Teachers' Strike

[BlinkingDuck]

Originally Posted by Gundy

Are you serious? No, I don't. I don't at all. The idea is laughable. What I do doesn't require a master's degree. I don't have to deal with 30 kids every day, or, god forbid, their parents. And I don't have to bring my work home at all, mentally or emotionally. I recognize and respect the difficulty that is inherent in the job -- especially those teaching for CPS, and especially those teaching in underserved areas. Education is not a place where we should cheap out; you shouldn't have to take a vow of poverty to do meaningful work (I work for a nonprofit myself.) I feel the same way about cops.

Assuming you are not pulling my leg...you would be the FIRST person I've ever seen answer that question to answer with a 'no'. Even supposedly big time teacher 'supporters' laugh derisively when asked that question. I've met shift managers at fast food places that firmly believe they should make more than a teacher. I've heard 20-something tellers at banks with no college education complain that a 50 year old teacher makes ALMOST as much as they do and how that is not right.

You are a rarity...assuming you are being truthful.

[lance strongarm]

Originally Posted by BlinkingDuck

Assuming you are not pulling my leg...you would be the FIRST person I've ever seen answer that question to answer with a 'no'. Even supposedly big time teacher 'supporters' laugh derisively when asked that question. I've met shift managers at fast food places that firmly believe they should make more than a teacher. I've heard 20-something tellers at banks with no college education complain that a 50 year old teacher makes ALMOST as much as they do and how that is not right.

You are a rarity...assuming you are being truthful.

I remember 10 or 15 years ago when everyone agreed that teaching was an important, underappreciated profession and the biggest priority for getting and keeping good teachers was boosting their pay.

Times change fast.

[Gundy]

Originally Posted by BlinkingDuck

Assuming you are not pulling my leg...you would be the FIRST person I've ever seen answer that question to answer with a 'no'. Even supposedly big time teacher 'supporters' laugh derisively when asked that question. I've met shift managers at fast food places that firmly believe they should make more than a teacher. I've heard 20-something tellers at banks with no college education complain that a 50 year old teacher makes ALMOST as much as they do and how that is not right.

You are a rarity...assuming you are being truthful.

O...kay. It's pretty obvious you don't believe me, and I'm not sure what I've said to make you think that, but okay.

I'm being perfectly honest: I'm a cog where I work, and I like it that way for now. I'm very competent, very good at my job, but it's rarely stressful. Even when I worked for assholes it was way less stressful than I imagine teaching to be. Family, volunteer work, and hobbies keep me plenty busy. As my kids get older and I have more time, maybe I'll pursue a more challenging career, maybe not, but until then, I'm pretty aware of my relative value in the job market, and no, I don't think I should make more than teachers. My husband's job, on the other hand, requires way more education than mine, a more rarefied set of skills, requires a lot more hours on the job, and has a lot more on the line should he screw up. I would argue that those factors make him more valuable in the job market than a teacher -- primarily because there are relatively few people who can do what he does.

The one thing I do envy teachers for: summers off. I would forfeit raises for...a long time to have summers off.

[ScatteredFrog]

Originally Posted by Wheelz

One of the sticking points seems to be over the authority of principals; the teachers don't want them to have hiring and firing privileges. This seems odd to me. I’ve never had a job in which my immediate supervisor didn’t have that power. “Job Security” shouldn’t mean “I can never get fired.” As for the evaluation part of it, I admit I don’t know enough to form a valid opinion.

That's the problem: the immediate supervisors DO NOT make the decisions; the immediate supervisors are the department heads, at least in high schools. My wife's first public school teaching job was in a different district, and it was the department head that interviewed her and offered her the job. Here it's the principal.

And there's NOTHING that says teachers cannot get fired. Even tenured ones.

[That Don Guy]

Originally Posted by ScatteredFrog

I'm not a teacher, but I'm married to an overpaid thug of a CPS teacher who drives a BMW and can take up to six months of vacation and works only six hours a day for nine months. Oh, wait...that's right...if she were making as much as the media made it out, I wouldn't have to work (well, in my case, scramble to find a job because I got laid off), we share an old Saturn, she spent at least half the summer at school for curriculum planning et al, and all last week she got to school at 7:15am and didn't even leave there until 5:30pm. And we live in a modest apartment and don't take exotic vacations, too. My bad.

Everybody knows teachers make at least $180,000/year (OK, not really, but keep reading).
Who told me this? The people who claim that "teachers have a 25% tax rate while Mitt Romney has a 14% one", since that's the only possible way a teacher would be paying 25% of his/her income in Federal income tax using a calculation method that sets Romney's at 14%.

However, both sides have agreed on a 3% raise for next year, followed by 2% each for the following three years. Reps from CPS claim that that's somehow a total of 16% increase, but when I did the math (twice just to make sure), I came up with 9.304424; I'll be happy to share the steps in how I calculated.

Well, I get:
Year 1: 1.03
Year 2: 1.03 x 1.02
Year 3: 1.03 x 1.02 x 1.02
Year 4: 1.03 x 1.02 x 1.02 x 1.02 = 1.09304424
To get 16%, you need a 3.78% increase per year for four years.

5) Standardized test scores -- as someone who's worked in test prep for ten years, I can tell you that standardized tests measure NOTHING but your family's income level.

So every multi-millionaire's child gets at least a 2200 on the SAT?

Actually, you do make a point, but I think there's also a cause-and-effect relationship between the quality of teaching at a school and the general income range of the families that live in that area, especially as the rich areas will vote for higher property taxes for the schools in question.
I also agree that test scores should have very little, if anything, to do with a teacher's evaluation, if for no other reason than it seems to be too easy to "stick a troublemaker teacher with poor students."

WTF is up with all this testing, btw??? When I was in school (I'm 38), the only legally-required tests I had to take were US and Illinois constitution tests in both 8th grade and HS -- and it was up to the teacher to decide how to format it.

My best guess is, one too many instances of somebody receiving a HS diploma who couldn't read it because he/she was never taught how to read. (There does not appear to be any way around this possibility that does not punish blind students as well.)
When I was in HS in California in the late 1970s, the state had just started testing all HS students in reading, writing, and mathematics, but only to see if they could perform at some minimum level (I want to say fifth-grade level, but I am not sure).

There's a fine line between "What should a student know?" and "Teaching to the test". Whenever I hear someone say, "School should be a place where you are taught how to learn things and apply critical thinking," I think of the people who use "critical thinking" to defend statements like "Nobody has ever walked on the moon" and "The 9/11 attacks were staged by the USA government."

[Intergalactic Gladiator]

Originally Posted by Gundy

Just got this via a school group -- this presents a much more detailed picture of the evaluation process. I'm seeing the CTU's point on some of this...hm.

Great post, Gundy.

I will admit my bias -- my wife's a CPS teacher, and it's been ugly for them since Rahm was elected (and even before, really). And the media seems awfully fixated on the money issue, which leads people who half pay attention to form oppinions like "Oh those poor teachers, no more cavier in the teacher's lounge." It's way beyond the money when there are so many other issues at stake. Have you ever heard of a teacher who wanted to be a teacher for the pay?

Chicago fire fighters are now working without a contract and the police will also be without one soon but these two departments cannot strike. Other departments are going to be facing issues as well. I have no cite, but it very much seems to me that the current mayor doesn't really care too much for Chicago's middle class, is only interested in making money for his people, doesn't really care about the city, and won't be around for another term. "policitcs as usual" right? Yuck.

[SanDiegoTim]

I don't think the problem is what teachers get paid so much as it is they all get paid the same. The concept of tenure is absurd. It doesn't exist anywhere in our economy (or in life for that matter)other than education and, to a limited extent, in government. Decertify the union, pay the good teachers more and fire the bad ones.

[Lochdale]

My sense is that the is some sympathy here over pay but almost none for their stance of merit based pay. The longer it goes on, (imho) the less sympathy there will be for the teachers.

[lance strongarm]

Originally Posted by SanDiegoTim

The concept of tenure is absurd. It doesn't exist anywhere in our economy (or in life for that matter)other than education and, to a limited extent, in government.

Just noting that teaching is education. Not that I necessarily think teachers should have tenure.

Decertify the union, pay the good teachers more and fire the bad ones.

If you decertify the union, the good teachers will get paid less and the bad ones will be fired (along with a few good ones).

[california jobcase]

Merit pay for teachers is a vengeful principal's dream. If you want the public schools to run amok internally with favoritism, nepotism, and a whole lot of Erase To The Top, go ahead and install a system that rewards teachers for the students' grades.

[lance strongarm]

Originally Posted by california jobcase

Merit pay for teachers is a vengeful principal's dream. If you want the public schools to run amok internally with favoritism, nepotism, and a whole lot of Erase To The Top, go ahead and install a system that rewards teachers for the students' grades.

Grades are hardly the only way to measure merit. Most people proposing merit pay systems are smarter than you think they are.

[california jobcase]

Every way I have seen proposed includes student progress as measured by standardized tests, quality and amount of tedious paperwork and lesson plans required of the teachers, and high-stakes classroom observations.

Any one of the three measures above could be used either for or against a particular teacher. If the administration wants to favor a teacher, all he needs to do is fill the teacher's classes with the best students. To get rid of a teacher to make room for the administrator's cousin (or more likely a coach's wife) the administrator can fill the classes with the worst students. Either way will generally give the administrator's desired results for two out of the three criteria. The paperwork schemes I've seen are always subjective enough for plenty of grading leeway.

Don't think for a minute that this kind of thing doesn't happen. I've seen it too many times.

[lance strongarm]

Originally Posted by california jobcase

Any one of the three measures above could be used either for or against a particular teacher. If the administration wants to favor a teacher, all he needs to do is fill the teacher's classes with the best students. To get rid of a teacher to make room for the administrator's cousin (or more likely a coach's wife) the administrator can fill the classes with the worst students.

So we make them selected at random or by someone else.

[Tom Scud]

Trib is reporting that a tentative agreement has been reached; final details to be ironed out tomorrow and the agreement put to the union for a vote on Sunday. If it passes, the strike is over as of Monday.

[Lochdale]

And the schools will improve?

Kicking the can down the road and spending money the city doesn't have.

[ScatteredFrog]

Thing is, it's the city's responsibility to make sure they HAVE the money that they agreed in writing to give.

[Cheryl44]

I just want to kick in the screen on my tv every time I see Tiny Dancer patting himself on the back because the strike is over.

[Tim R. Mortiss]

Originally Posted by Cheryl44

I just want to kick in the screen on my tv every time I see Tiny Dancer patting himself on the back because the strike is over.

I want to see Karen Lewis swallow him whole.

[BlinkingDuck]

Originally Posted by california jobcase

Don't think for a minute that this kind of thing doesn't happen. I've seen it too many times.

There is something about Education Admins...

Sure you have bad bosses in industry but, from my experience, most bosses I have had or seen have been pretty good. Competent, focused etc. Yes, they are interested in advancing but, on the whole, are decent and competent.

Education, on the other hand, seems to attract a certain type. I don't know if it attracts a certain type of personality or the job/surroundings create this personality but many school admins seem vindictive, controlling, authoritarian and, worse of all, "empire builders". Empire Builders are not happy just running a school, they need to have you subserviant and they need to have you loyal to THEM which means they need to be the one that hired you and so on. They relish the idea of trashing peoples' careers and being all-purpose assholes.

My thoughts are that admins tend to come from failed teachers. Great teachers want to stay in the classrooms. The old saying of "Those that do...do. Those that can't...teach. Those that can't teach...administrate". Therefore, they are not the cream of the crop to start. Put them in a position where they have to run a school and put up with huge amounts of crap from the public with probably not the greatest salary and not a huge amount of upward mobility and then give them power over a large group of teachers and you get a recipe for asshole creation.

I went through 2 of them when I was in teaching...and both times I lucked out because one time the admin hired me and seemed to like me so I was safe. The other one I just lucked out and was liked by her. In both cases I thought they were terrible admins and human beings.

I would go so far as to say probably >50% of school admins are probably of this ilk. These positions need to be destroyed, not given more power over teachers. They are part of 'what is wrong' with education.

Admins should be DRAFTED from the best teachers. The ones that don't want to do the job would probably be the best at it.