CHICAGO – An angry Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s appeal to the courts to end a six-day teachers strike in the nation’s third largest city set off a new round of recriminations Monday, but did little to end a walkout that has left parents scrambling and kept 350,000 students out of class.

It might not matter. By the time a Cook County Circuit Court judge considers the issue, the city’s teachers might well have voted to end the strike and recommend they agree to a tentative contract that labor and education experts – and even some union leaders elsewhere – called a good deal for the union.

“This was an enormously successful strike [thus far],” said Emily Rosenberg, director of the Labor Education Center at DePaul University in Chicago. “I’ve never seen solidarity like this among teachers.”