Chicago Teacher's Strike

[DMT]

Surprised this hasn't been posted already.

I'm interested to hear the other side because from what I've seen the Union is mainly at fault here. Chicago has one of, if not the, highest average teacher salary in the nation ($71 or $76K) , yet they turn down a 16% raise over 4 years because they don't want to be evaluated using test scores?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-strike-updates-pickets-up-as-more-talks-scheduled-20120910,0,4173856.story

http://www.suntimes.com/15054902-761/chicago-teachers-strike-for-first-time-in-25-years-contingency-sites-ready-charters-remain-open.html

http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2012/06/12/how-much-do-chicago-public-school-teachers-make/

[Bob Kohm]

Test score evaluation is a crappy tool for measuring teacher effectiveness and leads to all sorts of problems within schools as teachers squabble over and charge bias in the assignment of students amongst legion other issues. My personal favorite (and I'm not sure if this is linked into the Chicago debate) occurred in several systems in the Mid-Atlantic over the past couple of years when blanket proposals for test score based merit pay were applied... including to special education teachers. Want me to make the sacrifice to teach your autistic son or daughter? Then don't link my pay to how she does against the school system, statewide or national mean on a standardized test.

[DMT]

Test score evaluation taken in a vacuum is indeed a poor way to evaluate teachers, but I would assume that some controls are applied to account for where the students were at the beginning of the year. It makes no sense to punish teachers for having students who are behind if they were behind to begin with; rather they should take into account whether and how much the students show improvement over the course of the year. Also, good evaluation systems only use test scores in conjunction with other metrics.

If a teacher is unable to help his/her students improve over the course of the year, then they should be fired or at the very least reassigned to a different school. This is how the real world works; failure is not always solely the fault of the person who failed but nonetheless they are held responsible for the failure. Teachers are supposed to help students learn; if they can't, then they need to find a new profession. Yes, I understand there are many powerful contextual factors at play vis a vis school achievement, but this doesn't excuse teachers who are unable to improve their students' learning.

Also, the tenure system is a complete disgrace and needs to be eliminated.

[DMT]

Teacher pay should be immediately doubled so that quality will actually be enticed into working in that field. How does the free market ever account for that, though? It's not like teaching our children is something to turn a quarterly profit off of.

I agree that many teachers are grossly underpaid but not in this case considering they average $75K/year. That is not grossly underpaid by any stretch and the problem is some of the bad ones are grossly overpaid. This is why teacher evaluation is necessary; reward the good ones, weed out the bad ones.

[DMT]

$75k/year? Wow.

A teacher with a Master's and 30 years of experience makes about the same that I did in my first year out in the corporate world here in New Mexico. Sad.

Why? The median income in our country is less than that. You went to Stanford and have an MBA and you're comparing your salary to their's, again why?

Teachers knew going in (or should have) they were not going to get rich doing it, but $75K/year is plenty to get by on.

[Gregg]

Test score evaluation is a crappy tool for measuring teacher effectiveness and leads to all sorts of problems within schools as teachers squabble over and charge bias in the assignment of students amongst legion other issues. My personal favorite (and I'm not sure if this is linked into the Chicago debate) occurred in several systems in the Mid-Atlantic over the past couple of years when blanket proposals for test score based merit pay were applied... including to special education teachers. Want me to make the sacrifice to teach your autistic son or daughter? Then don't link my pay to how she does against the school system, statewide or national mean on a standardized test.

Wow, I agree with Bob.

[Moonlight J]

$75k/year? Wow.

A teacher with a Master's and 30 years of experience makes about the same that I did in my first year out in the corporate world here in New Mexico. Sad.

and in a right-to-work state, here's what the pay is for my local FL county

starting salary 37K, 20 years in, $51,105, for 191 days of work

an average of $705.25 more for each year you teach

CPS, on the same contract, starts at $40,405 in year one and is at $65,379 by year 13

Factor in the cost of living difference for Chicago (including state tax, etc) vs Florida, and.....

Go unions

[Moonlight J]

http://cgi.money.cnn.com/tools/costo...tofliving.html for funsies


If you move from Orlando, FL toChicago, IL....
Groceries will cost:

14%more

Housing will cost:

68%more

Utilities will cost:

9%less

Transportation will cost:

15%more

Healthcare will cost:

13%more

[Gregg]

http://cgi.money.cnn.com/tools/costo...tofliving.html for funsies


If you move from Orlando, FL toChicago, IL....
Groceries will cost:

14%more

Housing will cost:

68%more

Utilities will cost:

9%less

Transportation will cost:

15%more

Healthcare will cost:

13%more

What is the state income tax in Florida?

[Moonlight J]

What is the state income tax in Florida?

there is not one

[Gregg]

there is not one

Add 5% to the cost of moving to Chicago.

[frae]

I read the contract from 07-12, because I am a geek. Anyway, bachelors only in year one in 2011-2012 would have paid 49K. With a masters 52,5K. To make more than the 75K average quoted ( i did not double check that figure anywhere) you would work 11 years with just a bachelors and in your 12th year you would make 77. With a masters you would need to work 9 years and in your 10th year you would make just over 75K. I can't comment on Chicago city schools without doing more digging, but in Pittsburgh I know the turnover rate is high. City schools are stressful jobs and that salary and the expenses of living in Chicago do not sound amazing by any means.

I will try not to rehash much of my argument from the past, but you know I will.

- You can teach till you are blue in the face, but parental involvement and a students interest level are huge factors. Most of us on this site and probably most of our friend are educated. We probably had teachers that we thought did a great job and others who didn't, but we cared enough about our education to not fail. That motivation could have been our own or entirely the fear of our parents or any other factor. The point is is the parents don't care and the kids don't care it is really going to be quite amazing to get good results.

- Attendance matters. Again, if they don't come to school but once or twice a week how are they going to succeed? I teach in the suburbs and this is even an issue here. In a city school it is a huge issue.

- Testing as the only or a major barometer of teacher success is a bad solution. When the students performance on a test taken once a year is going to play a huge role in a teachers pay and employment you are now going to have classes entirely focussed on a test. Curriculum should be driven by teachers in districts and not by a state or god help us a national test. As Bob mentioned this will also lead to huge disputes over who teachers what courses. Who decides who teaches what? Principal? In a building of 1,400 my actual head principal sees me in class once or twice a year. The asst principals? I may not see them at all if they are not my supervisor for the year? The department head? That job would suck.

- Educational issues do not have easy answers and teachers will likely need to continue to give concessions in contracts around the country. Last spring my union voted to roll our contract back 3 years to ensure no one would be laid off for 2 (contracts bump up year to year so instead of working on 12-13 this year we are back working on 09-10). That said I do get quite upset when I read how teachers are greedy, or that we make too much, or how easier our job is. I love my job, I love my students, but this is a job for me and one that has to provide for my family and when people write letters bashing what we make it does hurt. I am in year 10 with two bachelors and I almost have my masters and I make 55K. Am I or any other teacher or union really to be blamed for trying to bargain for better wages? I feel bad for what the Chicago teachers will hear and I hope to god I never have to go on strike.

[OaklandA's]

I think most people agree with the general idea of rewarding good teachers and penalizing poor ones. But it is not easy to come up with an accurate way to evaluate a teacher. First, there is the problem of the variable quality of the students assigned for the teacher to teach. Maybe that problem can be minimized by tracking the progress of individual students from year-to-year on some standardized test, assuming that you have sufficient data and that you believe the test accurately measures what the students are supposed to be learning. And the more important the test becomes, the more teachers will feel the need to teach to the test.

But at the high school level, it can be even more complicated. Standardized tests are usually only given in subjects like Math and English on a yearly basis. If you are a high school teacher in a subject like history, chemistry, music, or a foreign language, the students probably will not take a standardized test in your subject, and there is no previous data to see if they have improved. What is happening in Chicago and many other districts for these subjects is that the "student progress" part of a teacher's evaluation may be based on the Reading/Writing progress of the school as a whole ("overall school literacy").

Since the standardized test part of teacher evaluation can be so difficult, in Chicago, the larger part of the evaluation is based on teacher observation - things like classroom prep, instruction, class participation, etc. These observations will be conducted by school principals and assistant principals, along with school district personnel. Obviously, there is a large amount of subjectivity involved here, and conflicts between a teacher and administrators could be unfairly reflected in a poor evaluation.

[Judge Jude]

I'm surprised that a way doesn't seem to have been found to combine test scores with the evaluations of students, parents, fellow teachers, and administrators.

Agreed that there is SOME danger in possible infighting of various kinds, but if a teacher scores well, say, in evaluations except for the administrator - that person might have some 'splainin' to do. And if the only "low" score is by students, it might just be because they don't like to work, And so on.

There must be something better than both "just go by test scores" or "no way to judge, so just go by seniority."

[OaklandA's]

I'm surprised that a way doesn't seem to have been found to combine test scores with the evaluations of students, parents, fellow teachers, and administrators.

Sure, but the devil is in the details. The plan proposed by Chicago bases the majority of the evaluation on "Teacher Practice" which is an observation-based measurement. It only involves school/district administrators - parents' and students' evaluations are not part of the process. Around 20-30% of the process is based on Value-Added metrics (for elementary schools) or other Expected-Gains metrics (for high schools). The high school tests include versions of the PLAN/ACT tests to measure student progress.