Seven days in, Chicago teachers are still on strike. Yesterday, elected delegates of the Chicago Teachers Union voted not to end the strike, opting instead to reconvene Tuesday after discussing a proposed contract deal with CTU's broader membership. Soon after their meeting, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced that he'll seek a legal injunction declaring the strike illegal and forcing the teachers back to work. So the next few days will bring either a resolution or a major escalation of Chicago's immediate crisis, which pits a famously strong-willed mayor against a local union intent on defying the "education reform" consensus.

This much is already clear: At a moment when teachers unions are everywhere on the defensive - from legislatures, to bargaining table to Hollywood - the teachers have wrung major concessions from the mayor. In the process, they revealed - and began to reshape - divisions in the education debate, in the Democratic Party and within the labor movement itself.