UPDATE: Last week we heard about the college prof. who made her students pledge to vote for Obama.
A college professor has been placed on leave after she allegedly forced her class to sign a pledge to vote for President Obama in the upcoming elections.
via Campus Reform.
Justice? Probably.
Four years of up-to-the-limit property tax increases for Chicago homeowners and businesses. Closing scores of under-enrolled and underperforming schools. Thousands of layoffs of teachers and other school staff. More cuts to the central office.
That’s what could await the Chicago Public Schools, thanks to the tentative agreement between teachers and the district that is expected to put an end to the five-day teachers strike.
Civic Federation President Laurence Msall said the 16 percent pay raise included in the tentative agreement will almost certainly trigger massive layoffs and scores of school closings.
via Chicago Sun-Times.
Well Duh!
This comes as a surprise to no one. What did CTU think was going to happen when you have a broke and bankrupt system giving 16% raises to it’s staff? You balance the budget by having less staff.
This is just like the minimum wage discussion: If the minimum wage was $25/hour there would be fewer people working… not more. And the price of your hamburger and groceries would be 20-50% higher.
When you artificially increase wages in the private sector you get inflation. When you artificially increase wages in the public sector you get a bankrupt public sector.
A citizen, whose nephew attends Brevard Community College, reports that he brought home the below bookmark pledging to vote for President Obama. The bookmark and pledge was handed out during a mathematics class taught by Assistant Professor Sharon Sweet. This occurred “while the student was in class at the request of his College Algebra teacher, Sharon Sweet, from Brevard Community College in [Melbourne] Florida.
”On the tear away GOTTAVOTE.org pledge form that students recieved, was the requirement to “state their party affiliation”. The student reported that Sweet has repeatedly stated her personal political views in support of President Obama in class. The student noted, “There is an older gentleman in the class that will argue with her but he said most of the students did not.”
I think this is the same tactic Saddam Hussein used.
… I guess that might not make sense to everyone. It’s worth noting that this GOTAVOTE organization is the left arm of Obama for America.
Striking Chicago teachers fear that once they approve a new contract with the school district and end their strike, Mayor Rahm Emanuel will go ahead with dozens of school closings because of falling enrollment and poor academic performance.
via Reuters.
Really? Well what do they think the mayor should do when the city is shrinking and budgets are in the red and the students are failing?
The union’s position is ‘just keep giving us more and more money to achieve less and less.’ It’s unsustainable.
Epic fail.
On the fourth day of the teachers’ strike, protesters targeted school board member Penny Pritzker, whose family owns the Hyatt hotel chain.
At 3:30 p.m., thousands of demonstrators dressed in red gathered outside the Hyatt Regency Chicago, at 151 E. Wacker Dr., protesting the $5.2 million in TIF money the city provided for a new Hyatt hotel in the Hyde Park neighborhood. Around 4 p.m., they began marching south on Michigan Avenue toward the South Loop.
Protesters said the TIF money spent on the Hyatt in Hyde Park would have been better used to improve schools in the neighborhood, and avoid budget cuts that have hurt the local schools.
via CBS Chicago.
Indeed, the TIF system in broken and the law needs to be repealed in Springfield. Of that there can be no argument.
But let’s look at this for just a second…
$5.2 million for the new Hyatt. 26,000 CPS teachers.
That’s $200 per teacher. That would be an average salary increase of 0.000026% for each teacher FOR ONE YEAR.
And that my friends is why unions suck. They will keep the kids on the street fighting over mice nuts. For all their fancy “for the children” rhetoric it’s really about draining every last nickel from the taxpayer.
Leaches.
God Bless John Kass:
When Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis led her members out on strike this week, she said real school would be closed.
“Negotiations have been intense but productive,” she said. “However, we have failed to reach an agreement that will prevent a labor strike. Real school will not be open (Monday).”
Real school? You mean that public system where four of 10 students don’t graduate?
Since real school wasn’t open, I was compelled to visit an unreal school.A South Side school where 100 percent of the students graduate, and 100 percent are accepted to college. A Roman Catholic all-boys school that draws from poor and working-class neighborhoods, a school where there are no cops or metal detectors, no gang recruitment, no fear.
An unreal school that is mostly black, but with a smattering of whites and Latinos, and where every student who sees a stranger in the halls goes up to the newcomer, introduces himself, shakes his hand, looks him in the eye and calls him Mister.
via Chicago Tribune.
It is unethical and criminal that our children are forced into failing schools when they have the real opportunity to have an excellent education. Vouchers would make real Obama’s rhetoric of every child having a fair chance.
Kass exposes the reality of the situation: this has nothing to due with educating children… it’s about politics.
For shame.
Then is an adverb referring to a period of time.
Than is a conjunction used to make a comparison.
I guess no one should be surprised given that 79% of CPS 8th graders are not proficient in reading.
Since CTU is out on strike, this appears to be timely.
Educational choice is the civil rights movement of our generation.
Then look at a breathtaking new study from researchers at the Brookings Institution and Harvard University. Brookings fellow Matthew M. Chingos and Harvard government professor Paul E. Peterson tracked 1,363 New York elementary school students who, starting in 1997, had received vouchers worth up to $1,400 a year through a New York City scholarship fund. Those students had their choice of any private school, religious or secular, in New York.
Result: African-American students who had used the vouchers were 24 percent more likely to attend college, and more than twice as likely to attend selective four-year colleges, as their peers who had not won the voucher lottery in a random draw. The hard numbers: 45 percent of the African-American students with vouchers graduated and attended college. That’s compared to 36 percent of otherwise similar students who hadn’t received the vouchers.
Those vouchers didn’t give a similar boost to white or Hispanic students, but did help African-Americans close the customary graduation gap between black and Hispanic students, the researchers reported.
via Chicago Tribune.
Poor kids on the South and West sides of the city are stuck in failing schools and Rahm, Obama, and the rest of the Democratic cabal aren’t going to do a damn thing about it.
When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of school children.
— Albert Shanker, former president of the United Federation of Teachers
I wrote about this before, how the truth is that CTU, WEAC, and all other teacher’s unions have a fiduciary duty to the union members. The union cannot do anything which would advance the interests of non-members (i.e. children) to the detriment of the members (i.e. teachers.)
This is a very simple legal principle that most educated people easily understand.
Of course there’s the greater philosophical discussion that should take place as to whether of not unions of government employees are to anyone’s benefit.
The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.
— F.D. Roosevelt, in 1937 to the National Federation of Federal Employees
The idea being that when private sector employees collectively bargain they can overplay their hand only to their own detriment as well and to the detriment of their employer. Another company will be the beneficiary of the higher wages (and cost of goods/services) of the first. This is not true in government where there is no competition.
Anyone seeking more and more from the public coffers should be considered with extreme skepticism.
Seventy-nine percent of the 8th graders in the Chicago Public Schools are not grade-level proficient in reading, according to the U.S. Department of Education, and 80 percent are not grade-level proficient in math.
via CNS News.
Very… very… sad.
Teachers make over $60/hour. Get awesome benefits. Not getting the job done. On strike demanding more money.