Chicago Teachers Strike

[Kingsnoke]

As of this morning teachers in the Chicago School District went on strike, protesting a number of things including evaluation based on high stakes testing. The union leader says the kerfuffle is necessary for the good of the kids, while the Mayor of Chicago says that it was totally avoidable.

Chicago is the 3rd largest school district in the country and 350,000 students are not in school due to it.

Is this strike justified?

[WishfulFairie]

No, because the teachers are being selfish and letting children get stupid
(no wonder are america is so low on the list)

[Larry01239]

Teachers can't work for free, but the city can't pay them good wages due to budget constraints. Is it Justified? sure. What is the solution? who knows.

[PlatonicZombie]

IMHO, standerized testing is a joke. So, I feel that it is just that they are on strike.

[Wooster]

Hmm let's see

Though they are already among the best-paid educators in the country, making an average of $76,000 per year in salary — plus benefits — the union is unsatisfied with an offer from the city’s board of education that provides them a 16 percent raise over four years, worth a total of $400 million. (The CTU’s original offer was for a 30 percent raise over two years.)
Accounts from both sides indicate that the sticking points are the maintenance of the union’s lavish benefits structure and a teacher-evaluation system that labor officials worry could — horror — result in the firing of large numbers of its most ineffective members.

Given that the city of Chicago is going bankrupt. I'd say they are completely in the wrong In fact I think knocking that average down to 50,000 would be a good thing. Those poor teacherrs, having their performance evaluated like every worker out there.

[Ur Mom]

A teacher should know what they're getting into before getting into it

[Wooster]

An interesting article from the City Journal on th matter:
http://www.city-journal.org/2012/eon0911cs.html

Of course, everything in the City Journal is interesting

[Kingsnoke]

Originally Posted by Wooster

Hmm let's see

Though they are already among the best-paid educators in the country, making an average of $76,000 per year in salary — plus benefits — the union is unsatisfied with an offer from the city’s board of education that provides them a 16 percent raise over four years, worth a total of $400 million. (The CTU’s original offer was for a 30 percent raise over two years.)
Accounts from both sides indicate that the sticking points are the maintenance of the union’s lavish benefits structure and a teacher-evaluation system that labor officials worry could — horror — result in the firing of large numbers of its most ineffective members.

Given that the city of Chicago is going bankrupt. I'd say they are completely in the wrong In fact I think knocking that average down to 50,000 would be a good thing. Those poor teacherrs, having their performance evaluated like every worker out there.

While I can understand where you are coming from on the salary argument, and kinda agree with you, The end of your argument is a strawman. Evaluation based solely on high stakes testing fails to take in for account factors outside of school affecting students.
I still don't think the strike should have happened, but the point the teachers are arguing has merit.

[Wooster]

Let's be real. The only thing they are upset about is that tenure is gone.

Doesn't matter how they are evaluated. As is typical with these test, a monkey could pass them. THe sad thing is the teaching is so poor in the unionized schools that their students will not. But the teachers are lucky, they will only be compared to each other. They don't have to outrun the European bear or Chinese tiger. They only need to outrun the union hack teacher next to them.

[Wooster]

An interesting article by Charles Lane, one time contributor of The New Republic

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...07a_story.html

Money Quote:
Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis warns that “this is no way to measure the effectiveness of an educator,” and she griped in a statement about the impact poverty, exposure to violence, homelessness, hunger and other social issues beyond our controlcan have on student performance.
I believe this is what a certain former president meant by “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”

But the outcome matters — a lot. If Emanuel can open a pay-for-performance beachhead in the nation’s third-largest school district, it would send a message across the country. If not, the setback would reverberate well beyond Chicago, too.
Actually, it should be lesson enough that about 400,000 mostly poor schoolchildren, and their parents, and the voters of Chicago generally, are regularly held hostage to closed-door bargaining between politicians and union chieftains — not to mention grander partisan political machinations.

[Vornmusion]

[QUOTE=Wooster;6246773]Hmm let's see

[SIZE=1]Though they are already among the best-paid educators in the country, making an average of $76,000 per year in salary


I see the forum still fails in all possible ways. /sighnation

[Vornmusion]

Originally Posted by Wooster

Hmm let's see

To go on from here; teaching in the US was already too good for its own existence. The pay and benefits were top-notch compared to the requirements needed during the 90s, and is the reason the field was swiftly flooded with them.; it was the "easy retirement" job at the time, and largely still holds this ideal over people even though it is no longer true. This is why you have so many stories of those teachers that "don't care" and "teach for the paycheck".

Fact is in reality they aren't putting anything back into the system anyway, teachers don't produce anything. "Educating the future", which has already shown to be a failure in the US, has no actual value -- if it has any it's potential value through investing and increasing the total wealth of the nation through business through the children in their adult lives, however that variable of potential is so skewed and impossible to predict that it amounts to nothing. Even with the potential value most of that will come from college level classes in their respective fields, something you don't need to go to prior school to qualify for at the base tiers. Teachers have simply been living in a station above their use for a very long time now. With everything taking a shite around them they still think they have more value to the system than they do -- while putting nothing back into it.

As to the evaluation system, it is worthless and doesn't precisely reflect a teachers ability due to failing to take account of outside influences; however how else will they evaluate them? A good teacher is one that has students pass their class with flying colors, a bad one is the opposite. That is it. There's no other way to judge a teacher because of the inherit point of their profession. A factory worker, and a whole line, is judged based on how much product they made during a given time frame. Less means they didn't do enough and therefor aren't likely to get that promotion; more means they did above what was deemed necessary with the usually benefits following. This is how most of the rest of the world works. I'm not going to get into the Good Ol Boys Club variable because that's too much effort for this discussion. The base premise will suffice here.

In the past they had no method of control, thus the lucrative nature through increasing status which resulted in superior long term finical stability -- this was the main draw to being a teacher in addition to the benefits. The evaluation system provided a glass ceiling, and teachers simply think they're above such systems -- which is something every other field has to deal with already. They expect someone to stand in their class room every day they teach and watch their teaching "prowess", and to take a study in the life of every student to show the teacher isn't at fault for half the class failing -- the kids just didn't want to do the work. That's what they want because the system that is already in place does it the only other way -- how well the kids do in the class.

The entire education system in the US is a failure, that is true. It is bogged down with interfaction politics and a host of lobbying bullshit. However the system is there and isn't going to change any time soon. There's nothing stopping them from deviating from the schools method of teaching and going their own route (which has in the past been shown numerous times to vastly increase the passing scores of children) and proceed to get fired. If teachers everywhere just go up and said "No, we're doing it our way" what would anyone do to stop them? Education systems halt nation wide, they'd cave. However teachers won't do this because the system provides an easy form of presenting the material; it's mindless and requires the children do more of their own research than a teacher does teaching. Teaching is not as hard as people like to think it is; work a blue collar job in a factory for 40 years which will inevitably ruin your body (thus the reason no one wants to work them anymore, along side crap pay) in a fun variety of ways (hope you have retirement medical or enjoy those thousand dollar bills every month) then tell me if teaching is hard work. There's a reason people want white collar jobs, and it isn't just better pay.

Bottom line this has very little to do with the evaluation system of teachers being "unfair" or any other term because "good" teachers are somehow thrown away. It has to do with money, that's it. They've lived above their station for so long they believe they're entitled to it when they don't do as hard work as they claim they do, and put nothing of actual value back into the country.

[Wooster]

Sadly, very true. Although, our higher education doesn't fall into this category very much and is consider world class. As the payer now is the student(or his parents), and surplus of crappy teachers will cause the college to fail, the techers have to at least teach something. Then again most prfessors do more than just teach, so they actually have a qualifying factor beyond that, writing high quality papers in the least.

Anyway, my dad taught in a medical college, which I guess would be consider a near tenured position, until they decied they didn't want engineers in their medical college, as well as class-by-class techincal college(in between he word for a couple decades in industry). However, whether it was a high class medical student or an inner-city kid trying to learn a useable, employable skill, they had to make a damn circuit.

What is the criteria for elemetary and secondary school? Critical thinking? What the hell does that mean? What you can measure is can they forking read and add 2+2; if they can't, as many cannot, then your education system is screwed up.


By the by, the compromise for this particular situation was the slow growth of pay but still no checks on teacher performance. So the Chicago will save some money, but the education in Chicago will still rot. And that is why most of the teachers do not send their kids to the public schools there.

[Saiyan]

I don't know what to say I have disdain for teachers because I was bulled and threatened by them in school.

Other then some petty bs I was never really bullied by anyone except a few teachers in highschool because I didn't like the way they ran things.