The Chicago Teachers Union has collectively decided that a sixteen percent pay raise in an economy where 23 million people are looking for work isn’t enough. Public school teachers in Chicago are currently among the highest paid in the nation, with an average annual pay of $71,000, before benefits.
Seriously -- Chicago teachers walked away from a sixteen percent pay raise, because it wasn’t enough. Sixteen percent!
At the same time, Chicago public school students are among the most undereducated in the country. Which leads to the question: What are these teachers being paid for? This week, apparently they’re being paid to shop for red shirts and to not teach.
The teachers just want things to be fair. I’m not sure how ignoring your students to strike in the street to protest a measly sixteen percent pay raise while not improving your job performance is fair, but whatever.
Karen Lewis, the president of the union, has called Mayor Rahm Emanuel a bully and a liar for calling for accountability for the teachers and a 41-minute longer school day. As many as 6,000 teachers may lose their jobs if they are evaluated based on performance, which is apparently a bad thing in Chicago. In the real world, you get fired if you do a crappy job, but in Illinois you go on strike because your raise wasn’t big enough.
The Chicago Teachers Union is giving great teachers a bad name. No one goes into teaching for the money … it’s a difficult, time-consuming, mostly underappreciated job. The hope is that teachers go into teaching because they love kids and want to help shape their future. Not so they can protest a massive pay raise in a down economy as not enough.
Maybe it would be different if Chicago schools were flourishing. You get what you pay for, and all that jazz. If they teachers were being underpaid, that would be another matter as well. That was the original intention of unions, after all, to make sure that the working class was not being oppressed or taken advantage of. But Chicago teachers make over twice the average local income of just over $30,000 a year.
Chicago teachers are already overpaid, Chicago students are underperforming, and the Chicago Teachers Union’s demands are unreasonable. This is not about the students and what’s best for them, this is about a teachers’ union demanding more than its fair share.
Image via firedoglakedotcom/Wikimedia Commons
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Comments 122
Jenny, this is one of the most ignorant things I've ever read. Let me explain why it's unfair for a teacher to be paid based on student performance. Teachers can only do so much. Students are in our care for 8 hours out of the day. What happens during those other 16 hours of the day is completely out of our control. So we can assign homework, but does that mean the kid is going to go home and do it? No. We can make a lesson fun and exciting, but does that mean the kid gives a rats ass about what's going on? No. I once administered an oral test to a student who failed. Straight up failed. After the test I asked her if she knew that she failed. She said yes. Then I asked her if she even cared. She said nope. Let me ask you something, if a woman with a drug or drinking problem gets pregnant is the doctor who delivers a crack or FAS baby responsible for what that woman does outside of his care? Should he be punished because a woman made her own choices to not care for her baby or her body during pregnancy? Should he be punished because the woman gave birth to a crack baby or a baby with FAS? No. Because that's absurd. He didn't make that choice. If teachers could make every single parent care about their child and their child's education, I'd be singing a different song.
But teachers can't do a damn thing about the parents who don't have bedtimes for their kids, or help or at least encourage their kids to do homework, or feed their kids, or send their kids to school clean and ready to learn. Is a police officer punished for not catching the criminal who robbed the bank? No. Is the doctor punished for the diabetic who died because he refused to take care of his health? No. Student performance should be a very, very small part of a teacher's evaluation. I'm mad as hell that my students' performance is what determines my paycheck. Because if a kid comes to school tired, dirty, hungry, and not prepared to learn, there's a pretty slim chance that I'll be able to teach him anything, no matter what I do.
Regarding the evaluations. If we don't use standardized test scores, what do you propose that we DO use?
Working in a corporate environment (whether a large or small corp, it doesn't matter), at the beginning of each fiscal year, I would sit down with my boss and set a series of professional goals that ranged from fiscal to physical - did I work wtihin the budgets set? Did I make money on various projects? Did the projects/events generate interest? Was I able to beat last years' numbers?
Standardized testing, from the SAT on down, are a way to gauge, numerically, whether students are making progress. If you eliminate them (and it seems, if they're good enough for colleges, they should be good enough for the teachers) then what do you propose to use in their place?
There has GOT to be some standard, measurable way to evaluate a teacher. I'm still waiting to hear what it is.
Nonmember comment from Typical
I figured Jenny wrote this before I even clicked. Mitt Romney deserves his money, but the people who educate our children don't... That's not backwards at allllllll.
Um, Romney actually accomplishes something. These teachers obviously don't.
I understand that you can only work w/what you're given - if you're given crappy kids who KNOW that your pay/job depends on them, some of those little brats will intentionally do poorly just because THEY suffer no consequence - the teacher does. And hey, it's fun to fuck w/people's lives.
So like someone else asked - how do you evaluate a teacher if not by observing/testing the end product? Should the eval be based on the # of kids in class who actually did learn something?
Once again I point out that 15% of 4th graders read on grade level and over 1/3 of Chicago teacher send their kids to PRIVATE school. So, is it the kids that suck or the teachers? And if the kids suck, move the hell out of Chicago and get a job where you can teach some decent kids.
Speaking on the subject of evaluating on test scores, let me say this:
Why would a teacher want to take a chance and teach in school with a high need population? Why would a teacher want to teach LEP, IEP, or MD students? Some of the best teachers I know teach these students and try their darndest to be successful. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't but we still need good teachers to work with these demanding students.
I am a music teacher, how would arts teachers be evaulated?
I believe the best evaluation comes from the evaluator (principal or supervisor) being IN the classroom and watching for engaged students, meaninful learning, and academic rigor.
Children are unpredictable and that's their charm. And sometimes, no matter what you do, you can't reach a child and make him learn. Children are not a product with specific parameters and predictable outcomes. It is impossible to predict the chances for success when a child is born and throughout his life. We hear success stories about children born into poverty, abuse, and neglect who become great citizens and we hear about children born into privilege, wealth, and care who become another statistic in the drug war. It is not an exact science and should not have compensation dependent on such concrete outcomes.
Test scores should be taken into consideration but it should be a small part of a bigger evaluation. Teachers should be evaluated by a third party who comes in and observes; who checks on their lesson plans, makes sure the lessons they are teaching are meeting state standards. They also need to consider outside factors, just as a doctor would do. A doctor will check and see if the patient has other health issues or a history of certain health issues; this third party that evaluates teachers needs to look at the students and determine if they have contributing factors that could effect their education. Are they from an impoverished family? Do they have a history of abuse? Are there emotional/behavioral problems? Floridamom, I'm not making excuses, I'm stating the facts. And I know it's probably difficult for you to see beyond your middle-upper class lifestyle, but the fact is that kids have parents who don't give them bedtimes, so they want to come to tired. And kids have parents who don't bother to feed them, so they come to school hungry. And kids have parents who don't bother to bathe them so they come to school dirty. Put yourself in the place of that child; how well could you do your job if you were tired, hungry, and dirty? Teachers do a lot of work, but parents and students need to pull their weight too.