[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ-4gnNz0vc?rel=0]
Category: Education
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Tale of Two Missions
Absolutely amazing piece of work about Chicago’s failing schools.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmnFQkD0Eg0]
I have considerable new found respect for Mr. Williams after seeing this. I always thought we was railroaded out of NPR unfairly. But I also thought he was a little light intellectually. Whatever his faults (and we all have faults) it’s clear he cares about the children and wants to make things better. Kudos.
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Chicago Teachers’ Union Closer to Strike
Both sides have agreed to the appointment of a fact-finding panel that has 75 days to issue a report recommending terms for settlement of the labor contract.
Once that report is issued in the middle of July, the parties have 15 days to accept or reject the panel’s recommendation. If its rejected, the fact-finding panel can publish its recommendation. Thirty days after that, the union is free to strike.
via Chicago Tribune.
Things are heating up, the battle lines have been drawn. Everyone loves the teachers (who basically babysit their children all day,) but the cost is simply out of control. The union drives wage inflation which it turn drives tax inflation. So even though there are far fewer students than a few decades ago, the cost of educating these fewer student is considerably higher.
Chicago continues to slide into Gotham. A teachers strike could seal the deal.
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‘Why Didn’t White Folks Keep Them for Themselves?’
The Chicago Teachers Union, and school employee unions in general, are pulling out all the stops to slow down a school choice and education reform movement that is bowling them over in numerous states and cities.
Bold reform efforts are being pushed by the likes of Republicans like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Democrats like Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. It’s a bipartisan effort that has Big Labor on its heels.
In Chicago in particular, the teachers union is flailing to stop any meaningful reform it possibly can. In response to the move for a slightly longer school day, the union has demanded an astonishing 30% raise. For weeks, union leaders have been beating the war drums for a teachers’ strike, which could cripple the city. …
But perhaps the most remarkable accusation came when she said, “If charter schools were so good, why didn’t the white folks keep them for themselves?”
via Breitbart.
Just plain amazing. This is what CPS has teaching our children.
This is how brainwashed some people have become by CTU and it’s tactics. A sorry state of society where race politics superceeds student and parent choice. Troubling days ahead.
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Chicago Teachers Union Wants to Strike
The Chicago Teachers Union says internal polling shows there is support for a strike if contract talks with Chicago Public Schools break down.
A new state law requires the union to get approval from 75 percent of its members before a strike, leading many to question if the union could muster support for a walkout.
CTU spokeswoman Stephanie Gadlin said members at several schools were polled.
“The preliminary results indicate that if a strike vote were held today, teachers in those schools would vote unanimously for a walkout,” Gadlin said.
via Chicago Tribune.
CTU’s voting block is just as out of touch as the Occupy Movement.
I wrote awhile back about how teachers are overpaid. Now they want a 30% raise over two years. Clueless or ambivalent to the financial state of affairs in this town, county, state, country.
I say go ahead and strike. Show the world what you’re really all about.
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How to Make More ‘Makers’
Joey Hudy, a young “maker” from Phoenix went to the White House this week to show off his project, the “Extreme Marshmallow Cannon.” When President Obama saw it, he told Joey: “Let’s try it.” Joey set up the air cannon, which uses a bicycle pump to build up air pressure, and put a marshmallow down the barrel. When he pressed the trigger, a single marshmallow was shot out across the room to the delight of everyone, but especially the president.
via CNN Blogs.
This is a great story about how we need more young people (kids?) to be able to think creatively, differently. This is especially necessary in our inner city school which appear to have a more homogeneous population.
Over at Chicago News Report a bunch of hate-filled racists took over the comment section of an otherwise civil blog. Among the filth was an observation:
Almost every black teen has the same carbon copy personality…. There’s almost no black goths, or nerds, no black metalheads, they quash any difference within their community and make them fall in line … or else they get beat down or even killed.
I don’t know if that’s true — but if so, it’s a problem.
We need to encourage all children to take things apart just to see if you can put them back together.
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Illinois Teachers’ Pension Troubles
It’s important to note that this fund do NOT include CPS teachers.
Illinois public school teachers and retirees could have reason to worry about the kinds of pension checks they will be getting down the line. …
The Springfield State-Journal register reported over the weekend that pension director Dick Ingram sent a memo to his board on Feb. 9, saying he was no longer confident that the state’s largest pension system will continue to pay it enough money to stay above water. The state owes Ingram’s fund $43 billion. …
Ingram said pension funding is under severe threat from the state’s unpaid bills, soaring Medicaid costs and the $85 billion in overall unfunded pension liability, which is expected to rise.
“If that is the case, the only other option available that would significantly change the amount owed is to reduce past service costs for active members and retirees,” Ingram wrote in the memo. …
Gov. Pat Quinn addressed the pension crisis shortly after releasing his budget plan in February. …
“Everybody is going to get a haircut. No one will get scalped – that’s the basic concept,” the governor added.
via CBS Chicago.
Decades of the Machine running both Chicago and the state have led to every government entity in the state not being able to meet it’s obligations.
This is a wake-up call to not only teachers, but police officers, firefighters, and government workers of every sort. The good ‘ole days are over. The gravy train is ending.
Time to get real.
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WI Billboard: Truth to Power on Teachers’ Unions
This is an idea I’ve discussed with CTU reps at a meeting one time. CTU cannot represent “the children.” 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.)
Glad someone’s bring the truth forward.
A group purporting to advocate for education reform is putting up a billboard attacking the state teachers’ group, Wisconsin Education Association Council, or WEAC, as a tool of big labor uninterested in educating children.
Reforming Education And Demanding Excellent Results-Wisconsin, or READER-WI, is fronted by Jeff Waksman, spokesman for the Republican Party of Dane County, and David Blaska, former Isthmus blogger.
The group argues that public education is failing miserably and points to unions as the culprit: “Laws do not allow teachers to use children for partisan political advocacy, but that has not been the case, particularly in Wisconsin. Elementary school children have been forced to take part in anti-Scott Walker activities, even those young enough to not have any real grasp of the actual political issues facing the world. Big Labor has made the classroom much more political than it should be.”
via The Daily Page.
Did I mention that this is awesome!!
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CPS Teacher’s Union Fights Everything
Having absolutely no logic to defend their position:
With a 90-day deadline on negotiations with the teachers union having passed, Chicago Public Schools can implement a teacher evaluation system that will see student performance count for 25 percent of an elementary school teacher’s assessment, a figure that will rise to 40 percent in five years.
The Chicago Teachers Union has opposed such significant weight on student performance, but even at its highest the CPS proposal for student performance is less than the 50 percent used in states such as Colorado, Tennessee and Ohio.
via Chicago Tribune.
So we’re still going to be behind other states, but yet CTU is still fighting it:
“We don’t disagree on every aspect, but we don’t agree on the plan as a whole,” said CTU’s lead negotiator, Carol Caref. Currently, teachers are evaluated using a checklist that both principals and teachers have called useless.
I see, the current system sucks and everyone knows it’s worthless but whatever you do, don’t include student performance in any new evaluation method.
Caref said the union thinks having student performance count for 40 percent is too high because of concerns about the test data’s reliability. He said the union believes it’s a mistake to implement a new evaluation system without first trying it on a pilot basis to identify any problems.
Ya, problems like it may show that teachers that suck have been given the green light to continue to not educate children year after year after year. That would be a problem for the Union.
Big win for the children though.
CTU can’t die soon enough. CPS has completely failed generations of students nearly entirely as a result of CTU pushing it’s significant weight around. Can’t evaluate teachers… shear nonsense.
CPS lost it’s moral imperative years ago. We as a people owe it to our children to build a competitive network of schools which give parents a real choice — a voice — in their children’s education.
If we’re really all in this together, then All Schools are Public Schools.