There are moments when satire becomes unnecessary because reality does the work for you. This is one of them. The Chicago Teachers Union — representing educators in the nation’s third-largest school system — managed to publicly embarrass itself by misspelling the word governor on a political flyer blasted across multiple social media platforms.
Not a typo buried in fine print. Not a rushed draft that never left an inbox. This was a headline message: “TELL GOVERNER PRITZKER,” proudly posted by CTU’s official accounts on X, Facebook, and TikTok. It stayed up until school choice advocate Corey DeAngelis pointed it out, at which point the union quietly deleted the posts across all platforms. No apology. No explanation. Just delete and hope the internet forgets.
It didn’t.
DeAngelis’ reaction was blunt and devastatingly effective. If an organization tasked with educating children can’t spell a basic civics term correctly on its own branded material, what does that say about its standards? His remark — “Beyond parody” — landed because it didn’t exaggerate anything. The union did this to itself.
What makes the episode more than just a cheap laugh is the broader context. According to a November 2024 Illinois Policy Institute report, fewer than one-third of Chicago Public Schools elementary students can read at grade level. Less than 20 percent meet math standards. Those are not marginal failures. They are systemic collapses.
The Chicago Teachers Union doesn’t know how to spell “Governor.” pic.twitter.com/FLJAJz3AbQ
— Corey A. DeAngelis, school choice evangelist (@DeAngelisCorey) January 13, 2026
And when confronted with those results, CTU President Stacy Davis Gates dismissed standardized testing as “junk science rooted in white supremacy.” In other words, the problem isn’t performance — it’s measurement. Accountability is the enemy, not illiteracy.
Meanwhile, Chicago spends over $30,000 per student per year, a figure that should produce excellence by any reasonable standard. Instead, a June 2025 ChalkBeat–ProPublica investigation found roughly 150 CPS schools half-empty, with dozens operating at less than one-third capacity, draining resources while students fall further behind.
Against that backdrop, the misspelled flyer stops being funny and starts being emblematic. This is an organization demanding more money, more power, and less oversight — while failing at the most elementary level of competence. The flyer urged Governor JB Pritzker, himself a billionaire heir, to “make the ultra-wealthy pay their fair share.” Ironically, the petition it linked to spelled “governor” correctly. The activists running the backend managed what the teachers union could not.
It’s tempting to dismiss this as a harmless mistake. But symbols matter. Details matter. And when an institution responsible for education can’t get the basics right, the question writes itself: if they can’t spell “governor,” why should anyone trust them to teach children to read?
