice that you care about school funding.

Your views, of course, don't make a bit of difference, even if you vote.

This is California.

Now comes the news this week that education groups -- school boards, school administrators, school districts -- are challenging cuts in the state budget passed last June. 

Those cuts, they say, violate the state constitution's guarantee of a funding minimum for schools -- a guarantee enacted by voters in 1988 and 1990.

Teachers' unions aren't part of the lawsuit because they negotiated the cuts -- as part of a deal that gave teachers protections from layoffs.

The lawsuit has made headlines, and raised the possibility of more money going back to schools.

But the lawsuit is likely to drag on for years and unlikely to make impact on the school budgets.

No, the real importance of the lawsuit is as a reminder that Californians have virtually no say in how their schools are funded.

That's because we've eliminated democracy when it comes to school funding.

Instead of letting our elected representatives make decisions, we imposed a complicated formula -- that constitutional guarantee -- to govern school funding.

The lawsuit isn't a challenge that says schools don't have what they need to educate students to the best of their ability -- though that's undoubtedly true.

The lawsuit is about whether we have met the terms of constitutional guarantee. It's not about kids or education -- it's about a formula.

And it's hard to impact a formula unless you have the millions necessary to change the constitution -- or to pursue a lawsuit against it. Most Californians don't. And so we don't have a say in how our schools are funded -- and how our kids are educated.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Education Nation brings together educators, elected officials, business leaders, parents and more to look for solutions to the nation's education challenges. Hosted by NBC News, the summit is taking place outside 30 Rockefeller Center Sept. 25-27. See

educationnation.com

to learn more.

The roster of speakers and panelists includes Presidents Obama and Bill Clinton, Warren Buffet, LeBron James and more.

Here's the full schedule of events:

Sunday, Sept. 25
12:00-2:00pm Teacher Town Hall

Monday, Sept. 26
8:00am Welcome by NBC News President Steve Capus
8:15am Spotlight Interview with Warren Buffett, Susie Buffett and Melinda Gates
8:45am Brain Power: Why Early Learning Matters
9:50am Innovation Spotlight with Sal Khan
10:10am Spotlight Interview with Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education
10:25am Classrooms In Action: A Window On Great Teaching
11:15am Spotlight Interview on Akron Schools with LeBron James
11:30am The Changing Face Of Education
1:45pm The State Of Education: The Governor’s Perspective
3:45pm Innovation Spotlight with John Hunter
4:00pm Stepping Up: The Power Of A Parent Advocate
7:00pm Job One: Preparing America To Compete In The Global Economy

Tuesday, Sept. 27
8:00am Newsmaker Hour with TODAY, Morning Joe, and Squawk Box
9:00am Squaring Off on Education Reform: A Debate with Geoffrey Canada & Diane Ravitch
10:00am Innovation Challenge Presentations
11:15am A Matter Of Degrees: Measuring The Value Of Higher Ed
1:15pm Global Influence: What Can We Learn?
2:30pm Innovation Challenge Conclusion
3:15pm Voices Of A Generation: Students Speak Out
4:00pm Closing Session with Fmr. President Bill Clinton and Brian Williams

Wednesday, Sept. 28
1:30pm President Obama delivers Back-to-School address

Oakland school officials released a list of five schools slated  for closure this weekend and say the move could save more than $2 million, money  that can be put toward improving other district schools.

District Superintendent Tony Smith is proposing to close five  elementary schools in 2012: Lakeview, Lazear, Marshall, Maxwell park and  Santa Fe. Another eight school programs would be redesigned, according to the  proposal, two - Burckhalter and Kaiser -- would be expanded and one middle  school would see its grades reconfigured.

The closure list contained ten names prior to Saturday's list.

The school closures would affect more than 900 students.

A district staff report notes that the district operates far more  schools than districts with nearly twice as many students. Long Beach Unified  School District, for example, operates 89 schools for 86,000 students,  Sacramento Unified School District operates 85 schools for 48,000 students,  and San Jose Unified School District operates 52 schools for 32,000 students. 

Oakland, meanwhile, operates 101 schools for 38,440 students.  Nineteen of those schools have fewer than 200 students and 24 of them have  between 200 and 299 students.

  The school board will discuss the recommendations at a meeting  Tuesday, but is not scheduled to make a final decision until Oct. 26.

Bay City News contributed to this report.

President Barack Obama’s school modernization plan could mean more than $2.8 billion for California’s K-12 education system and another $1.13 billion investment for modernizing facilities at the state’s community colleges, according to a fact sheet release by the White House on Tuesday.

A day after pitching his $447 billion jobs proposal to Congress, Obama traveled to Ohio on Tuesday to focus on how his plan will help rebuild and modernize schools across the country.

The president is proposing to invest $25 billion to modernize at least 35,000 schools nationwide, and another $5 billion for modernization at community colleges. The funds can be used for a range of emergency repair and renovation projects, greening and energy efficiency upgrades, asbestos abatement and removal, and modernization efforts to build new science and computer labs and to upgrade the technology infrastructure in our schools, according to a fact sheet provided by the White House.

The proposal ensures that the nation’s schools in need of most repair can make necessary enhancements, by dedicating $10 billion toward 100 of the largest local education agencies. LAUSD, the largest public school system in California and the second largest public school district in the nation is on that list and stands to receive $743 million.

The school modernization funds are part of the president’s larger American Jobs Act, a bill designed to jumpstart economic growth and job creation. The money would fund a range of critical repairs and needed renovation projects that would put hundreds of thousands of Americans – construction workers, engineers, maintenance staff, boiler repair and electrical works – back to work, according to the Obama Administration. The $2.8 billion investment for California’s K-12 school infrastructure is expected to create 36,000 construction jobs.

The president’s spending plan faces an ongoing political fight in Congress. On Monday, Obama proposed offsetting the price tag of his jobs plan by increasing taxes for the nation’s highest earners and oil and gas companies starting in 2013. Those tax increases have been repeatedly rejected by Congressional Republicans.

The American Jobs Act requires funds to be spent by Sept. 30, 2012, an effort to encourage shovel-ready projects to begin right away.

Click here to find out where LAUSD and California allocations compare to the rest of the nation.

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