Chicago Teachers Rip 'Big Money Interest Groups' 404
theodp writes "The striking Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is holding a massive 'Wisconsin-style rally' Saturday as ongoing negotiations try to bring an end to the strike that has put education on hold for 350,000 of the city's schoolchildren. 'The 30,000 teachers, school social workers, clerks, vision and hearing testers, school nurses, teaching assistants, counselors, and other school professionals of the Chicago Teachers Union are standing strong to defend public education from test pushers, privatizers, and a national onslaught of big money interest groups trying to push education back to the days before teachers had unions,' explains the CTU web site. 'Around the country and even the world, our fight is recognized as the front line of resistance to the corporate education agenda.' Some are calling the strike — which has by most accounts centered on salary schedules (CPS salary dataset), teacher performance evaluations, grievance procedures, and which teachers get dibs on new jobs — a push-back to education reform that has possible Presidential election implications. The big winners in the school strike, Bloomberg reports, are the city's largely non-union 100+ charter schools, which remained open throughout the strike. Charter school enrollment swelled to 52,000 students this fall as parents worried by strike rumors sought refuge in schools like those run by the Noble Charter Network, which enjoys the deep-pocket support of many wealthy 'investors.'"
Chicago Teachers Rip 'Big Money Interest Groups' (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course they do. They hate the competition.
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Here in Canada they'r one of the biggest. The part about this that really irritates me is that they've been getting annual raises about four times the rate of inflation and threatened to strike during a huge budget shortfall at the first mention of pay freezes. A completely classless move. There are very large numbers of people waiting to get into teaching, yet the pay keeps going up. What ever happened to supply and demand? If there's that big a supply, the rate of pay increase (if any) should be at or bel
Re:Chicago Teachers Rip 'Big Money Interest Groups (Score:5, Informative)
getting annual raises about four times the rate of inflation
Check your numbers. If the real inflation rate was as low as their request, then gasoline would be about $1.50, a day at the hospital would be about $750, a loaf of bread would still be 50 cents, higher ed tuition would still be about $1000/semester....
There are very large numbers of people waiting to get into teaching
For kindergarten teachers in my sorta-rich suburb, yeah the competition for teaching jobs is incredibly intense. For ghetto areas like big cities, where you need to wear a bullet proof vest, often there's racial hiring quotas, there are serious issues getting enough staffing. Its very much like the demand for police officers in different locales... oddly enough the nice places have 10 applicants per position, and the bad places have 10 positions per good applicant...
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Nerdfest is talking about Canadian teachers, not Chicago teachers.
Re:Chicago Teachers Rip 'Big Money Interest Groups (Score:5, Insightful)
In the US, food and fuel is specifically exempted from determining the amount of inflation.
Yes, that's exactly why that politically motivated figure is meaningless.
If you could exist merely by purchasing iphones, for food, energy, and shelter, then the inflation figure would matter. As it is, its merely a measure of how much the govt has already decided to raise social security payments.
We do the same game with unemployment. Someday, in the American workers paradise, none of us will have jobs anymore while reported unemployment will be 5%, and inflation will always be 2% even if the price of a cup of coffee is doubling every month.
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There are very large numbers of people waiting to get into teaching, yet the pay keeps going up. What ever happened to supply and demand?
Well, the better question is why does the Ontario government keep subsidizing the training of enormous numbers of teachers in taxpayer-supported universities, when there is an enormous existing surplus of teachers.
Perhaps 1 in 10 teachers graduating today from an Ontario university will be able to get a full-time teaching job after graduating.
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The Ontario premier's wife is a teacher, and over the past eight years he's seemed to have little to no interest in doing anything but hiring more teachers and giving them large raises. Our teachers are already paid far more than in the US. When the budget shortfall became an obvious problem (although anyone with a clue could see it coming), did he start talking about freezing teacher salaries? No, he started talking about reducing *doctor* salaries.
You've fallen into their trap (Score:5, Insightful)
The rich learned long ago that the best way to stay in power and keep all the money was to pit groups of people against each other. Traditionally this is done with racial or cultural boundaries. Black/white, Christian/Islam, etc, etc. But since they've been globalizing the economy to take advantage of all that cheap labor they've got a problem. They're having a hard time keeping us segregated, and keeping a single large voting block they can count on. The "Southern Strategy" is breaking down.
So they're sicking you on public employees. They don't really have it that good, it's just that after 30 years of lower wages and longer work hours their lives look like heaven. That's the trap. You're too busy asking, why do those guys have food, shelter and health care? to ask "Hey, why don't I have those things?".
Re:Chicago Teachers Rip 'Big Money Interest Groups (Score:5, Insightful)
That is a foul harvest to reap.
Re:Chicago Teachers Rip 'Big Money Interest Groups (Score:5, Insightful)
Unions have a lot of money and political pull too.
In many ways they have more political pull per dollar. Because the Unions in the US need just as much reform as the business system does.
Why am I paying out of my paycheck to something that will use for political campaigning for a party I may or may not believe in.
That money should be used to pay for a small staff of legal experts, and for operations. The rest of the money should be held to pay for strikers pay during a strike.
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Re:Chicago Teachers Rip 'Big Money Interest Groups (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should public sector be any different from private sector?
What is more democratic than voting for something to change?
So many of your current entitlements (by which I mean safe working conditions, 8 hour days as opposed to 14 hour days, paid vacation) was won by unions. You should take a history lesson my friend!
Re:Chicago Teachers Rip 'Big Money Interest Groups (Score:4, Informative)
You have a very distorted view of history. The 8 hour day and 40 hour work week was instituted by FDR, ruled unconstitutional and then overtime pay was created as a fix. This was all part of FDR's fix to unemployment during the recession. The concept was if spread a little work around it was better then someone grabbing a lot of work at the expense of others. It was a mantra of the Socialist parties and the communists parties in th3 first part of the 1900's.
Safer working conditions would have been the norm without unions too. As soon as the government got into the habit of playing insurer for occupational injuries, working condition standards began being implemented by law and tort. You can thank the Unions for getting some state workers compensation laws passed though. But they have been in place long before Unions had legal rights to exist (1906 for federal employes and earlier in some areas). To claim safe working conditions outside a specific factory or a specific job is a little misguided to say the least. OSHA and MSHA are direct results of the government paying out for on the job injuries. They were created in the 1970's specifically to increase workplace safety and reduce the worker's compensation payouts.
No it wasn't.
Re:Chicago Teachers Rip 'Big Money Interest Groups (Score:5, Informative)
Your mistake is looking only at the history of the USA. There are other countries which got 8-hour work day and other labor protection laws literally decades earlier, and in all those cases unions have been instrumental. US was a late comer to that party.
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The unions are just another corporation, like any other. Specifically, they are a commodities brokerage. Their commodity is human labor. This is capitalism how it was meant to be, competition amongst various business interests, all seeking special favors and protections from the authorities (which, on the face of it, is kinda wag the dog, since the authorities exist to serve them, and can be easily replaced). The ancillary benefits to the commodity is nice and all, but it's just designed to keep the product
Re:Chicago Teachers Rip 'Big Money Interest Groups (Score:5, Informative)
You have a very distorted view of history.
I believe your own distorted presentation of history is misleading. The eight-hour workday was not an emergent property of depression era unemployment. The depression was simply fuel to an already existing fire. How legislation emerges is often as important as the emergence itself...
Carpenters in America went on strike in the early 1790's for a 10-hour work day. This had become a general public sentiment and by the mid 1830's Philadelphia workers staged a general strike -- organized and lead by Irish workers in the coal industry. The American eight-hour workday found its initial foothold in Boston in the early 1840's and by the 1860's it was being demanded in Chicago. Baltimore 1866, the National Labor Union made it the first and most pressing issue to normalize on an eight-hour workday. The Illinois legislature passed a (largely ineffective) eight-hour workday law in 1867. The ineffectiveness of the leglislation resulted in a city-wide strike in Chicago that lasted a week before crumbling. Later, in 1868, a similarly impotent eight-hour workday law for federal employees was passed by Congress. In 1869, Grant signed the National Eight Hour Law Proclamation. The movement persisted through out the 1870's and in the 1890's labor strikes of 10's and hundreds of thousands of peoples in Milwaukee, Chicago, Cincinnati, New York, and other cities and townships throughout America -- organized labor standing united for that which civilized management and government were unwilling (or unable) to deliver.
The fight was not just in the north... in San Fancisco, the eight-hour workday was implemented at a mill at the turn of the century -- following arbitration and in the face of boycotts and strikes.
Most notably in history, in 1914 Henry Ford called for the doubling of wages and the cutting of work hours from nine to eight. Many sibling companies, while unhappy with Ford's move could not argue with the productivity increase he demonstrated...and they soon followed with similar moves. In 1915, a series of strikes motivated toward the eight-hour work day swept the northeast...successfully.
The Adamson Act of 1916 (signed by Woodrow Wilson) solidified the eight-hour day in the United States for railroad workers. It was the first time in American history that the private industry workhours were regulated by federal authority. The law was challenged and upheld in Wilson v. New, 249 U.S. 332 (1917).
The Adamson Act blazed the trail for all the related legislation in America that followed...
Similarities around the world (timeframes) --
Australia, 1855-1956
Spain, 1873-1919
Portugal, 1919
Germany, 1899
France, 1936 (Matignon)
Russia, 1917
Iran, 1919-1946
Mexico, 1910-1920
New Zealand, 1840-1899
Puerto Rico, 1899
Puru, 1919-?
Uruguay, 1914-1915
Chili, 1924
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"Public sector unions should be outlawed."
Why? This is (or supposed to be) a free country, you should be able to join any organisation you want.
"Private sector unions must be voluntary.:"
All union membership should be voluntary, and no employee, publis or private should be penalized for belonging to any union, politcal group or religious group.
Freedom of assembly and all that.
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It is illegal for a group of CEOs to join an organization dedicated to fixing prices. Or did you think that was a bad idea too? Both concepts undermine competition and are bad for everyone except those in the organization.
Nice straw man, but you unintentionally pointed to exactly the right comparison. CEOs head organizations which are comprised of many people gathering together to obtain mutual benefit, namely pooled resources that allow members of the organization to engage in activities and reap benefits that they could not individually. These folks all gather together to have greater bargaining power in the market. We even privilege these collectivist organizations under law by providing the individual members immunity
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Re:Chicago Teachers Rip 'Big Money Interest Groups (Score:5, Insightful)
Public sector unions are in a unique position whereby their members operate important or vital national infrastructure. The police in many places are forbidden to go on strike, in recognition of this fact. The bottom line is that if you have unions with often effectively unsackable members in charge of things like water and power, you're going to get bent over a barrel.
Because they are fundamentally wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
I think FDR said it best:
"[A] strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to obstruct the operations of government until their demands are satisfied. Such action looking toward the paralysis of government by those who have sworn to support it is unthinkable and intolerable."
Re:Chicago Teachers Rip 'Big Money Interest Groups (Score:5, Insightful)
Public unions should not be permitted because these guys are sitting on both sides of the bargaining table. They have massive clout and can influence local elections. This means they'll get a sympathetic ear elected, and when it comes time for contract negotiations, it's them and the guy they basically put in charge.
You can see how this turns out. Public unions reaping all sorts of benefits that aren't found in the private sector, cities literally bankrupt yet still being coerced into giving public employees raises.
Who represents the taxpayer in all this? Nobody, that's who. The main entity that funds all of this doesn't get say, and that's why it should be prohibited for public employees to collectively bargain.
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Right, and that's why governers have recently killed the power of teachers, police, and firemen unions in many states. Because people can't elect anyone who will go against them. Oh wait, you are just totally wrong.
Sweet! (Score:3)
Oh, and come off it. There are lots of good reasons to be required to join an organization before you can do something. Principles are lovely, but don't let them blind you to cold hard reality. For one thing, in a right to work state it's easy to discriminate against Union employees. When I say 'discrimin
Re:Chicago Teachers Rip 'Big Money Interest Groups (Score:5, Interesting)
I am an employee of the federal government. Not only do I think I shouldn't be able to be in a union I'm not sure if I should be allowed to vote. I realize my salary come from taxing productive members of society. I do believe that my job is constitutional. But if those people that pay my salary decide they no longer want to fund the agency I work for I shouldn't have a vote in the matter.
Re:Chicago Teachers Rip 'Big Money Interest Groups (Score:5, Insightful)
Would you apply the same reasoning to government contractors?
Or to the employees of the privately run cafeteria inside the Pentagon (I assume there's such a thing, it doesn't matter, you get the idea: they make all their money through the government)?
What about government employees that own stock in companies and make more money out of that than out of their government jobs?
Honest questions, since you don't really give many reasons for your opinion. I don't know what you're doing exactly, but why are government employees (i.e. mostly schoolteachers, policemen, firefighters) not "productive" members of society? I don't think there's much disputing that the examples I gave add value to society.
Re:Chicago Teachers Rip 'Big Money Interest Groups (Score:4, Insightful)
Working for the government doesn't change your citizenship. If you think that a weak argument, then consider this: you still pay taxes, and that alone normally provides a legitimate claim to a vote.
You're one of the people who decide what agencies get funded. Even soldiers retain the vote.
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Let me tell you about what my union did for me. I am a federal employee in a large building for a large agency. I get paid well and have many fine benefits. One day some years ago a rat died in the subfloor under my desk. I called in a work order for the dead rat and not much happened. A week went by and the rat smell intensified. I asked for an update on the rat issue and was told it was in the system and awaiting a tech. Another week and it was unbearable. I spoke to my union rep, he made a few phon
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Re:Chicago Teachers Rip 'Big Money Interest Groups (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, I don't even know that unions serve a real purpose, anymore. We no longer employ twelve year old kids for sixteen hours a day in dangerous machine shops for a nickel an hour and anyone who has been wronged can seek out legal representation.
How do you think we got those rights? How are we supposed to maintain them? There has to be a balance, no excess of power on either the amployer's side or the worker's side.
Re:Chicago Teachers Rip 'Big Money Interest Groups (Score:5, Insightful)
If there are any restrictions corporate participation in the political process (in the name of freedom to exercise property there should not be)
So your ideal political system is basically despotic feudalism. I don't see why property should have a say in politics.
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The reason why laborers colluding is not bad is because the balance of power is tilted heavily against them and in favor of employers (which are predominantly large corporations today) in the first place. It may be a free market in a sense that you're free to take the offer or go elsewhere (where you'll be offered the same exact thing), but it's certainly not a fair market. Unions make it that much fairer.
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It has everything to do with the matter at hand. Many states require that if it's a union job, you're required to join that union. Then union money comes out of your paycheck, whether you like it or not - much like taxes.
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Re:Chicago Teachers Rip 'Big Money Interest Groups (Score:5, Insightful)
Then move to a 'Right to Work' state. There are plenty of them where you don't have to join a union if you don't want to.
All states should be right-to-work states. Being forced to pay protection money to hold a job is the type of thing the Mob does. Mandatory union membership has no place in today's world of massive amounts of government labor laws and regulations protecting worker safety and rights. Whether or not labor unions helped bring about those protections doesn't matter. The protections are there now, and public sector labor unions are without purpose other than to soak the taxpayer and gain political power & influence for their leaders.
Public sector unions should be outlawed. Both because they place essential services provided by government at risk from strikes, and because the taxpayers who pay the union wages & benefits have no say in how much the unions get, it's between the union and the politician they helped elect. It's two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for lunch, without the sheep being allowed a vote. It's corruption incarnate.
Strat
Re:Chicago Teachers Rip 'Big Money Interest Groups (Score:4, Insightful)
Apparently the unions with their people "on the ground", bags of cash, and their purchased elected officials in several states disagree with your viewpoint, and are free to set things up how they like.
FTFY
And s I already pointed out in another thread, your second reason for them being outlawed is seriously flawed.
How is it "seriously flawed" that unions have a long history of backing politicians in exchange for favorable treatment at the expense of the taxpayer? Have you been asleep for the last six decades or more, or have you never learned any history except what people with an agenda have told you?
Elected officials in several states just took away a lot of power from Teachers/Police/Fire unions.
Yes, for the first time in a long time. And it was so alarming and unexpected, the unions outside of Wisconsin threw massive amounts of money and resources into the fight precisely to prevent this setting a new precedent.
Have you seen Detroit recently? I'm not far away and get to see the damage unions and the corrupt politicians.they own have inflicted. I've watched it happen first-hand over the last 50+ years. I hate it. My aunt and her family used to live there in what was once a nice lower-middle-income suburban neighborhood that now has packs of feral dogs out in daylight and the occasional black or brown bear wandering through. That's not exaggeration. There are YT videos.
The rest of the state isn't all that much better, with several large municipalities having state-appointed emergency financial managers taking over all authority for spending and the budget because the corruption and union favoritism and cronyism have bankrupted them.
Want things to go the other way? Convince other voters to vote your way.
How many times does it take? Seems like there are a lot of judges and other politicians and unions across the nation that don't want the voter's will carried out when it doesn't go their way. How far do they go in fighting the decision of the voters before you can say they want to disenfranchise the voters by making their vote meaningless? How many injunctions? How many failed recalls? How many legislators on the lamb in another state to avoid losing a vote?
Strat
Re:Chicago Teachers Rip 'Big Money Interest Groups (Score:4, Insightful)
Yup. Competition from essentially unaccountable charter schools or private schools getting public money with little or no oversight, and under a variety of guises able to reject students with physical, mental or behavioral issues. There have been studies showing that the "new school effect" is what may account for any short-term gains in charters, and that renovating and relaunching public schools could have the same effect. Charter and private schools aren't expected to act like social service agencies, dealing with all sorts of damaged kids. The regular public schools are. And recent studies about the effects of stress on neurological development pretty much shows that these kids are being wired to fail by their environments. Poverty, home problems, crime, etc. are the actual problems.
The motivated parents who move their kids to a new school? Those kids probably have less stress than the kids who have parents who are having more problems and aren't focusing on them. Charter/private with vouchers will lead to tons of kids being left behind.
Please understand - the for-profits, consulting companies, etc. have NO interest in actually fixing education. Education is one of the few places where there's a lot of public money, it's staying public, and it's largely going to middle-class employees. The entire point of the reform - from the standpoint of these companies - is to siphon off a ton of that money. Their profit margin will be built by lowering wages - leading to lower-quality teachers over time - and eventually making the whole thing even worse.
I halfway expect to see some of these for-profit companies running juvenile detention facilities soon as well. They make money either way if they do.
I hate the competition too (Score:3)
They rejected 16% salary increase over 4 years (Score:5, Informative)
and say they want a 30% increase over 2. They are already some of the best paid urban teachers in the whole country. Insane.
http://reason.com/reasontv/2012/09/15/the-deep-logic-of-the-chicago-teachers-s [reason.com]
Don't want to be held accountable, even opposing Obama's merit-based suggestions in favor of tenure, etc.
I'll say what I always said: it's about the children, alright, about using the children.
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Yes, it is insane to pay those who are teaching the children well.
Much more sane to pay lobbyists a few million a year to make sure the teachers have no say in legislation.
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They do a LOUSY job.
"U.S. Department of Education: 79% of Chicago 8th Graders Not Proficient in Reading"
Re:They rejected 16% salary increase over 4 years (Score:5, Insightful)
It is really about evaluation and them not wanting to be evaluated so they can keep their job of not doing shit.
This comes from the son of a Teacher, and family members who are teachers/went to college for teaching.
And this comes from them as well.
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Of course you need to evaluate them too. I'm not sure how it is in the US as I don't live there, but are the salaries equal in the private and public schools? If not there is no point in evaluating the teachers in the public schools as all the good teachers will have drained to the private schools with higher salaries.
Having equal salaries in the public schools makes sure you don't get the worst teachers by default.
If the salaries are equal then my statement is moot of course, but if not I'd much rather pay
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but are the salaries equal in the private and public schools? If not there is no point in evaluating the teachers in the public schools as all the good teachers will have drained to the private schools with higher salaries.
My sister in law would be LOL at this time. Its the other way around... The primary private school competitor is a nun, willing to teach for free. You'll make more money at McDonalds than as catholic school teacher. They are the minor leagues for the public schools who recruit from them.
The "cream of the crop" at private (usually religious) schools vs "not so good" at public schools is the average parental quality. The kids are about the same (other than having been raised better, on average, by the pri
Re:They rejected 16% salary increase over 4 years (Score:4, Informative)
That being said, private school teachers often make less, but enjoy a more stable support system for both class sizes and keeping children in line.
Re:They rejected 16% salary increase over 4 years (Score:4, Insightful)
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Also, If I'm reading the various articles about this correctly, That's just the raise in base pay. The teachers also get increases based on time in. So, a 5-year teacher's pay might go up 7% from one year to the next, but the actual teacher with 5 years in will get a bigger increase in pay - the next year, they'll be a 6-year teacher...
evaluation is hard (Score:3)
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How much is "well?" This argument seems to work no matter how much teachers are paid. My guess is that if teachers were paid a million dollars a year, and were asking for an increase, anyone opposed would be accused of being against good pay for teachers. As the GP said, Chicago teachers are already some of the best paid in the country. 30% is huge. Student outcomes have not increased by 30% over the past two years, so why should teacher pay be increased by that much over the next 2?
Re:They rejected 16% salary increase over 4 years (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you know a teacher is underpaid and overworked? Don't worry, they'll tell you.
Idk how it is your area, but in my state, property owners pay for the bulk of the funding of the schools. My parents have their own house and a rental house, and to pay the property and much larger school tax bill on the rental property alone, they need to collect slightly over 3 months rent a year before they see a penny of revenue. It is not unusual for the school to demand and be handed 10-12 increases in budget each year. Just sustainable over the long term...
Our teachers get paid more than they do, starting at around $40k and going up as much as $120, depending on tenure and degrees - the attainment of higher ones past bachelor's, which once hired, is also paid for. They get a pension after 20-25 years. They get the caddilac of health plans for their entire families. They get a host of sick and vacation days during the year, those days roll over into the next year and so on, and any left over at the end of their career are paid out in full. They have the summers off (mostly) and often attend a conference somewhere which is usually a 1-2 hour a day work excuse in order to go someplace nice paid for by the taxpayer. Oh, and unheard of job security. There's nothing quite so cushy in the private sector for low level employees.
The professors in the local community college, in the same county, get much less than the HS teachers do.
HOWEVER, I realize this is mostly taking place in the richer suburbs of America and is not everyplace. I'll grant that. But even with all that, our kids aren't doing extraordinary.
In the words of Comptroller General David M. Walker, Healthcare and Education is where America spends way more than 1st world country, often 2x as much, for worse results and with no outcome testing of any type.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcWrdM-a_Uo [youtube.com]
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Except that public school teachers most places are paid well. Its largely private school teachers that work for next to nothing. If you take the typical public schools teach salary and divide it out to a per month number over 9 not 12 because they don't work summers, most of them are compensated better than they would be in another field with the same credentials.
This dispute is not really even about 'compensation' per say, its about the accountability and the tenure system. Essentially this abo
Re:They rejected 16% salary increase over 4 years (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the most ridiculous thing I've seen in a while.
Are you telling me scientists should have no way to determine what science policy should be?
If the politicians aren't listening to teachers about what education policy should be, then how do politicians have an informed opinion on such things? Oh yes, that's what lobbyists are for.
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Nationally, teacher salaries and benefits cost over $500 billion annually. Imagine reducing teacher staffing by 10%, or teacher compensation by 10%, or an equivalent combination. That would free up $50 billion annually for Gates, Broad, Walton, Pearson, etc. Education reform is all about getting this money, period. McSchools are on the way and they will be standardized, popular, and highly profitable - just like the restaurants. Enjoy your future McLearnin', Americans!
I'm not a teacher, I have kids in publi
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Depends on the city. What are Honolulu kids going to do, put pineapples in your chair?
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What, did you think Hawaii was a special case because all the pictures show you a tropical paradise?
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No, I was going by the fact that Honolulu has the 4th lowest violent crime rate in the country. [forbes.com]
Re:They rejected 16% salary increase over 4 years (Score:5, Insightful)
A 16% increase over 4 years works out to be 4% a year, which just happens to be a little lower than the average inflation rate over the last 4 years (yes, it's lower than that at the moment). Which means, in terms of spending power, its just maintaining the status quo.
As for "merit-based" performance metrics, they don't measure the teacher's performance; they measure the students. What that will mean is that teachers will be competing to teach the students more likely to meet the metrics. The good teachers will get those postitions, and the teachers who don't make the cut will be relegated to the difficult students. So the students who get the worst teachers, will be:
* Poor students, who don't have access to tutors or other extra curricular methods of learning
* Students with disinterested parents (parental involvements is one the major predictors for academic achievement)
* Students in classes of disruptive people
And the teachers who teach them will be stuck in a position of no advancement, because their students are consistently out-performed by other demographics.
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Try again, bubeleh. The average inflation over the last four years, according to the Departmen of Labor's CPI, has been somewhere around 2.5%. The last year in which inflation topped 4% was 1991.
Re:They rejected 16% salary increase over 4 years (Score:4, Insightful)
The average inflation over the last four years, according to the Departmen of Labor's CPI, has been somewhere around 2.5%
He's talking about real world inflation, like how much the cost of living has increased, commodity prices that are relevant to the median person, etc. Price of food, price of gasoline, price of real estate/rent, price of sickcare insurance, etc.
You're talking about the completely imaginary govt figure which is a statement of how much the govt has decided to increase CPI indexed transfer payments, social security, .mil pay and pensions, federal pay, etc. What the govt's willing to provide as a pay raise has no interaction what so ever with "how much stuff costs". There's a thing veneer of respectability where they exclude everything not fitting the message. So, yes, the average iphone cost plus maybe the average cost of a cedar 10 foot 2x4 maybe has only gone up 2.5%, but it doesn't "mean anything" in the real world other than SS checks and .mil paychecks are going to be 2.5% higher. What it really means is the politicians think they'll lose too many votes if they only paid out 2.4% more, but they wouldn't get enough extra votes if they paid out 2.6% more to make it worth it compared to other pork barrel expenses.
It would be very much like if instead of arbitrary payraises at work, people we given imaginary cooked books to base their raises. Just admit its arbitrary and mostly made up.
Re:They rejected 16% salary increase over 4 years (Score:4, Funny)
You don't just get to make up statistics to support your point.
I'm pretty sure making them up to support your argument is the exact point of statistics.
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What that will mean is that teachers will be competing to teach the students more likely to meet the metrics. The good teachers will get those postitions,
There is a leveling effect. The definition of "good" will of course be "hotties" "brownnosers" "groupthinkers". Generally speaking people who are not good teachers or good role models. The bottom half of the barrel due to competition won't even be getting jobs. So its not so much that the bad kids will be stuck with the 2 out of 10s, they'll be stuck with the 6 out of 10s. The long term effect of low quality teachers teaching the good parent's kids and better than average quality teachers teaching the
Re:They rejected 16% salary increase over 4 years (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know how the Chicago district proposes to measure "teacher performance" but it is possible to measure actual teacher performance. Chicago is a big system over which most teachers' actual performance can be measured:
Compare last year's test scores of the kids who are in each teacher's class with the end-of-term test scores of those same kids to measure their progress. Now compare the progress scores of that class of kids to the average progress of other kids in the district who had similar scores at the end of the previous term. In this way, you remove (to first order) the differences between particular groups of kids. What's left is attributable to other factors, such as performance of the teacher, the classroom, administration, time of day at which the class is taught (yes, I think this makes a difference), etc.
Each teacher teaches several groups of students. A system like this can do a lot of good. They get real, meaningful feedback, probably for the first time ever. It's likely that some teachers will get a great progress score on one class and a bad score on another class. And they may sometimes be very much surprised by the rating. Because they only see how hard or easy it is to teach a class of this kind or that kind of students, not whether it can be done better.
Such a system also should identify top performers by category. Mr. X does a fantastic job with top performers but totally fails teaching slow kids. Mrs. Y does a poor job challenging the really bright kids but is good at helping slow kids catch up. They're both stand-out teachers in particular areas. So have Mr. X help teach other teachers how to work with top performing students and have Mrs. Y teach other teachers how to help the slowest students, deal with troublemakers and motivate slackers. Assign the students that are hard to teach to a group of teachers headed by Mrs. Y. Move the faster students to another group headed by Mr. X.
That at least can work in core subjects like math, science, reading and history, and any subjects where what is being taught is specific facts or skills. But some subjects are hard to evaluate in an objective way. How do you judge the merit the art that students produce? The quality of their music? The validity of their debating points? There's still a lot we don't know how to and maybe can't ever be really measured in education.
Re:They rejected 16% salary increase over 4 years (Score:4, Interesting)
A 16% increase over 4 years works out to be 4% a year, which just happens to be a little lower than the average inflation rate over the last 4 years (yes, it's lower than that at the moment). Which means, in terms of spending power, its just maintaining the status quo.
Meanwhile, for the people actually paying for the teachers, median household income is down 7% in the last 10 years. [usatoday.com]
As for "merit-based" performance metrics, they don't measure the teacher's performance; they measure the students.
"I'm a good teacher, but my work doesn't really do the students any good. Give me a huge raise."
So the students who get the worst teachers, will be:
* Poor students, who don't have access to tutors or other extra curricular methods of learning
The students get such a great education from their government teachers, they need to hire tutors.
* Students with disinterested parents (parental involvements is one the major predictors for academic achievement)
* Students in classes of disruptive people
Obviously, you acknowledge these things are a problem. But rather than solve the problem, you want to make sure it doesn't affect teacher paychecks.
Nevermind the students. The purpose of a government school is to maximize payroll.
Re:They rejected 16% salary increase over 4 years (Score:5, Insightful)
merit-based suggestions
In other words, the plan where teachers who work in tough environments where students have not decided whether they want to graduate from high school or become criminals are punished. "Merit based" evaluations of teachers are not all they are cracked up to be; teachers cannot magically affect improvement if parents and cultures are not working with them. There is also the question of what basis is used for evaluations -- do you really think scores on tests show how well teachers are doing in their classrooms?
Re: (Score:3)
They are already some of the best paid urban teachers
Why the need for the "urban" qualifier?
Re: (Score:2)
you shouldn't have the right to unionise
I see you're espousing freedom as usual.
The system is not working (Score:5, Insightful)
"U.S. Department of Education: 79% of Chicago 8th Graders Not Proficient in Reading." Teacher evaluations are a must. It is time to get rid of the ineffective teachers that are protected by unions.
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"U.S. Department of Education: 79% of Chicago 8th Graders Not Proficient in Reading." Teacher evaluations are a must. It is time to get rid of the ineffective teachers that are protected by unions.
Because parents culture and value system has much more of an influence than anything the teachers could ever do, I assume its a given that you already support taking kids away from their parents if the test results are poor, so the logical next step of optimizing a minor impact area does make sense. Setting up an orphanage system / military discipline dorm for kids with bad test scores would be expensive, but probably fairly effective.
Remember, never optimize the small stuff first. In this non-IT non-CS e
Re:The system is not working (Score:5, Insightful)
So, if teachers have so little effect on what kids learn, why are we paying them at all?
Re: (Score:2)
Teacher evaluations are a must
What do you plan to base those evaluations on? How do you hope to ensure that the evaluations do not favor teachers who work in "safe" schools in middle class areas, where the students are being pushed by their parents to get high test scores and go to college, over teachers in "tough" schools where the parents are not so worried about education and where the students dream of becoming master criminals?
Re:The system is not working (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd be all for evaluation if I thought it would be done right. I lack that confidence. If you just look at how a given teacher's students perform then that's not fair to the teacher, since he has no control over those students' educational experience prior to arriving in his classroom. The only objective way to evaluate individual teachers' performance would be to test students every year and measure the delta between each teacher's students over the course of the year that teacher had them. If a given teacher has 5 classes of 25 students each, and those 125 students scored, on average, at the 30th percentile at the beginning of the year, but at the 35th percentile at the end of the year, then maybe we say that teacher did a good job despite his students scoring well below the state-wide average.
There are problems with testing students so frequently though:
1. It's expensive.
2. It cannibalizes classroom time.
3. It encourages teachers to try to game the system by teaching to the test or teaching "test-taking skills" instead of their actual subject matter.
4. It encourages teachers (and principals) to allow (or assist) their students to cheat.
5. It's not necessarily applicable to all types of teacher. How are you going to objectively measure the effectiveness of an art teacher?
Another way to go would be to only evaluate principals and give them more leeway to hire/fire teachers they like and use whatever in-house evaluation methods they want. Test only at school level jumps, i.e. prior to elementary, between elementary and middle, between middle and high school, then after high school. You'd want to be sure to evaluate the principals using the average percentile change of students who went through all grades at the given school. If the set of 8th graders leaving a given middle school has an average percentile rank of 50, but that same set of students averaged in the 40th percentile before starting 6th grade, maybe you give that principal a good rating. The problem here, though, is that it encourages principals to try to get kids who appear likely to regress to leave their school.
you mean like... competition and choice? (Score:3)
And who is going to make that evaluation? How are they going to hire and fire?
In essence, you want a free market in education in which parents evaluate schools and outcomes, successful principals win and schools grow, and bad ones get closed. Government has a function in such a market: it can keep schools small and the market free and effici
Let's hold a Wisconsin style protest... (Score:5, Insightful)
... Because that worked so well in Wisconsin. In Wisconsin, the result of the protests were:
* The teacher's union being flat out broken. The state won.
* A failed recall effort.
* A complete loss of support from many parent for the teachers. Demanding more money when people are struggling is never a hit.
Re: (Score:2)
The recall is the first recall in history where the incumbent won. It's a surprising result, so as a strategy it wasn't a bad idea.
Re: (Score:3)
a) Call me back when the state supreme court rules. A county court ruling has a long way to go before it is anywhere near over, especially when there are many other court rulings in favor of the law.
b) Trying to recall a governor and having the governor stay is a faiure. No spin about it.
c) Protests are not credible evidence of anything other than the protestors being unhappy. Election > Protest.
public schools are a mess (Score:3, Insightful)
We need a good public school system. But I can tell you first hand that public schools aren't always best. I have kids in both public and private schools, and the private school is far better. That's one small local example, I know, but the notion that it's just big money or testing that has adversely impacted public schools is ridiculous. There are some valid points there - there should be no candy machines in lunchrooms and teaching to tests can be a problem. But tenure, a sense of entitlement, an overplayed seniority system, and general lack of accountability for unionized teachers is also a big problem. The main problem as I see it is that there is no incentive in *any* of the public school schemes I've seen to strive for excellence. Mediocrity is the high bar most teachers and schools attempt to reach, and if they even get that far they are doing well. If you do what's minimally necessary, you will get paid, you will advance, you will get summers off, and you will eventually get your nice pension at 55. Do *you* get summers off? Do *you* get to retire at 55? Do *you* get to keep your job if you just sorta, meh, show up and just do what you have to do? No way you will be a teacher at the private school I'm familiar with if you aren't trying to help your students be the best they can be. It's just like that.
Of course public schools generally have a harder job than private schools. They have to deal with *all* the kids - including the dumb ones and the ones who parents have no concern for the quality of their kids education, for whatever reason. Parents who spend lots of money on private school generally don't do it capriciously - they care a *lot* about education and they put their money where their mouth is. So it's not completely fair to just blame lazy/stupid teachers (there are plenty of them for sure). Lazy stupid kids and their parents are equally to blame. Personally, I don't care about them. They should not be my problem or my kids problem. One way or another, public schools need to separate kids by ability and give motivated kids the chance they deserve. I know teachers and administrators who try to do that, but the system makes it very difficult.
Re:public schools are a mess (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, yes. In my experience most jobs are like that. You have to really suck to get fired. *Maybe* if you're just phoning it in you get to be first in line when there are layoffs. Maybe. But then only if your employer does a good job of identifying who's just phoning it in. Not all do.
Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Funny)
I grew up in a northern Wisconsin city where the teachers stuck twice times in four years .
You don't say. . .
Opposite day (Score:3)
"competition" This is not even a word that should be spoken if we are talking about education.
It is if you want any quality to result.
What we have now is almost zero competition, and the results suck.
Competition is what you introduce when you want results to stop sucking.
Government-enforced monopolies are usually not healthy for anyone.
hmm... (Score:2)
I'm with them on the complaint about test pushers. But privatization? Why should they care? Can't the union accept private school teachers as members and negotiate with private employers just like it negotiates with the City of Chicago? Other unions agitate for their members who're employed by private entities.
I'm also curious what would stop the city from hiring scabs. Parents would no doubt be unhappy with the decrease in teacher quality (since everybody would be brand new) but at least their kids wo
Re: (Score:3)
Can't the union accept private school teachers as members
The problem is that the union currently represents people whose jobs are threatened by privatization; a deal would first need to be reached that allowed public school teachers to be transferred to charter schools and visa versa, or else the union would have members fighting against each other. One of the issues in this strike was the number of teachers who were fired when schools were closed; a while back, a tentative deal was reached where the city would give those same teachers first consideration for
Information to reflect on during this strike (Score:5, Insightful)
Ten posts in, and I already see the guy chomping on the high-salary-bit modded at +5. Before that becomes the focus of these posts, let me add something to reflect on.
There is not only a very strong negative correlation between the percent of a school's low-socioeconomic-status students (measured by a school's free-and-reduced lunch rate) and test scores*, but there has proven to be causation as well. [aft.org] Now, urban Chicago has some of the highest poverty rates in the state of Illinois. Creating a system where half of a teacher's evaluation (and, ergo, the chance they keep their job) is based solely on test scores is simply setting up teachers to fail. Teachers know this; when they (or anyone else, for that matter) are put into a position where their evaluation likely will be poor, due to circumstances far beyond their control, resulting in dismissal from their job, it will negatively affect their performance in the classroom. Then, with high teacher turnaround, the quality of new hires will just suffer precipitously.
This evaluation system was never meant or designed to improve teacher performance. It was designed to set schools up to fail. And Chicago Area Teachers have every right to stand up and stop it. Anyone who tries to complain about salaries is merely throwing a red herring into the discussion.
* source: The Star Tribune [startribune.com]. It appears that, sadly, they removed the free-and-reduced lunch data from this year's test results. In previous years, I ran simple correlation calculations between a district's free-and-reduced lunch percentage, and the percentage of students who were proficient on the tests. The correlation coefficient was -.87 for math and -.92 for reading.
Re: (Score:3)
It's not about salaries. That's why teachers are offering to take pay cuts, obviously.
Slashdot (Score:2, Insightful)
I am really struggling to figure out how this posting/article fits with Slashdot at all.
Nerds care about education (Score:4, Insightful)
Do your research (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, WTF does this have to do with tech? This is one of the most inappropriate stories for a News for Nerds site.
But, since we're all nerds, we do our homework, right?
Anyone who wants to engage in an informed discussion about this issue should, at the very least, read the fact finder's report:
http://www.ctunet.com/blog/text/FactFinderCOMPLETE.pdf [ctunet.com]
Yes, it's 80 pages long and still requires a fair amount of context.
I am so sick and tired of idiots blathering on about (a) lazy selfish goddammed overpaid teachers or (b) without unions we'd all be working 752 days a week in sweatshops.
I'm in a union, been down this road before, it sucked ass. I still have a love/hate relationship with unions. But unlike binary data, things in the real world are rarely black and white.
Re: (Score:2)
First of all, WTF does this have to do with tech? This is one of the most inappropriate stories for a News for Nerds site.
Because nerds have no interest in education or politics, right? This site has been about more than tech news for a long time.
"back to the days before teachers had unions" (Score:3)
Right. Back to those terrible days when high school graduates could actually read and write.
Sad (Score:5, Interesting)
whoa whoa whoa this isn't about us (Score:3)
'Big Money Interest Groups' (Score:3)
Like teacher's unions?
I'm fine with that.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Actually,. some public service workers do *not* have the right to strike. Striking in such cases is simply refusing to report for work, and can get treated accordingly--you get fired. Ask the old PATCO air traffic controllers' union about that.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
The teachers don't support any sort of reform, and the current system is obviously not working. It's just like the demonstrations in Greece and Spain against austerity. Childishness. Me! Me! Me! They don't care about the kids, or they would have their own reform plan.
They are against any kind of accountability for teachers.
They are against any kind of accountability for schools.
They are for keeping the current "more pay for graduate degrees" pay schedule, even though studies show that teacher graduate d