Chicago teachers' strike

[jonottawa]

I'm trying very hard to have any sympathy for these folks. FWIU they're the highest paid teachers in the country and they're getting a huge pay raise and they're going on strike anyway because they've got certain performance standards to live up to and are expected to put in a full day's work?

 

Am I missing something? Is there a pro-teachers person in here who can maybe clarify things for me?

[Phil]

Personally I'm enjoying Rahm's tantrums.

[kenberg]

I just heard of it today and it is difficult to form any specific opinion.

 

CNN, at http://www.cnn.com/2...rike/index.html

says the average teacher salary is about 75K. My guess is that if parents saw their kids thriving in school, few would begrudge the teachers their salaries. I know nothing about the Chi schools but it is hardly a secret that most urban schools are a disaster.

 

We have someone doing some construction work at our house. He gets paid well. He does a good job. We are happy and if we need more work we will call him again. I don't think many urban parents have such nice feelings about the schools their kids go to.

 

OTOH, I would not want to work at the generic urban school. Not for 75K, not for a 100K.

 

So there is trouble.

[mike777]

yes they make around 100K or more including benefits.

 

One big problem is there is a 3 billion dollar deficit over the next 3 years, they have been offered 16% raise over 4 years. No one has really said where the heck this money will come from.

 

One big issue is testing and more merit pay and less pay based on seniority.

 

 

Rob Heselton, a teacher at Jones College Prep for 12 years, said the important issues for him are "not as much salary" as class size, extra days and hours added to the school calendar this year and the way Emanuel handled those issues. "It was just the fact that it was forced on us," he said. "I don't want to be out here at all, but it's definitely worth fighting for."

 

Average teacher pay is $76,000 a year. The school system has a $665 million budget deficit. Teachers voted in June to authorize a strike if a new agreement could not be reached.

 

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012/09/10/chicago-teachers-strike-for-first-time-in-25-years/57720772/1

 

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In Chicago, union President Karen Lewis suggested the city's proposal could put thousands of teachers' careers at risk because the evaluation system relies too heavily on standardized test scores and does not take into account such factors as poverty, violence and homelessness.

 

Teachers "have no control over those scores," said union coordinator John Kugler

[Bbradley62]

I'm trying very hard to have any sympathy for these folks. FWIU they're the highest paid teachers in the country and they're getting a huge pay raise and they're going on strike anyway because they've got certain performance standards to live up to and are expected to put in a full day's work?

 

Am I missing something? Is there a pro-teachers person in here who can maybe clarify things for me?

I am not on the teachers' side here, but can probably clarify for you anyway. First, that "huge pay raise" you refer to is 16% over 4 years. Since we don't have any idea what inflation will be like 2-4 years from now, I don't think I'd call that "huge".

 

Second, it appears that the primary sticking point is the idea of evaluating teachers based on their students' standardized test scores. The union, like all teachers' unions nationwide, says this is not an appropriate way to evaluate teachers. They are concerned that up to 15% of teachers could lose their jobs when these test scores indicate that they are ineffective.

[Cthulhu D]

I am not on the teachers' side here, but can probably clarify for you anyway. First, that "huge pay raise" you refer to is 16% over 4 years. Since we don't have any idea what inflation will be like 2-4 years from now, I don't think I'd call that "huge".

 

Indeed, isn't this just marginally above long term inflation? like, 0.5%. Half a percentage point a year in real terms is pretty small actually.

 

Second, it appears that the primary sticking point is the idea of evaluating teachers based on their students' standardized test scores. The union, like all teachers' unions nationwide, says this is not an appropriate way to evaluate teachers. They are concerned that up to 15% of teachers could lose their jobs when these test scores indicate that they are ineffective.

 

This is just designed to punish teachers who teach in poor areas. The biggest determinant of standardised testing scores is the background of the parents. Teachers don't have any control over this, so why measure them on something they cannot control?

 

As Mike777 points out, those teachers are the most underpaid already.

[Bbradley62]

As Mike777 points out, those teachers are the most underpaid already.

I've now read Mike777's post three times, and I cannot find where he suggests that anyone is underpaid.

[awm]

This explains some of the reasoning.

 

Complaints include:

 

(1) An increase in the length of the school day amounting to a 20% increase in hours without additional compensation.

(2) Teacher evaluation based on student tests which are not designed to evaluate teacher performance, and do not compensate for student poverty levels.

(3) Lack of funding to repair school buildings and provide textbooks for students.

(4) Cuts to classes like art, music, and PE.

(5) An emphasis on charter schools rather than funding the public school system.

(6) A recent law making it almost impossible for teachers to strike (requiring 75% of teachers to vote to strike, not 75% of votes).

(7) A general view that the city is not negotiating in good faith.

 

This strike has something like 98% approval from the Chicago teachers union -- pretty startlingly high.

[Bbradley62]

The biggest determinant of standardised testing scores is the background of the parents. Teachers don't have any control over this, so why measure them on something they cannot control?

Clearly, I haven't read the actual proposal by the City, but I would presume that they would be attempting to evaluate teachers based on students' score improvements from one year to the next, not based on absolute values. The question is (should be): "do your students know more at the end of the school year than they knew at the end of the previous school year?", not "do your students test as well as the kids in the rich part of town?". Teachers should be held accountable for seeing that their students make some progress over the course of the school year.

[Cthulhu D]

Clearly, I haven't read the actual proposal by the City, but I would presume that they would be attempting to evaluate teachers based on students' score improvements from one year to the next, not based on absolute values. The question is (should be): "do your students know more at the end of the school year than they knew at the end of the previous school year?", not "do your students test as well as the kids in the rich part of town?". Teachers should be held accountable for seeing that their students make some progress over the course of the school year.

 

Yeah, except this is almost entirely predicated on the parents as well - the environment the kid spends the summer holidays in effects retention. If you test a school kid at the end of the school year, that kid goes backwards between 2-3 and 8 months by the start of the next year, predicted by socio-economic status.

 

You need to test multiple times in a school year to get meaningful results. Of course, the actual tests as proposed don't even control for socio-economic status of the kids, so it's obvious that Chicago is just trying to ***** the teachers.

[Bbradley62]

You need to test multiple times in a school year to get meaningful results.

Sounds like a good idea to me.

Of course, the actual tests as proposed don't even control for socio-economic status of the kids,

You don't have to control for anything if all you're doing is comparing each kid to the however-many-months-earlier version of himself, not trying to compare him to a kid with different circumstances.

so it's obvious that Chicago is just trying to ***** the teachers.

That's just plain nonsense. Chicago needs those teachers who are competent to continue teaching in its public schools; those who are not need to go, and Chicago needs a reasonable way of differentiating, which the union doesn't seem to want to allow.

[Cthulhu D]

That's just plain nonsense. Chicago needs those teachers who are competent to continue teaching in its public schools; those who are not need to go, and Chicago needs a reasonable way of differentiating, which the union doesn't seem to want to allow.

 

From my reading they are not proposing multiple tests a year or socio economic controls. What other explanation is there? As it stands, the proposal is 'if you teach poor black kids, you are going to get fired, have fun!'

 

I'd be on strike too.

[Bbradley62]

There is simply the explanation that each student is expected to "know more" at the end of the year than he knew at the end of the previous year, without regard to comparing him to anyone else. Alternatively, the measurements can be done within each school; if a teacher's students make noticeably less progress during the year than all the other teachers' students (at the same school), that teacher can reasonably be deemed to have failed to educate his students. Any attempt to distinguish between good teachers and bad teachers is better than the union's apparent position that there are no bad teachers.

[mike777]

From my reading they are not proposing multiple tests a year or socio economic controls. What other explanation is there? As it stands, the proposal is 'if you teach poor black kids, you are going to get fired, have fun!'

 

I'd be on strike too.

 

 

As a graduate of the Chicago public school system, and given my mom was a teacher in Chicago, it does seem wierd that they want to fire all the teachers of black students but Ok. Not sure why they target only blacks and not other races. They face a 3 billion dollar deficit.

 

I suppose they could just raise taxes by 3billion over the next 3 years but that is still on a budget that fires all those teachers.

 

It is just weird that Chicago it planning on spending 3 billion bucks they dont have and yet they still wont repair schools, buy textbooks....that money just maintains the current status quo.

[mike777]

http://www.trulia.com/schools/IL-Chicago/Georgie_Pullman_Elementary_School/

 

btw my old school has 8 students for each full time teacher.

 

I just checked the other school I went to has ten students for each full time teacher.

This school was 100 years old when I went there. I notice they tore it down and built a new building.

 

--

 

Now if we only give them 10-11k per student that barely covers the teachers cost right now let alone for being underpaid at roughly 100K including benefits.

 

Note there is no money left over for the buildings, desks, textbooks, air cond, etc.

[billw55]

I have a hard time accepting claims that teachers are underpaid. I sure don't make $75,000 per year, and I work substantially more days per year than they do. And the benefits, wow, dirt cheap pensions and healthcare, and so much more. And on top of all that, they have (for the time being, anyway) lifetime guaranteed jobs at high pay with no risk of layoff, company closing, etc.

 

I also don't accept once a year standardized tests as a teacher quality indicator. There are random and systematic confounders. For any given teacher, these scores will fluctuate, more or less randomly. There is real risk of sometimes penalizing (or even firing) good teachers who hit an unlucky dip, or rewarding bad ones who hit a lucky peak. Furthermore, administrators have their personal whims when class placement comes around. Principals will sometimes place all/most of the "bad" kids in the classes of teachers they don't like, or the "good" ones in classes of teachers who run their errands or otherwise kiss their butts. These teachers will get punished/rewarded for their test scores? meh.

 

I wish I knew the solution but I don't.

[hrothgar]

I have a hard time accepting claims that teachers are underpaid. I sure don't make $75,000 per year, and I work substantially more days per year than they do. And the benefits, wow, dirt cheap pensions and healthcare, and so much more.

 

Couple comments about teacher's pay:

 

1. The hours SUCK. My mother was a high school teacher for a couple decades. She was typically busy with lesson plans, grading, and the like far into the evening. Yes, the summer vacations and school vacations are nice. However, the hours she worked during the school year were ridiculous. (This coming from someone who is used to "start up culture" in the tech industry.

 

2. The pay sucks... Teacher's need to invest significant time and money into their qualifications. (When I was growing up, most of my public school teacher's had at least a master's degree).

[mike777]

I have a hard time accepting claims that teachers are underpaid. I sure don't make $75,000 per year, and I work substantially more days per year than they do. And the benefits, wow, dirt cheap pensions and healthcare, and so much more. And on top of all that, they have (for the time being, anyway) lifetime guaranteed jobs at high pay with no risk of layoff, company closing, etc.

 

I also don't accept once a year standardized tests as a teacher quality indicator. There are random and systematic confounders. For any given teacher, these scores will fluctuate, more or less randomly. There is real risk of sometimes penalizing (or even firing) good teachers who hit an unlucky dip, or rewarding bad ones who hit a lucky peak. Furthermore, administrators have their personal whims when class placement comes around. Principals will sometimes place all/most of the "bad" kids in the classes of teachers they don't like, or the "good" ones in classes of teachers who run their errands or otherwise kiss their butts. These teachers will get punished/rewarded for their test scores? meh.

 

I wish I knew the solution but I don't.

 

 

I think the debate is over should there be more competition or free market options or should the solution come from more government central control.

 

 

Reuters) - Chicago teachers walking picket lines on Monday, in a strike that has closed schools across the city, are taking on not just their combative mayor but a powerful education reform movement that is transforming public schools across the United States.

 

The new vision, championed by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who used to run Chicago's schools, calls for a laser focus on standardized tests meant to gauge student skills in reading, writing and math. Teachers who fail to raise student scores may be fired. Schools that fail to boost scores may be shut down.

 

And the monopoly that the public sector once held on public schools will be broken with a proliferation of charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately run - and typically non-union.

 

To reformers, both Democrats and Republicans, these changes offer the best hope for improving dismal urban schools. Many teachers, however, see the new policies as a brazen attempt to shift public resources into private hands, to break the power of teachers unions, and to reduce the teaching profession to test preparation.

 

In Chicago, last-minute contract talks broke down not over pay, but over the reform agenda, both sides said Sunday. The union would not agree to Emanuel's proposal that teacher evaluations be based in large measure on student test scores.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/analysis-striking-chicago-teachers-national-education-reform-162522907.html

[billw55]

I think the debate is over should there be more competition or free market options or should the solution come from more government central control.

There already is free market competition in Chicago: Catholic schools. As I understand, those that can afford it almost universally choose this over the public schools. Those that cannot, go to public. This fact has not averted the current situation.

 

Is there something else you mean by "competition" or "free market options"?

[mike777]

There already is free market competition in Chicago: Catholic schools. As I understand, those that can afford it almost universally choose this over the public schools. Those that cannot, go to public. This fact has not averted the current situation.

 

Is there something else you mean by "competition" or "free market options"?

 

 

Yes, but good point, see the rest of my post. BTW I dont think the charter schools are on strike, so at least some students are not affected.

 

Many teachers sent their own children to non public schools. The median income for non teachers in Chicago is around 45k btw.

 

yes, they are trying to increase the options, and at the very least as other posters have pointed out this is an attack against the Chicago Teachers union power.

[phil_20686]

I have no problem paying teachers more, although I would generally prefer to have more teachers, if there were a limited budget, but it seems like teachers probably have some of the largest long term effects on a country's general outcome.

 

I also think that we demand much too little from our students. I would like to see schools set their own exams twice yearly, and for them to be appropriately rigorous. It felt like there was really no expectation from the standard exams to achieve any real level of problem solving, or interest.

 

I remember an A level practical exam, based around a series of chemical tests to identify an unknown compound, where out teachers told us that in 90% of the exams the chemical tests were set in blocks 1 (a) 1(b) etc, and the last question in each block would be the one that was positive. Thus the ideal strategy was simply to complete the last test in every block, and then having seen that they were positive, and worked out the chemical, you could fill in the results for all the other tests, knowing they were negative, and making sure to use all the buzz words. E.g. You would lose marks for using "clear" instead of "transparent" despite my dictionary insisting they were synonymous.

 

It was just completely bizarre. A practical exam set up in such a way that the teachers would tell you that the optimum way to take the test was not actually to do most of the tests, because the exam setters seem to assume that all students are idiots and will not recognise the patter in a dozen years of passed papers. Or maybe they didn't care as it was an easy way to boost marks.

 

This stuff is completely widespread. English literature, we were advised that the examiners would not actually check your quotations, and since there was no requirement to reference them to an edition and page number, we could just make them up. Full marks without ever reading the set text. No problemo. And they were open book exams, so you would buy the editions that have copious notes on the main themes and cultural information, and had lists of useful quotations at the back. That was perfectly within the rules.

 

The hardest GCSE exam by far that I sat was Latin, as you had to do a forty line translation from the Illiad, and that is pretty hard, so obviously we didn't do that. There was a restriced set of about 250 lines that they were allowed to ask you from, so we just learned the english by rote, along with the last work of each line in latin. No need to do any actual latin.

 

When an exam system has become so corrupted that "good teachers" are those who advise their students on the best way to game the system, it should all go to the scrap house imo. Exams need to be much harder, so that it is no longer the case of applying algorithms by rote, but that genuine thinking is required. Before I went to university I had never seen an exam question that required you to think in a new way, or do anything other than regurgitate past material and solutions.

 

 

=====================================================================

 

I also think a large part of the problem is the psychosis of the the education establishment. On the one hand they believe that education is fundamentally a good thing, and on the other they have made a sort of idol out of educational equality, and these goals are in tension, because a good educator will fundamentally make his class more unequal. To say that it is hard/impossible to teach some kids from disturbed backgrounds is true. So you teach the rest, and if you are a good teacher who enables learning, then every year your class will become more unequal as the good students move every farther away from the worse students.

 

You see it clearly in the large scale movement in the UK (and a little in the US) to abolish private schooling. Here in the UK, private schools have historically been given charitable status, and removing charitable status will effectively bar the middle classes from elite educational establishments. It has always been seen in the past that giving a child a good education was a good thing, in and of itself, and if parents were prepared to pay extra to have their children in private education, instead of state schooling that is doubly good, as the child is getting a better education, and the state school has one less child to spread its funding around.

 

However, its evident that having elite private schools perpetuates inequality, because two students who started off the same, and worked the same amount, and one went to an elite school, and one went to an average school, will have vastly different outcomes. Moreover, its not just a question of skills, more stimulating environments help increase your general intelligence. One study suggests that the difference between a good and bad education adds at least two IQ points per year of education. A child with an elite educational establishment, compared to a poor one, will be twenty five IQ points better off over the full school career. That is HUGE, and it is permanent (this result is for average children, its easier to have big changes towards the mean than away from it in terms of absolute iq scores).

 

The progressive response is to claim how unfair all this is, and that if only we forced well off parents to put their children in comprehensives like the rest then this would drive up standards in the rest. However, this, imo, is just a pretext. In reality they view this inequality as a bad thing, and would rather the children of the well off received a worse, but more equal, education. I cannot understand this sentiment, but it seems fairly widespread among the intellectual left.

 

=======================================================================

 

Thirdly, My generation regards teaching as what you do when you aren't smart enough to have a real career. I don't know how this happened. My grandfather told me that when he became a teacher (1940) it was regarded as on a par with being a surgeon or a GP or a university professor. I.e. A high status job. I think status is more important than money in attracting young applicants to teaching. We are young and idealistic, but the one thing we really can't abide is being looked down on by accountants. :)

 

I think society has moved towards equating status and money, and that means that we will have to pay our teachers more to get better teachers. I am at peace this this fact. :) I think teachers salaries should be in the 30-60k (in pounds) range, which is about 50% higher than they are, and will put them on a par with young professionals in law, tax, computer science, civil servants and universities. Of course, there will never be as much scope for progression as these other careers, but they do have much better holidays. :)

 

======================================

 

PS: The information age is here. Teachers unions need to adjust to the fact that you can actually measure teacher performance, and that some teachers are much better than others. Once they have accepted this (incontrovertible) fact, then there is a long conversation to be had about the best ways to use that information, about how to deal with the inherent randomness of stats applied to individuals and all that stuff.

[kenberg]

I wish I knew the solution but I don't.

 

I am in 100% agreement with this.

[TimG]

You need to test multiple times in a school year to get meaningful results. Of course, the actual tests as proposed don't even control for socio-economic status of the kids, so it's obvious that Chicago is just trying to ***** the teachers.

From my perspective as someone who has worked in public schools (rural) and as a parent of kids who have attended public schools (again rural), standardized tests are often a big waste of time.

 

As one example, the elementary school I worked at last school year uses Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA) levels to monitor reading progress. These tests require one-on-one teacher involvement, especially at lower levels, and can take over an hour to administer. A 3rd grade teacher with a class of 12 students could effectively use two full days of school to test their entire class. What are the kids who are not being tested supposed to be doing when their classmate is being tested by their teacher?

 

But really, classroom teachers should not be administering such tests, especially when their continued employment may depend upon the success of their students on the tests. So, you really need to hire someone to administer tests and pull individual students from the classroom to take the tests. Of course, they will be missing some direct classroom instruction when they are being tested, something that the classroom teacher will have to make up one-on-one. During which portion of the day?

 

I performed the year end assessment on all the students I worked with in math last year. They all met the yearly progress requirement! The yearly progress requirement that was a large part of my yearly evaluation as a teacher. How shocking is that? Even though I believe I tested them fairly, I also understand that if they had been assessed by objective strangers, they would not have scored as well.

 

When my middle school age children take standardized tests, there is a big to do made out of it. The principal sends a note home encouraging parents to make sure their children get a good night's sleep and eat a good breakfast on test days. Regular classroom activities are adjusted so as not to tax the students prior to a test period and the homework load is adjusted. In short, school is disrupted for a week or two.

 

I recently read a Vanity Fair article about the environment at Microsoft. The article described a process by which all members of a team needed to be evaluated such that some were ranked as superior and some ranked as inferior -- that is, someone(s) on each team had to be given the lowest ranking and those who were ranked lowest often lost their job. It created a very political environment where people jockeyed not to produce a product, but to be part of a team where they could outrank co-workers and keep their jobs.

 

I could easily see similar things happen when a teacher's continued employment is based upon student test scores. Teachers will compete amongst each other for "good students" and will have incentive to NOT help co-workers, in fact sabotaging co-workers' efforts could become beneficial. Principals who may want to fire a particular teacher but do not have cause could stack their classes against them or otherwise rig things so that their students have a more difficult time. None of this, obviously, is beneficial to the students.

 

Part of No Child Left Behind is a requirement that high schools have a 100% graduation rate in order to maintain good standing (not be listed as a "failing school") by some year that is not to far in the future. Anyone will tell you that a 100% graduation rate is not going to happen in any but a small handful of schools. But, doesn't it seem like an incentive to school districts to lessen their graduation requirements so that they can graduate a higher percentage of students? (I am not well read on this subject, but I believe states can petition the federal government to be exempt from this 100% graduation rate requirement, or some other provisions of No Child Left Behind by establishing their own guidelines and requirements and jumping through some other hoops. But, it still seems to me that there is incentive to set the bar as low as possibly allowed to better meet goals.)

 

Anyway, if I were a classroom teacher with 15-20 years of teaching history, I would be very scared if my future employment (and vesting of retirement benefits, etc) suddenly depended upon the the children in my classroom meeting a certain level on a standardized test. No amount of classroom teaching skill could trump the efforts of administration if they wanted an excuse to let me go.

[mike777]

I would be very scared if my future employment (and vesting of retirement benefits, etc) suddenly depended upon the the children in my classroom meeting a certain level on a standardized test. No amount of classroom teaching skill could trump the efforts of administration if they wanted an excuse to let me go.

 

 

This may shock you but this is the world we nonteachers/union live in, at least in the USA.

 

It is called at will firing. You can basically be fired for any reason.

[TimG]

I have a hard time accepting claims that teachers are underpaid. I sure don't make $75,000 per year, and I work substantially more days per year than they do.

Teachers don't start out at these "comfortable salaries". The cost of living where I live is much different than in Chicago, but around here starting teacher pay is less than half of $75,000 (actually the first website I found says that average starting salary for teachers in Maine is $38,770 -- the second showed that average teacher pay for teachers with less than 5 years of experience at my local middle school is $29,565 -- there must be some difference in what is considered a "teacher", perhaps ed techs are included in one figure and not in the other, for instance). Anyway, I am confident that no matter how you look at it, teachers don't start out with "comfortable salaries". And, they may not go to the classroom 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year, but those 185 school days (in Maine) aren't short days.

 

Teachers are being asked to pick up more and more of their health insurance costs. Just like other industries, I imagine.