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)
Eeyore,
I wasn’t being condescending. I was speaking from my experience. I don’t know what Citizens United has to do with the election/appointment of local school board members. Maybe you can explain that to me.
I don’t recall expressing an opinion about the election of judges.
*****
“The board may reject a teacher’s plan. But the teacher’s will have done their job by forcing a serious and LOUD discussion about the issue.”
No one has been listening to teachers. Teachers have been cast as the ones responsible for all that is wrong with the schools that are failing in this country. In fact, many would have you believe that all schools in this country need to be reformed–when that is so far from the truth.
Elaine,
I did get your point. There is nothing wrong with your writing skills. I’m probably a little cranky now so I will kvetch that your last paragraph is a little condescending. I understand about power. I’ve read Robert Caro. I’ve lived under two Daleys. I’ve worked for a living. I’ve been an assistant and I’ve been a manager. I know administrators want to run the show and believe they know best. This is probably especially true in a public bureauracy
Teachers are NOT powerless. The last 10 days prove that. Karen Lewis did one hell of a job in managing that strike. I’d like her to do the same thing with a plan to boost the reading and math scores. Then she would have earned my full respect. It llooks as if they plan on having a lot of leverage in three years time and they take the three year contract which expires just as the mayor is running for re-election.
The board may reject a teacher’s plan. But the teacher’s will have done their job by forcing a serious and LOUD discussion about the issue. If they do that the lousy scores are owned by the board from then on. It’s not quite the same as the Ryan Budget deal, but I’m sure you understand the politics.
What’s to be privy too? I was interested in your opinion. Especially about the election of school boards in light of Citizen’s United and the ignorance of the electorate. You seemed to have a strong opinion and the election of judges (and now a school board) is a concern of mine. And I am pretty angry that neither CTU or CPS is talking about the pension bomb. It seems huge to me and completely dishonest that neither side is open about it. But maybe I am nuts, because no one on the Turley blog voices any concern. And they are not usually a quiet bunch.
Eeyore,
I asked about the reading on the test because teachers don’t have time to concentrate on any subject not on the standardized tests. I do care about the pension issue, but you are not asking the right question. People should be asking how much the teachers pay into the pension plan and ho many years has the General Assembly underfunded the state share of the pension? Now some in the legislature want to correct their malfeasance on the backs of teachers. My wife’s pension is at risk because legislators paid other bills with funds that should have gone to the pension.
Eeyore,
I’m not a Chicago teacher. I can’t give you information that I am not privy to/do not know.
I don’t think you got my point. Teachers are not the ones who are in control of school reform. They are not the people who wield the power. They get mandates from administrators. Usually, the powers that be discount what teachers have to say about teaching, learning, and what is best for children.
Elaine,
This has been a very educational thread. I thought I had a pretty good handle on the state of public education but as I continued reading this thread I realized there was a great deal I didn’t know and, thanks to your efforts, a great deal I have now learned.
Elaine,
I completely agree about early childhood. When my kids were little I volunteered in the schools. Choir here.
So can I stop looking for documentation on the average teacher salary at $71K? I’ve wasted an hour of my life looking for what I hoped would satisfy you after that retired teacher’s blog wrote that inaccurate info and the BLS muddied the picture by giving you METROPOLITAN Chicago. CPS is strictly city limits.
We’ve talked a lot. Where are we? Will you be ok with the test once a year that can be taken in an hour? Don’t even have to take it every year if the kid is moving along. But I would like to get some further feedback on why no reading reform plan from the teachers other than “the administrators wouldn’t listen”. It may be impossible to raise scores in this city, but TO BE SILENT ON THE PROBLEM. That’s inexcusable.
And the omission of information on the pension? Any suggestion as to what that is all about? We’ll probably never know, but I feel better that I have noted it for all who have stayed with us ’til the end. And I hope Raf cares. Teachers should care, too. Because when it blows, people will be unbelievably angry. It will be WI to the tenth power.
What about the election of a school board? Any more thoughts on that after I mentioned Citizen’s United and general ignorance on the candidates?
Too tired for further conversation. Enjoyed it. Hope it’s not all so black and white now.
This has been an interesting thread to read as a reader that has no experience whatsoever with kids and schools. The pay and benefit angle caught my eye.
What struck me was the money a teacher with a PHD and a minimum of 16 teaching experience got. Man, if I had those quals I wouldn’t work for that money and have to deal with 28 kids for 7 hours a day for around 36 weeks. And be expected to civilize them, teach them stuff and help turn them into citizens. While worrying about peanut allergies. That benefits (including assault pay for days off and injuries!) comes to 100K is just not enough.
If a baby-sitter charged half minimum wage @, to look after 28 kids for 7 hours a day for 180 days they’d make 127K. One person/28 kids, w/maybe an aide. Day care and commercial baby-sitting has more regulation in terms of group size to caregiver, and way fewer expectations,
You just couldn’t pay me enough.
The average teacher salary is $71,236 in the Chicago Public School district, which includes elementary schools and high schools, according to the Illinois Interactive Report Card of Northern Illinois University.
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/chicago-public-school-teachers-highlight-perennial-debate-teacher/story?id=17202417#.UFpenaPYEUo
Eeyore,
I’m not anti-testing. I’m against high stakes tests–and spending valuable class time prepping children for tests. At the elementary school where I taught, we used to administer a reading test twice a year–once in January and then again in May. It was a test that kids could take in about an hour. It had a vocabulary section and a reading comprehension section. It usually provided a pretty good indication of what level kids were reading at. That said, we teachers could tell what level our students were reading at without the tests. Still, each child’s test scores provided a good written record for the child’s reading progress over the years.
Many children in poor communities come to school unprepared. They don’t know the alphabet, their numbers, colors, nursery rhymes, have never been read to, etc. One can’t expect a kindergarten teacher to provide those children with all the background they need to prepare them for reading readiness and for first grade. Many of those children will remain behind academically for most/all of their school years. It’s hard for them to catch up on what they’ve missed. It’s difficult for teachers to make up for all that they’ve missed. It’s a fact of life. That’s why I am a big proponent of early childhood education.
ABC News on average teachers salary…
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/chicago-public-school-teachers-highlight-perennial-debate-teacher/story?id=17202417
Elaine,
I’ve said I don’t care about the tests. Stop all the tests. All I want is kids reading (and math) at eighth grade level before entering high school. I bet you’d be happy with that, too. Now just tell me how you and I are going to honestly determine that those eighth graders are at grade level.
The better test scores from the suburbs don’t tell me anything that I haven’t known forever.. Wealthy schools fare better, much, much better. It tells me money is better. It tells me my kids should move to Wilmette. So should the entire west side. And the south side.
It tells me if all those kids from the west side had parents that had jobs that paid them $250K a year, they’d know how to read. Or at least 90% of them would know how to read. I need to make allowances for the usual social problems.
Elaine,
Sorry this is going to be piecemeal. I don’t know how to copy and paste from various sources in one commet. This is Ezra Klein…
What do the teachers get now?
Under the currently binding contract (pdf), 2010-11 annual teacher salaries ranged from $47,268 for teachers with bachelor’s degree with a year’s experience or less, to $88,680 for those with doctorates who have at least 16 years of experience. Those in schools with longer school years (42.6 weeks or 52 compared to 38.6) make commensurately more. All told, teachers in Chicago make an average of $74,839 a year. However, the school board rescinded the scheduled 4 percent pay increase set to take effect this past school year
Eeyore,
I am not a proponent of high stakes testing of children. I’ve stated that a number of times on this and other threads. I think the mania for such tests that has overtaken this country in recent times has perverted the educational process. I think the billions of dollars spent on such tests–as well as the class time–could be put to much better use. Wealthy communities usually fare well on such tests–poor cities rarely do. What does that tell you?
Elaine,
I agree that early education is probably the best way to help kids.
I’m going to have to check the salary claim. Some time ago I found info from the ctu and the city that had the average at $70K. “Metropolitan Area” could cause problems. CPS just covers Chicago. I’ll look.
I’ve read the CTU summary. I have questions. (may I shout?) NOTHING ON PENSIONS. Does anyone find that odd? Why don’t they want to talk about pensions? Could it be that teacher pensions are going to blow up Illinois and Chicago? Everyone knows that but no one wants to talk about it. I had been putting all the blame on the pension bomb on the government but the NYT article said it was more complicated.
No numbers given on the health care costs. Percentages hide costs. I want hard numbers.
No class size number given.
I’d like more on the weekly 75 minute professional development. My grandchildren had no school on many Friday In-Service Days. Is this weekly 75 minutes out of the school day?
CPS used to have superintendents. Don’t know why they went to CEO. My guess it was to make believe we had a new and better education model. Don’t know the makeup of the board. I would strongly support having teachers on the board.
Teachers with a plan may have been ignored. They have not been ignored the past month. They could have any forum, probably any national forum, they wanted. And I think they could have generated some interest sometime over the past 8 years. The interest may have quickly waned, but if they wanted, they have shown themselves as able pr people. Elaine, I know you know those scores are Critical. The best I can get from you is that the teachers aren’t “always blameless”. You’re wimping out on me! I’m terrible at analogies, but does your defense come close to the kid who killed his parents asking for mercy because he is an orphan?
I’m off to disprove that salary link…
Nal left the following link and excerpt on another thread:
The in box. The $74,000 lie.
September 12, 2012
http://preaprez.wordpress.com/2012/09/12/the-in-box-the-74000-lie/
To fact check this claim, I went to the best source available to the public: the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The BLS has data from May 2011 for the Chicago metropolitan area that breaks down the average salary for teachers. Across the profession, teachers in the area were earning an average salary of $56,720.
Eeyore,
My guess is that the teachers were ignored or not asked to be a part of the educational reform decision-making process. I saw the same thing happen when I was a teacher. Administrators would make educational decisions from on high and foist them upon teachers–whom they treated as their underlings…as people who didn’t know what was best for the students that they worked with every day. Of course, many of the “new educational ideas” that administrators forced teachers to implement weren’t the success stories that they had hoped for.
I think early childhood educational programs would have helped poor children in Chicago way more than Renaissance 2010.
Chicago does not have a superintendent of schools–it has a CEO! Arne Duncan isn’t even an educator. How many members of the school board in Chicago are or have been educators?
Elaine,
I’d like socialized medicine. Costs won’t come down until we have death panels. Medical advances manage to keep too many alive too long at too great a cost. I was grateful that any bill got passed.
Elaine,
P.S. I’m glad you’re not annoyed with our conversation and find it productive. Me too.
Raff,
Tendency to pass? I went to LeMoyne school 60 years ago. They passed failing kids then. They are still passing them. Maybe that can be the place to start. Of course, we had better figure out the consequences. There may be a lot of 12 year old kids in 3rd grade. But I bet Elaine has a lot more to offer on this problem. I don’t understand your question about reading being on the almighty test. I don’t care if they give any tests ever again. I just want kids to be at 8th grade level upon entering high school.
Elaine,
Your assessment of the origins of R2010 is probably quite correct. I was pretty naive about the dangers of privatization when it was first proposed and was desperately hoping for a solution for our kids. Why so little press about R2010? The Trib and Sun Times can barely call themselves newspapers anymore. How often do we link to their articles? I remember reading Royko in study hall. But why are we surprised? 60% of Americans think Obama is a Muslim.
You said:
“If you want to provide children with a better education, you should include the teachers who work with children every day in helping to design a better educational model that would really address the problems of failing schools”
Yes! So where were the teachers? Where is their educational model? This is not a sudden development. If R2010 was instituted in 2004, the problem had to have been “noticable” then. I would have a lot more confidence that the kids were their primary concern if they had been developing a program and clamoring for its implementation. Jeez! They have had an open forum for the past two weeks and (gonna shout again) NOT ONE WORD ABOUT READING AND MATH LEVELS. It’s like it doesn’t exist. It’s like Rmoney’s taxes, his foreign policy, his tax plan.
And I just took a quick pass at the firedoglake article (I will do a close read later and hope the ctu link is better). WTF! There is no discussion about pensions! And when I read about “big sticking points” I want to know numbers – how much do they pay for health insurance now ($10/mo? $1000/mo?) and how much will they pay with the new contract. Percentages tell you nothing! What are the co-pays? Damn. It makes a difference. This is what reporting has been like on this. Pathetic.
I sure hope the ctu summary covers this.
Eeyore,
I’ll have to disagree with you about experimenting with R2010. I think any educator with experience would be able to see it was an experiment that was not really about providing the poor children of Chicago with a better education. It was a “corporate model” of reform–which, I believe, was devised to break the union and help to privatize schools. Imagine firing entire staffs of schools–principals, teachers, janitors, and support staff– because some bureaucrat decided their school was failing and had to be shut down. If you want to provide children with a better education, you should include the teachers who work with children every day in helping to design a better educational model that would really address the problems of failing schools.
Regarding the ACA, I was extremely disappointed that Obama and the Democrats caved on a public option. Although there are some positive aspects of it, I believe it could have been so much better. I’m not sure it will bring down the cost of health care in this country.
I don’t think we are talking across each other. I think it’s been a good discussion. I understand your perspective. I understand why you feel frustrated. I don’t believe that teachers are always blameless.
I don’t blame you for being upset. I would be too. What would I do if I felt my granddaughter was getting a poor education–probably what I have done in the past–speak out at school committee meetings, put pressure on elected officials, get a parent group organized–and now that I’m retired I would volunteer to help at her school. It looks as if the powers that be in Chicago don’t give a damn about what the members of the LSC’s think and what they would like to see happen in the schools in their neighborhoods/districts.
Why has there been so little press and so few facts reported about Renaissance 2010 and how it has failed CPS? This is the program that Arne Duncan took to Washington to push for at the federal level.