CBS News reports:
Thousands of teachers, parents and supporters marched through downtown Chicago on the first day of a school strike.
The crowd Monday afternoon stretched for several blocks and was expected to swell through the early evening and into the city’s rush hour. Some protesters carried signs that said “Chicago Teachers United” and “Fair Contract Now.” Others waved red pom-poms and chanted. Earlier in the day, thousands of teachers picketed around neighborhood schools.
[…]The city’s public school teachers make an average of $71,000 a year. Both sides said they were close to an agreement on wages. What apparently remains are issues involving teacher performance and accountability, which the union saw as a threat to job security.
They don’t want to be held accountable for failing to provide outcomes for their customers, the children.
Why do you think they might fear being held accountable? Are they doing a poor job of teaching? Is that why they fear being accountable? Let’s see.
CNS News explains:
Chicago public school teachers went on strike on Monday and one of the major issues behind the strike is a new system Chicago plans to use for evaluating public school teachers in which student improvement on standardized tests will count for 40 percent of a teacher’s evaluation. Until now, the evaluations of Chicago public school teachers have been based on what a Chicago Sun Times editorial called a “meaningless checklist.”
[…]In 2011, the U.S. Department of Education administered National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests in reading and math to students around the country, including in the Chicago Public Schools. The tests were scored on a scale of 0 to 500, with 500 being the best possible score. Based on their scores, the U.S. Department of Education rated students’ skills in reading and math as either “below basic,” “basic,” “proficient” or “advanced.”
[…]79 percent of Chicago public school 8th graders were not grade-level proficient in reading. According to the U.S. Department of Education, this included 43 percent who rated “basic” and 36 percent who rated “below basic.”
[…]80 percent of Chicago public school 8th graders were not grade-level proficient in math. According to the U.S. Department of Education, this included 40 percent who rated “basic” in math and 40 percent who rated “below basic.”
Fire them all. Abolish the federal Department of Education. Make teacher unions illegal.
Education policy tutorial videos:
- MUST-SEE: John Stossel’s documentary about public schools and school choice
- MUST-SEE: Cato Institute lady explains why competition is better than monopoly
Related posts
- Graduate students with non-STEM degrees increasingly dependent on welfare programs
- A look at homeschooling and alternatives to college
- The consequences of the feminization of education in the UK
- Should the government restrict men’s participation in STEM fields?
- Education policy basics explained in three Heritage Foundation videos
- Student debt forcing college graduates to put their plans on hold
- Despite record youth unemployment, young people support Obama 52-27
- Rising student debt will impact future housing demand
- Is it “brilliant” to accumulate $185,000 of debt studying the humanities?
- 1 in 2 new graduates are jobless or underemployed
- Another looming debt crisis: law school students racking up $100,000+ in debt
- Unemployed college graduate ran up $90,000 of debt while studying English
- Is a college degree worth what you pay for it?
- Census Bureau confirms DC schools spending $29,409 per pupil
- Obama: 25% fewer male graduates than female graduates is a great accomplishment
- In Los Angeles schools, only 45% of students can read at grade level
- Many of Obama’s young supporters now unemployed, living with parents
- Wisconsin public school teachers protest the publication of their salaries in flier
- Public school teacher threatens student with arrest for criticizing Obama
- New study: low family income not a major cause of low student achievement
- Teacher union memo reveals agenda to undermine parents
- Public schools spend $130,000 of stimulus money on diversity training books
- New Jersey per-pupil cost is $17,800
- Republicans in Florida, Indiana and Pennsylvania push school choice
- Do public school teachers want to give children a quality education?
- Sex-education video prompts mother to transfer out 7-year old daughter
- 10% of US students are subject to sexual misconduct by school staff
- How Obama’s new 2011 budget fails the poorest children in two ways
- How teacher unions lobby government to block educational reform
- What helps kids to learn? Parents, teacher unions or education bureaucrats?
- New study reveals how school choice benefits the poorest students
- Do teacher unions care about providing high quality education?
- NEA lawyer explains the real goals of teacher unions: money and power
- Are teacher unions interested in helping your children to succeed in life?
- Economist Walter Williams evaluates whether teachers are earning their huge salaries
- How teacher’s unions make war on charter schools
WINTERY KNIGHT 
As a teacher, I TOTALLY agree with you on the no accountability thing. It’s ridiculous and I would be fine getting rid of teacher unions
…that being said…
It doesn’t matter if you have the greatest teacher in the world in front of the class…if the kids are not motivated (and most of them have to be motivated by discipline at home) nothing is going to work.
LikeLike
We agree completely. The parents have to be involved. The thing is, the left also embraces policies like sex education and no-fault divorce that ensure that children will be raised by strangers instead of by their parents. But I agree with your point about parents. Too much focus on making money, a lot of the time.
LikeLike
Well of course…the elitist liberals believe, and have for a century now, that us dumb masses don’t know how to raise a child. Best leave it to the experts, teachers and psychologists.
LikeLike
I agree…and (was) a teacher too. Glad my perspective is not just my own.
LikeLike
This just doesn’t make any sense. Democrats love unions and Chicago has as it’s mayor a Democrat of Democrats. There’s more to this, and I smell politics and presidential campaigns.
LikeLike
The average being $71K doesn’t really say much – median is a more useful determinant of whether those teachers are really overpaid. The pay distribution could very well be left-skewed and low median but shows a high average due to union fat-cats. In which case, the problem isn’t with the idea of having unions per se (to paraphrase Francis Schaeffer, one of failures of Christianity was to fail to push for compassionate use of accumulated wealth) – it is with the management of unions itself.
LikeLike
The newspaper reproted that 80% of 8th graders in the Chicago public school system are not at proficient level in math, and the teachers are at fault. However, the newspaper did not report these students’ attendance or behavior in school. It did not reprot how many parents attended parent/teacher conference or was in contact with their child’s teacher on daily or weekly base. If the newspaper is going to reprot the failure of the teacher, than it would be fair to report the failure of the parents and students too.
Remember it takes a team of three to successful educate a child.
LikeLike
If it takes a team of three, then why don’t the teachers pay the parents $71,000 a year too? That way they can both be responsible.
Furthermore, as I mentioned before, unions are radical leftists who undermine the family with their leftist anti-family ideologies. They are social liberals who push irresponsible sex, sex education, feminism and gay marriage. Let them deal with the breakdown of the family and the fatherlessness they caused. I want them all fired for failing to educate the unruly children that their voting and political activism made.
LikeLike
I also agree, abolish the Fed Ed folks….what does some stuffy suit person know about a child in rural Kentucky or downtown Phoenix?
Oh and the Chicago teacher’s salary schedule is online. From what I gather, even new teachers make $50k.
But on the flip side, I am a former teacher. If you do your job, I mean really do your job, put children and their education first and work your darndest to ensure their success, it is a very very hard job, worth that $50k for 180 days of work. Although I also think we need a longer school year, but with education as broken as it is, more does not equal better.
Because the students, on average, do so poorly, isn’t it pertinent that they be getting an education this week? Not staying at home? I’m more than willing to go in and teach, be a “scab” but I’m too far away and qualified in my state but not IL to teach…as you must be a resident of Chi-town to teach there. Oh! They are photographing anyone trying to cross the picket lines, trying to slander teachers with a heart. Nice job folks.
LikeLike