Academia, Justice, Politics, Society

Chicago Teachers Take a Stand Against Mayor Rahm Emanuel and His Contract Demands

Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger

CPS Parent Matt Farmer Puts Penny Pritzker on Trial at CTU’s Stands Strong Rally

Rahm Emanuel promised to “shake up the Windy City’s schools” when he campaigned for mayor of Chicago in 2011. One of his main goals was to change the teacher evaluation process. He is a big proponent of using students’ standardized test scores in determining the effectiveness of classroom practitioners.

On September 12th, Mike Klonsky wrote the following on his blog SmallTalk:

It appears this morning that our autocrat mayor has decided to stonewall the negotiations. While he’s moved on compensation issues, he’s refusing to even discuss teacher evaluation and the power of principals to hire and fire teachers at will.

Rahm is operating here without the benefit of knowing much about education. He’s that just-right combination of street-thug ward politician and Wall St. hustler who thinks that because he believes something to be true, he has the right (power) to force it on the public. First case in point was his notion that more seat time in school necessarily produces better results. It doesn’t. Now he’s convinced that you can evaluate a teacher based wholly or largely on their student’s score on a standardized test. You can’t.

Yesterday Rahm hauled a few of his pet principals, (including Ethan Netterstrom, principal at Skinner North) in front of the TV cameras, to claim that in order to be “successful” they need the unchecked power to hire and fire whoever they choose, regardless of qualifications and experience and without any due process. This is a recipe for City Hall-style patronage and going back to the days when teachers (and principals) worked at the pleasure of ward politicians. It is also a recipe for principals getting rid of teachers who may be the wrong color or political persuasion. It’s interesting to note here that principals already have lots of authority over faculty hiring and that black and Latino teachers have been the victims of these kinds of hiring practices. Today, just 19 % of the teaching force in Chicago is African American, down from 45 % in 1995.

This is what happens when you make the school system a wing of City Hall, weaken collective bargaining, take power away from popularly-elected school boards and Local School Councils, and dismantle public space and public decision making.

This strike really represents a last stand for teachers and all public employees against moves by Tea Party governors and their Democratic Party counterparts in urban districts like Chicago, Cleveland, and Detroit, to eliminate teachers collective bargaining rights altogether. This was the original idea behind SB7 which made it illegal for teachers in Chicago (nowhere else in the state) to bargain over anything except salary and benefits — two issues that could easily be reneged on after the contract was signed for budgetary reasons. Remember, the board agreed to a 4% raise in the last contract only to take it back once the contract was signed.

All this leaves Chicago’s teachers with only one option. Dig in and fight back with the only tactic left to them under SB7 — the power to withhold their labor and put their bodies on the line in defense of their profession and of democracy. What happens here in Chicago will ultimately determine the fate of teachers and public worker unions everywhere.

Emanuel’s children do not attend public schools. They are enrolled at an elite private school—the University of Chicago Lab School, where the tuition is said to be more than $20,000 a year. According to Mike Elk, the conditions at the school Emanuel’s children attend are far different from those one finds in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS).

Elk provided information about the U of C Lab School:

The Lab School has seven full-time art teachers to serve a student population of 1,700. By contrast, only 25% of Chicago’s “neighborhood elementary schools” have both a full-time art and music instructor. The Lab School has three different libraries, while 160 Chicago public elementary schools do not have a library.

“Physical education, world languages, libraries and the arts are not frills. They are an essential piece of a well-rounded education,” wrote University of Chicago Lab School Director David Magill on the school’s website in February 2009.

Magill also wrote the following in his Director’s Address to Returning Faculty in 2010:

I believe that the “business model” of improving education will fall on its own sword.

It is unfortunate that the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation developed primarily by politicians and enacted in 2002 morphed into what many refer to as a “business model” of improving education. Measuring outcomes through standardized testing and referring to those results as the evidence of learning and the bottom line is, in my opinion, misguided and, unfortunately, continues to be advocated under a new name and supported by the current administration.

In the past decade, there have been many critics of the educational policies promoted by the so-called corporate reformers. Only recently have some voices been taken seriously—in particular, the voice of educational historian Diane Ravitch. Her recent book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, provides a compelling argument to examine the data that tells us that reforms of the past ten years are not working and are actually degrading the intellectual potential of students. And this comes from one of the early architects of many of those reforms. This is a book worth reading, authored by a person who admits she was wrong yet is forceful when advocating for change. Listen to this from Ms. Ravitch:

“We must honor those teachers who awaken in their students a passionate interest in history, science, the arts, literature, and foreign language. Such teachers (if acting today under NCLB) would be stifled not only by the data mania of their supervisors, but by the jargon, the indifference to classical literature, and the hostility to their manner of teaching that now prevails in our schools.

“Without a comprehensive liberal arts education, our students will not be prepared for the responsibilities of citizenship in a democracy, nor will they be equipped to make decisions based on knowledge, thoughtful debate, and reason. . . . Not everything that matters can be quantified. What is tested may ultimately be less important than what is untested, such as a student’s ability to seek alternative explanations, to raise questions, to pursue knowledge on his own, and to think differently.”

And to that, I say AMEN and thank you, Ms. Ravitch, for seeing the light and for cracking the armor of the “business model.” Because of her and others like her, I believe this disturbing chapter in American education history is coming to a close.

I must admit that I am not as hopeful as Mr. Magill is that this chapter in American education history is coming to an end. What I hope is that the teachers’ strike in Chicago will awaken many Americans to what has been happening to our public schools over the past decade in the name of school reform…to how high stakes testing of students has perverted the educational process in this country…to the narrowing of the curriculum because everything is focused on prepping children for tests and not on helping them to become critical thinkers and doing what is best for each individual child…to the elimination of art and music teachers and school librarians.

Matt Farmer, the speaker in the first video that I posted, is a lawyer, musician, local school council member, and a CPS parent. He stands with and supports the striking teachers. He wrote the following in an article for the Huffington Post titled Teachers Don’t Like Bullies last May:

Teachers and their union representatives are simply gearing up — outside of the classroom, mind you — to fight for their professional lives this summer, and I’m glad they’re finally getting engaged.

I say that both as a longtime CPS parent and as a local school council member.  I talk to a lot of teachers around the city, and from Rogers Park to Gage Park they’re angry.

They’re tired of being made scapegoats for the devastating effects of the generational urban poverty that Emanuel and his aides would rather not talk about. They’re tired of having their students used as over-tested lab rats by an ever-changing cast of out-of-touch, out-of-town “reformers” who specialize in “public education by press release.” But what really angers the teachers I’ve talked to is the absolute lack of respect that this mayor and his hand-picked team have shown them during the last year.

In fact, I’d fear for my fourth-grade daughter’s next eight years in the CPS system if her teachers were not mentally and emotionally invested in the ongoing contract negotiation process.

Make no mistake — I want my kid in class next September. But if her teachers ultimately vote to go on strike, my daughter will know why.

She may not have a deep understanding of tenure issues, pension contributions, or “step and lane” increases, but (like most kids I know) she has a solid grasp on the basic concept of “fairness.”

Even a 10-year-old can understand that if 75 percent of the CTU’s membership ultimately concludes that our charter-school-loving mayor is trying to give them (as Emanuel might say) “the shaft,” then those teachers need to stand up and fight, not only for their individual jobs and their profession, but also for the well-being of the kids in the classrooms in which they now teach.

The deck is undeniably stacked against the teachers in their current negotiations with the Board of Education, and a strike vote is the only leverage teachers have to secure a fair contract.

You want to call mock strike votes a scare tactic, be my guest.  But don’t forget to call out Emanuel and his high-priced media machine the next time the mayor starts talking about putting 55 kids in a classroom, or complaining that CPS teachers enriched themselves for years while “cheating our children,” whom, he claims, teachers effectively “left on the side of the road.”

It’s easy, I suppose, to make a habit of dumping on CPS teachers if the only parent-teacher conferences you ever have to attend take place at a private school.

Chicago Public Teachers Stage Historic Strike in Clash with the Mayor on Education Reforms

Striking Teachers, Parents Join Forces to Oppose “Corporate” Education Model in Chicago

Chicago Teachers Strike Could Portend Referendum on Obama Admin’s Education Reform Approach

CTU President Karen GJ Lewis Speech May 23 Rally

Addendum: The Worst Teacher in Chicago (This is a true story.)

CHICAGO. In a poorer city school, one English teacher–I won’t use her name–who’d been cemented into the school system for over a decade, wouldn’t do a damn thing to lift test scores, yet had an annual salary level of close to $70,000 a year. Under Chicago’s new rules holding teachers accountable and allowing charter schools to compete, this seniority-bloated teacher was finally fired by the principal.

In a nearby neighborhood, a charter school, part of the city system, had complete freedom to hire. No teachers’ union interference. The charter school was able to bring in an innovative English teacher with advanced degrees and a national reputation in her field – for $29,000 a year less than was paid to the fired teacher.

You’ve guessed by now: It’s the same teacher.

It’s Back to School Time! Time for the editorialists and the Tea Party and Barack Obama’s Education Secretary Arne Duncan to rip into the people who dare teach in public schools.

And in Arne’s old stomping grounds, Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel is stomping on the teachers, pushing them into the street.

Let’s stop kidding ourselves. This is what Mitt Romney and Obama and Arne Duncan and Paul Ryan have in mind when they promote charter schools and the right to fire teachers with tenure: slash teachers’ salaries, bust their unions.

NOTE: Chicago Teachers Strike May Near End As Union Releases Deal (Huffington Post)

SOURCES

Autocrat Rahm draws a line in the sand on test-based evaluation (SmallTalk)

Director’s Address to Returning Faculty 2010 (University of Chicago Lab School)

Director of Private School Where Rahm Sends His Kids Opposes Using Testing for Teacher Evaluations (In These Times)

Teachers Don’t Like Bullies (Huffington Post)

The Worst Teacher in Chicago (Chicago Tribune)

153 thoughts on “Chicago Teachers Take a Stand Against Mayor Rahm Emanuel and His Contract Demands”

  1. Eeyore,
    Is reading on the almighty test??? The administration of any school district is the place to start to ask why kids who can’t read keep getting passed ahead. The parents do not want their child held back for any reason and the administrations across the country have a tendency to allow it.
    Elaine,
    Great article detailing the contract terms.

  2. A Look at the Deal that Ended the Chicago Teachers Strike
    By David Dayen
    http://news.firedoglake.com/2012/09/19/a-look-at-the-deal-that-ended-the-chicago-teachers-strike/

    Dylan Matthews intends to wrap up the Chicago teachers strike with an assessment of what both sides got out of the contract “in one post.” Here’s a list, in one post, of some of the things he left out, culled mostly from what the CTU informed its members was in the contract.

    • Arts, music and physical education teachers: Over 600 additional teachers will be hired permanently under the agreement. The city didn’t want to increase staff at all. In addition, more support staff may come in the form of additional social workers and nurses, contingent on state revenue.

    • Special Ed. The issue of special education teachers having oversized workloads moves to a committee tasked with finding “solutions,” which probably doesn’t mean too much but you never know. But there is $500,000 per year toward hiring additional special education professionals to reduce caseload.

    • Health care. This was, as I understand it, the big sticking point in the compensation negotiations. The city wanted to increase premiums on teachers by 40% and increase co-pays for ER visits. The contract instead freezes health care premiums and co-pays at current rates. That’s a huge win for the union.

    • Office supplies: Teachers used to have to purchase their own office supplies and print out their own materials. They will now have access to those supplies. They will get $250 in supply money, more than the $100 the city offered. And textbook will be provided to students on Day 1. Before, students had to wait weeks for textbooks, delaying valuable learning time.

    You can go here for the rest. On major issues like teacher evaluations and class size and layoffs and recall and length of school day (particularly the latter, with the changes in personnel and the addition of a study hall), the deal improved over the initial offer from the city. The union claims that the deal on evaluations and the role of high-stakes testing is the minimum required by state law. I would have liked to have seen more on classroom facilities – there will be a committee to study providing air conditioning to all classrooms, which isn’t a lot.

    Overall, I think the union made out fairly well on this contract on a series of issues, but more important, they generated a national discussion about education policy that has the ability to last, and beat back some of a determined effort to radically overhaul city policies along the lines of the corporate-backed reform movement.

    *****

    Tentative Contract Agreement
    http://www.ctunet.com/for-members/strike-central/text/Board-Proposals-Summary-Comparison.pdf

  3. Elaine,

    Yes, the politicians are guilty! Absolutely yes. I hold both Daleys accountable for the failure to reform the school system. I will give them one TINY escape clause. R2010 was an experiment that needed trying, sorta like ACA which is going to need a lot of tweaking before we get it right. We are talking across each other. I HATE CHARTER SCHOOLS! Hard to find numbers, but maybe some are working. I guess they can stay. But I think the privatization of ANY government program IS A TERRIBLE MISTAKE be it prisons, parking meters, post offices, and most of all our schools. I DO NOT BLAME TEACHERS for all the poverty, crime, hunger, violence, and kids who have lost hope. I live here. I see those problems EVERY SINGLE DAY. My grandchildren are in a racially mixed, economically mixed school – not a magnet school, not a STEM school, not a Gold Coast school. I have spent hours in the school playgrounds while my kids play. I have some, however small, understanding of the issues but cannot approach you on the professional side.

    I hold the teachers accountable for TWO things – to make an ENORMOUS effort to get kids to grade level in reading and math before they enter high school. They definitely won’t be able to get all the kids there. But, Elaine, 90%!, 90% don’t make it! AND TO NEVER HEAR THAT MENTIONED IN ALL THE HOURS OF NPR REPORTING AND TEACHER’S INTERVIEWS OVER THE LAST TWO WEEKS IS CRIMINAL. (Sorry for the shouting, but after reading the following NYT article with more info on the pensions, I’m plenty mad.) I heard about air conditioners, music teachers, art teachers, homeless students, charter schools, fired teachers, teacher evaluations, re-hiring teachers, children being their only concern, it isn’t a salary issue, children moving during the school year. I heard hours of reporting and not once where those reading and math results mentioned. Oh, I would love to have music, and art, and social studies, and maps, and nurses, and social workers and gym in every single school. I WILL GIVE IT ALL UP TO HAVE THE KIDS BE ABLE TO READ AND DO MATH. I don’t care if teachers are tested, assessed, all have lifetime tenure, teach by rote, teach to the test, whatever. Those kids have got to get to eighth grade level in reading and math.

    As far as the composition of school board, I’m at a loss. We elect judges here and I have NO idea who should be retained or fired. Sandra Day says they should be elected but now with Citizen’s United….. Is Penny Pritzker worse? I don’t know. But I fear only crazy Republican fundies will run for the board, and that WILL be worse.

    But back to the reading and math thing….My grandchildren have no other option other than public schools. Elaine, if your grandchildren were in the same circumstances, what would be your position? (No fair opting for home schooling.)

    Here is the NYT article that just blew me away…looks like NOBODY is funding the pensions! A nation of idiots…

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/business/teachers-pension-a-big-issue-for-chicago.html?pagewanted=2&google_editors_picks=true&_r=0

    AND NOT ONE SINGLE WORD ON THIS WAS DISCUSSED THE PAST COUPLE OF WEEKS. Disgusting.

    Maybe it’s just me, after all I am Eeyore, but it seems that the teachers and the city may be dismantling the schools with this contract. The teachers got raises and some job protection, the city got longer days and will be able to close more schools and lose more teachers, and the kids will still not be able to read.

    Everybody happy?

  4. Eeyore,

    One has to question why the Renaissance 2010 school reform program in Chicago that was implemented in 2004 by Mayor Daily didn’t address the issues of shorter schools days for elementary students and the shorter school year, lack of libraries and arts programs, large class sizes. Instead the reform movement put tons of school money into establishing charters and turnaround schools. I read somewhere that the Gates foundation gave $90,000,000 to that program.

    I’m not trying to say that teachers may not be at fault for some of the failings of the Chicago Public Schools. I do have to wonder why no one blames the politicians or questions the failings of Renaissance 2010 to help improve the schools. Do you think that teachers should get all the blame? Do you think the mayor of Chicago should appoint his cronies to the school board–or do you think members of the board should be elected?

    In Massachusetts, the length of the school year is mandated by the state–not by individual school systems.

    *****

    “Unlike most school systems, CPS is headed by a chief executive officer rather than a superintendent. The position was redefined after Mayor Richard M. Daley convinced the Illinois General Assembly to place CPS under the mayor’s control. Illinois school districts are generally governed by locally-elected school boards, where each district board hires a superintendent, who in turn hires administrators such as principals, who then must be approved by the school board. In contrast, the CPS board is appointed by the mayor, essentially making the entire system completely accountable to the mayor…”

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Public_Schools

  5. Elaine,

    More from The Beast on the additional school hours…..

    And, when it comes to money, teachers will get what some are calculating as a 16 percent or 17 percent pay hike over the potential four years of the deal (three years for sure with the option of a fourth by mutual agreement). In a recession, teachers have done well. In addition, at least 500 of the union’s previously laid-off members have already returned to assist with a gaping anomaly: the deal lengthens the school day by about an hour and 15 minutes at elementary schools; no teacher will teach anything beyond a few minutes more.

    That curiosity prompted a need for more bodies to deal with what, in my own
    child’s school, amounts to only 20 more minutes of actual instruction (the rest is largely in the assuredly beneficial lengthening of recess and luncheon). Indeed, it remains publicly unclear how much more instruction there is systemwide, even if one applauds Emanuel for dealing decisively with what had been the shortest day and year of any major American school system.

  9. Elaine,

    I live in a ordinary neighborhood as do my kids and grandchildren. All three generations have always attended, and will always, attend public schools. I do not,at all, dispute the terrible poverty and neglect that exists in our schools and the monumental job a teacher has to educate most of these children. I do not have an argument with your notes posted at 7:58 and 9:08. I would offer that the “shortest school day and the shortest school year” (which the new contract ends) does seem at odds with the unions professed primary concern for the kids. The lengthening of that day will now be composed of mostly recess and a longer lunch. I recognize those are good things too, but it does not exactly attack those reading and math skills.

    It is still hard as hell to get the details on the contract. There was an “end of strike” 20 minute segment on our NPR station this morning without word one on the financial terms. Why, oh why, does nobody want to talk about it? The damn pension debacle (I blame lack of government funding and ’08 economic collapse) is going to kill the unions. I just learned (see following exerpt from Daily Beast) that Chicago has been suspending contributions to the pension. WTF! We are a nation of idiots! Anyway, you will find the following interesting. Seems the financial terms will mean the loss of more teachers and closing more schools. The new contract calls for a 17.6% increase over 3 years + optional 4th year. This does not include the automatic “step” increases and “lane” increases.

    Daily Beast exerpt:
    Emanuel pointedly identified the system’s problems but has not brought its major wolves at the door to heel. The teachers, who now average about $74,000 a year and cost the system in the vicinity of $100,000 with benefits, will continue to ravenously suck up most of the system’s cash.
    Laurence Msall, president of the Civic Federation, a tax and government research group, said late Tuesday that it was too early to fully analyze the contract’s details but it seemed very difficult for the city to accommodate the pay hikes. Significant reductions in schools and teachers will be necessary.
    The current budget, he noted, provided for only a 2 percent raise, with no hikes for years of service and advanced degrees. That meant draining all the reserves in the school system’s general fund and some added restricted reserves totaling $431.8 million to close a deficit of $665 million. In doing that, the system failed to heed its own fund-balance policy.
    The system has already projected a $1 billion deficit for the 2014 fiscal year due to its structural deficit and the end of a three-year partial suspension of contributions to the teachers’ pension fund. Those required contributions will grow by at least $338 million, Msall said, to $534 million in fiscal 2014, from $196 million in fiscal 2013.
    The system’s long-term debt has risen by 28.3 percent, or $1.1 billion, in the last five years, largely due to its capital construction program.
    “In summary,” he said, “the wage increases and other enhancements will likely require very dramatic cuts in personnel.”
    It’s something that Emanuel, even as he turned emotional Tuesday, knows is unavoidable: to save itself, the system must shrink dramatically.

  10. Eeyore,

    Here’s some information I found on CPS, the school day, and test scores:

    Going To School In Chicago: High Poverty, Short School Days, Crumbling Buildings
    By Pat Garofalo, Travis Waldron and Jeff Spross
    Sep 11, 2012
    http://thinkprogress.org/education/2012/09/11/828761/chicago-school-experience/

    Excerpt:
    Chicago’s public school teachers were on strike for a second day today, continuing a standoff with the city’s mayor, Rahm Emanuel (D). Negotiations stalled over a handful of issues, including teacher evaluations, the funding of charter schools, and class sizes.

    Meanwhile, some 350,000 students are left missing time in the classroom. And a look at the statistics regarding the performance of Chicago students — and the facilities in which they try to learn — shows just how critical it is that the city both invest in new resources and get its teachers back on the job as quickly as possible. Here are the key facts about the conditions students in Chicago currently face:

    – 33 percent of Chicago’s children were in poverty in 2010, versus a rate of 20 percent for Illinois children as a whole; 80 percent of Chicago students qualify for free or reduced lunches. Research suggests the academic achievement gap between children of differing income levels has now far outpaced the gap between back and white children, and income disparities can account for 40 percent or more of the variation in test scores.

    – Chicago has a shorter school day than the national average for elementary schools, at five hours forty-five minutes (though secondary school days in the district are slightly longer than the national average). Many Chicago students are in class for 10 days less than the national average of 180 days. Emanuel and the teachers negotiated a deal to extend hours and hire hundreds of new teachers to deal with the increased workload. Studies have shown that expanded learning time can provide a significant boost for students, particularly those most likely to fall behind in the classroom.

    – Chicago scores lower than other big cities on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests, with just 20 percent of students performing at “proficient” levels in 2011. 60 percent of students performed at “basic” levels. However, the district has made big strides to improve student achievement since 2003.

    –According to CTU, 42 percent of Chicago’s elementary schools lack full funding for arts and music teachers, even though the Dept. of Education called arts and music education “particularly beneficial for students from economically disadvantaged circumstances and those who are at risk of not succeeding in school.” Chicago schools also lack adequate funding and equipment for physical education — only 13 percent of middle school principals reported having enough physical education resources for their students in 2011.

  11. Eeyore,

    I don’t have any idea how Chicago Public School students’ scores compare to the scores of students in other large cities on the same tests, When comparing reading and math scores, one should factor in the poverty level, class sizes, school resources, etc.

    Massachusetts MCAS scores are published in the newspapers. It is usually easy to figure out which are the wealthy communities and which are the poor ones by the test scores.

  14. Chicago Teachers Strike A Push-Back To Education Reform
    Peter S. Goodman
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/15/chicago-teachers-strike_n_1886142.html

    Excerpt:
    CHICAGO –- Two weeks before teachers here went on strike, shutting down the third largest school system in the nation, a teenage boy was shot and killed in a rough neighborhood on the South Side.

    At Morrill Math and Science Specialty School, the shooting prompted teacher Monique Redeaux to scrap her regular social studies lesson, a unit on Christopher Columbus. Instead, she guided her seventh- and eighth-grade students through a discussion on violence and inner-city poverty.

    The boy who was killed had been enrolled at the school the previous spring, and several of Redeaux’s students were with him when he was shot. Some felt vulnerable to potential retaliation amid talk that the shooting was perhaps gang-related. Even those who had not known him were shaken and disturbed.

    At Morrill — a sturdy brick building in an area littered with boarded-up homes — nearly all of the roughly 800 students are black or Latino, and 98 percent qualify for free or reduced lunches, meaning they are poor or close to it. Every day, Morrill teachers compete with hunger, homelessness and trauma for the attention of their students. Kids show up having seen relatives slain or hauled off to jail. They sidestep syringes on cracked sidewalks, and they do their homework inside cramped houses with drafty walls, leaky roofs and the sound of gunshots crackling outside.

    For students, the death of a former classmate was at once shocking and commonplace. “These are the issues that we’re dealing with,” Redeaux says.

    She tells me this by way of explaining her opposition to the teacher evaluation system the Chicago Public Schools system has been moving to impose on teachers, one of the most contentious issues dividing the administration from the union. In essence, the job security of teachers will rest upon their ability to show gains in student achievement on standardized tests. Those who fail to deliver risk losing their jobs.

    Like most, if not all, of the teachers manning picket lines here in the past week, Redeaux contends this system is unfair and governed by principles that only make sense so long as you have never been inside her classroom to witness the challenges of trying to educate young people in a crime-ridden, poverty-stricken inner city neighborhood.

    She is no fan of standardized tests, she says, because they undermine the sort of creativity a teacher in her situation requires: one built on understanding that the Monday after a former classmate has been murdered, students might be disinclined to think about European explorers setting out for bounty in the New World half a millennium ago.

    The evaluation system school district authorities want to put in place here is premised on the assumption that progress on standardized tests reflects quality instruction, while poor test scores reflect unsatisfactory work by teachers. For Redeaux, this assumption collides with reality. For one thing, research has found the methods used to evaluate teachers are typically flawed. But more importantly, she maintains, her students are confronting challenges far beyond the imperative to memorize historical dates, and that constrains their performance, rendering standardized tests a bogus measure of their achievement.

    “They’re dealing with issues like, ‘I’m hungry’, or ‘I don’t necessarily know where I’m going after school’,” she says. “There are things that happen in this neighborhood all the time. And you have to take time to discuss those things. Standardized tests don’t account for any of that. They tell us about the zip codes people live in, and how much poverty there is. To hold us accountable for all of those other factors is unfair. To think that the things that are happening in the streets are not going to spill over into the classroom is very callous and unreasonable.”

  15. Elaine,

    Thanks for the link to the Sun Times article. It does a good job of reporting. I looked for this kind of info several weeks ago and the numbers are all over the map – especially depending upon the source – teachers or CPS. I would remind you that I did stipulate “large urban systems”. The article was helpful in saying why that is important. I knew there would be no comparison to a district like Winnetka or Kennilworth or many smaller towns throughout the state. The article also points out the advantages of the district that is top ranked; I think it was Burbank. Didn’t they mention they might have only one or two schools in the entire district? I would suppose that there are enormous differences in running the two systems; just as there must be in governing Burbank vs Chicago. But I am quite willing to accept those salaries as being accurate (although it would have been helpful if they had reported the average salary) My source (that I cannot locate) said that raises happened pretty fast in Chicago.

    I’m pretty sure we are in complete agreement about charter schools, public education, Rahm, Michelle Rhee, ALEC, demonizing teachers and what an enriched education looks like. I think the reading and math scores are unacceptable. During the strike, I’ve not seen or heard any discussion of what the teachers or Karen Lewis think of those scores. Since I have “skin in the game”, I find that very disturbing and fear the consequences for my grandchildren. I’ve always supported teachers unions. Not so much today.

  16. teacher evaluations have turned ugly in the state where I live. too much information to keep track of. who thinks this stuff up? either teachers work longer hours for no pay or students suffer.

    administrators and politicians are insane. how did Lincoln write the Gettysburg Address with no real formal education? Do we need 9 months of school per year? Are we teaching to the way humans learn? Is there any concern for principles and concepts rather than wrote memorization of facts?

  17. Elaine M. 1, September 18, 2012 at 3:48 pm

    Matt,

    “I’d dig in, too, if I were constantly being lectured by self-righteous crusaders whose knowledge of the inner-city schools crisis comes from a Hollywood movie.”

    Have you heard about the movie “Won’t Back Down” that is soon to be released?

    Weingarten: ‘Won’t Back Down’ union stereotypes worse than ‘Waiting for Superman’
    By Valerie Strauss
    8/28/12
    ===========
    Watched the clip that you attached. I refused to watch Brokeback Mountain.

    http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CCIQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.imdb.com%2Ftitle%2Ftt0388795%2F&ei=NNRYUK37Mufy0gH4qoHAAQ&usg=AFQjCNGeiVjmJz38qLqnR9Se7f146BfxpQ

    Too much hollywood. In the “real” Old West, the term cowboy wasn’t always complimentary.

    Wyatt Earp’s father was a lawyer. I’m an accountant.

  18. Matt,

    “I’d dig in, too, if I were constantly being lectured by self-righteous crusaders whose knowledge of the inner-city schools crisis comes from a Hollywood movie.”

    Have you heard about the movie “Won’t Back Down” that is soon to be released?

    Weingarten: ‘Won’t Back Down’ union stereotypes worse than ‘Waiting for Superman’
    By Valerie Strauss
    8/28/12
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/weingarten-wont-back-down-union-stereotypes-worse-than-waiting-for-superman/2012/08/28/c88857f2-f0c2-11e1-892d-bc92fee603a7_blog.html

    Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst organization is playing a big role in screening the not-yet-released, anti-union film “Won’t Back Down” at the Republican Convention in Tampa, complete with a guest discussion panel that features former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

    But Democrats shouldn’t feel left out; Rhee’s group is doing the same thing at the upcoming Democratic convention as well.

    The film, starring Viola Davis and Maggie Gyllenhaal and set for release on Sept. 28, tells the story of two mothers who work together to transform their children’s failing urban school. It sounds benign, but some people who have seen it are concerned that the film perpetuates myths about public education and leaves out important realities about school reform. Here’s one post from a school activist and parent who saw the film. Below you will find another, from Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.

    Teachers unions, and Weingarten herself, have been demonized by some school reformers who have turned the discussion of failing schools into an assault on unions and veteran teachers. What these reformers don’t mention is that we find the same problems in urban education in systems with unions and without unions. In fact, a review of student performance in states with and without teachers unions stated: “If anything, it seems that the presence of teacher contracts in a state has a positive effect on achievement.”

    Of course unions have in many cases been late in acknowledging the need for reform in teacher evaluations and other issues. But their approach is changing; Weingarten herself just called for a new brand of unionism that helps not only members but also the communities in which they live. She has said repeatedly that unions need to change

    Here’s Weingarten’s take on the movie, which she recently watched. She says that the “blatant stereotypes and caricatures” of unions in “Won’t Back Down” are “even worse than those in “Waiting for ‘Superman,’ ” a tendentious documentary that smeared Weingarten herself. Her full commentary follows:

    By Randi Weingarten

    One can’t help but be moved by the characters and story portrayed in Walden Media’s film “Won’t Back Down.” The film is successful in driving home the sense of urgency parents and educators feel to do everything they can to provide the best possible education for their children. That is abundantly evident in this film — it’s what I hear as I visit schools across the country, and it’s what I heard when I sat down with parent and community groups from across the country last week.

    We share that pain and frustration. And we firmly believe that every public school should be a school where every parent would want to send his or her child and where every teacher would want to teach. Unfortunately, using the most blatant stereotypes and caricatures I have ever seen — even worse than those in “Waiting for ‘Superman’ ” — the film affixes blame on the wrong culprit: America’s teachers unions.

    As a former public school teacher and president of the American Federation of Teachers, I have spent almost my entire public career working on behalf of children and teachers. After viewing this film, I can tell you that if I had taught at that school, and if I were a member of that union, I would have joined the characters played by Maggie Gyllenhaal and Viola Davis. I would have led the effort to mobilize parents and teachers to turn around that school myself.

    I don’t recognize the teachers portrayed in this movie, and I don’t recognize that union. The teachers I know are women and men who have devoted their lives to helping children learn and grow and reach their full potential. These women and men come in early, stay late to mentor and tutor students, coach sports teams, advise the student council, work through lunch breaks, purchase school supplies using money from their own pockets, and spend their evenings planning lessons, grading papers and talking to parents. Yet their efforts, and the care with which they approach their work, are nowhere to be seen in this film.

    This movie could have been a great opportunity to bring parents and teachers together to launch a national movement focused on real teacher and parent collaboration to help all children. Instead, this fictional portrayal, which makes the unions the culprit for all of the problems facing our schools, is divisive and demoralizes millions of great teachers. America’s teachers are already being asked to do more with less — budgets have been slashed, 300,000 teachers have been laid off since the start of the recession, class sizes have spiked, and more and more children are falling into poverty. And teachers are being demonized, marginalized and shamed by politicians and elites who want to undermine and dismiss their reform efforts.

    Parent engagement is essential to ensuring children thrive in the classroom. The power of partnerships between parents, teachers and the community is at the heart of school change.

    But instead of focusing on real parent empowerment and how communities can come together to help all children succeed, “Won’t Back Down” offers parents a false choice — you’re either for students or for teachers, you can either live with a low-performing school or take dramatic, disruptive action to shut a school down.

    Real parent engagement means establishing meaningful ways for parents to be real partners in their children’s public education from the beginning — not just when a school is failing. The goal should be to never let a school get to that point. Parents are actually calling for real investments in their neighborhood public schools and that should be our collective focus.

    Across the country, AFT teachers and leaders are partnering with parents and community groups to create real parent engagement that strengthens schools and neighborhoods:

    * In the South Bronx, the Community Collaborative to Improve District 9 Schools (CC9) partnered with the United Federation of Teachers on a school reform agenda focused on teacher quality, school leadership and family-school partnerships. Through the partnership, teachers participated in neighborhood walks to visit with the families of their students. And they established the lead teacher program, which allowed experienced teachers to provide mentoring and guidance to newer and struggling teachers. CC9 members were involved in hiring the lead teachers.

    * In Minnesota, AFT affiliates negotiated the Parent-Teacher Home Visit Project into their contract, training teachers to visit their students’ families to establish bonds with parents outside of the school environment and help parents support their children’s learning. And the AFT’s affiliate in St. Paul surveyed parents to get their concerns and thoughts about their schools, and then incorporated the results into their contract negotiations.

    * In Connecticut, the AFT helped create a law that provided an avenue for parents to become involved in their children’s schools. As a result, parent councils are being formed all over the state, which will lead to better schools.

    * In Cincinnati and elsewhere, AFT locals are working to mitigate the impact that poverty and other out-of-school factors have on students by offering wraparound services, including health and mental health services, meal programs, tutoring, counseling and after-school programs. Many of the services offered in Cincinnati schools were based on survey responses from neighborhood parents on what was needed for children and the neighborhood.

    * The AFT is leading a coalition of businesses, community groups, parents and educators to completely transform the educational and economic opportunities available to children and families in McDowell County, W.Va.

    * The AFT worked with a British corporation to develop a digital filing cabinet of lesson plans and resources for teachers called Share My Lesson. It’s an online community for teachers to share their best ideas and collaborate with one another.

    Sadly, this film chooses to ignore these success stories and the many others happening across the county. Instead, it promotes the deceptively named “parent trigger” laws, which are marketed as parent-empowerment laws. Actually, these laws deny both parents and teachers a voice in improving schools and helping children, by using parents to give control of our schools over to for-profit corporations. Parent trigger laws are being pushed by organizations like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which Walden Media owner and oil billionaire Philip Anschutz helps fund.

    The film advances a policy that in reality limits teacher and parent voices, the very voices that are celebrated and empowered in the movie.

    In real life, there have been only two attempts to pull the parent trigger: One never made it to the approval process, but both were incredibly divisive and disruptive to the communities and schools involved. In Adelanto, Calif., where the trigger petition is still in progress, many parents report feeling deceived by the for-profit charter-backed organizers who came in to gather petitions. They actually sued to take their signatures back when they found out they were being used to give their school away to a charter company.

    That’s one reason why a Florida parent coalition representing half a million parents joined with the Florida PTA and others to oppose parent trigger legislation when the bill was proposed there last year. They knew from the California parents’ experience that the law would put all the power in the hands of for-profit companies, not public school parents.

    It must be pointed out that the film contains several egregiously misleading scenes with the sole purpose of undermining people’s confidence in public education, public school teachers and teachers unions.

    The film advances the “bad teacher” narrative through the character of Deborah. This teacher barks at students from her desk, uses her cell phone in class, refuses to let students use the restroom, puts children in a closet as a disciplinary measure and resists all reform efforts, yet miraculously remains employed at the school. She tells parents that she refuses to stay after school hours to help her students, and Davis’ character in the film shockingly asserts that union rules prohibit teachers from working past 3 p.m., an egregious lie. There is not a single contract or local union that would ever prevent a teacher from remaining after school to help a student or complete the other work necessary to be an effective teacher.

    Let’s be clear — this teacher, or any teacher who engages in such deplorable actions against children, should be fired for this outrageous behavior.

    The film features the union leader sharing a quote that anti-public education ideologues and right-wing politicians often attribute to former AFT president Albert Shanker: “When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of schoolchildren.” Despite the frequency with which corporate interests claim Shanker said this, a review of news reports, speeches, and interviews with Shanker’s aides and biographers, and even an analysis by the Washington Post, failed to find any person or report that could corroborate the statement.

    This is not the only time the movie resorts to falsehoods and anti-union stereotypes. Viola Davis’ character tells other teachers that the new school they create cannot be unionized because the union would restrict their ability to implement reforms that help kids. This is a false — unions are democratic organizations made up of individual teachers, and collective bargaining is the process by which individual teachers come together to implement reforms. Many examples demonstrate that far from blocking reform efforts, unions fight for the things children need to thrive in school, like safe classrooms and smaller class sizes. And unions empower educators to win the tools and voice they need to help children.

    Half of all teachers in the United States do not have collective bargaining contracts. The reality is that the states with the highest union density — states such as Maryland, Massachusetts and Minnesota — are the states that lead the nation in student achievement. And a recent Education Sector survey of teachers made clear that America’s teachers — both union and nonunion — recognize the importance of unions in strengthening the teaching profession and our public schools.

    Though deeply unfortunate, it is also unsurprising that “Won’t Back Down” is such a false and misleading depiction of teachers and unions. Anschutz’s business partner is on record saying that he intends to use Walden Media (which also produced the equally misleading “Waiting for ‘Superman’”), as way for him to promote their values.

    A look at the organizations in which Anschutz invests makes those values crystal clear. He has funded 20 organizations, including ALEC, Americans for Prosperity and the National Right to Work Legal Defense and Education Foundation. All of these groups operate against the public interest in favor of corporate interests, and all of them actively oppose collective bargaining rights and other benefits for workers. Anschutz has also invested millions in anti-gay and extreme religious-right organizations such as the Promise Keepers, whose founder declared that “homosexuality is an abomination against almighty God,” and organizations affiliated with Focus on the Family.

    The last thing that the country and the debate over public education reform needs is another movie that maligns teachers, caricatures teachers unions and misleads the American public about what is happening in public education today. Children deserve great schools because that’s how we build great communities. And real public education reform comes from teachers, parents and communities working together to help all kids thrive.

  19. Eeyore,

    I think linking salaries/raises and evaluations to the scores of high stakes tests is not a good idea. That would narrow the curriculum even more as teachers would feel great pressure to spend more class time prepping kids for tests in order to get a raise or not get fired. What teachers would want to have the neediest students in their classes?

  20. Eeyore,

    Evidently, the teachers in Chicago aren’t the highest paid in the state.

    Top-paid teachers: Blue-collar suburbs offer blue-chip pay
    By ROSALIND ROSSI AND ART GOLAB Staff Reporters
    August 7, 2012 (Update 9/9/12)
    http://www.suntimes.com/14298715-460/blue-collar-suburbs-offer-blue-chip-teacher-pay.html

    If you want to take home Illinois’ top dollar in teacher pay over time, don’t head to Chicago, where beginning salaries start out strong but fade in the stretch.

    Don’t even head to tony Winnetka or Lincolnshire.

    Head straight to the near southwest suburbs. Blue-collar Burbank. Working-class Summit. Middle-class Oak Lawn.

    A pocket of suburbs southwest of Chicago — some of them kissing the city’s border — have a blue-chip salary schedule that rewards starting teachers as well as the most veteran, highly credentialed ones with some of the steepest teacher pay in the state. Their beginning and ending teacher salaries are among the top 15 in Illinois.

    The compensation surpasses even what is paid in Winnetka and Lincolnshire, where bottom and top scales are nothing to weep about, coming in among the top 25 in the state.

    But the story is quite different in Chicago, which starts out strong for beginning teachers but falls over the long haul — a “front loading” phenomenon one expert said risks turning Chicago into a “farm system” for districts that pay better long term.

    A starting Chicago Public School teacher with a bachelor’s degree pulled down a salary that ranked No. 16 statewide this past school year, at $50,577. Not bad. A rookie with a master’s: No. 30. But top salary for a veteran with a master’s: a drop to No. 140. And the top amount a Chicago teacher can earn: $95,887, a further tumble to No. 167 statewide.

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