CTU is Going on Strike

[Soxbadger]

Imagine the uproar for the cost of this program. Hiring people not connected with the schools to evaluate the individual teachers. It sounds good but it just adds to the administrative costs to the schools. Why take more money away from actual teaching. Just use a team of admin and teachers and be done with it. The problem is that there is too much money going to non-instructional purposes already.

 

Because when you have 2 children who cant agree, you need an adult to supervise.

 

Id rather the school system took care of it themselves, but according to StrangeSox they are currently striking because they cant come to an agreement on how to resolve this.

 

That is inexcusable.

[Steve9347]

So... you are saying because you have a friend who complained about leaving at 5:30pm... what? All teachers are lazy or something? What is the point of posting this?

Sadly, his point is valid. That's the mentality of a lot of teachers. They b**** and moan and you'd think they were putting in 12 hour days, when in reality they're doing what normal people do on a daily basis, but it's a culture shock since they've been sitting on their asses for 2.5 straight months.

[ptatc]

But that sets up this issue in Chicago entirely because it leaves no mechanism for redistribution from wealthy districts to poor districts, and as has been noted previously, the CPS area is one of the most poverty-ridden school districts in the country, with nearly 90% of its students qualifying for the federal free/reduced price meal programs.

I agree it is a poor way to do it. It makes it tough to get good education in Chicago. The educational funding in Illinois is unfair. Back when there were factories and such in low income areas it worked out to the benefit of the areas. Not so much since they are gone. I'm just pointing out that the way the system works and why Illinois seems to be "underfunding" the state school system.

[StrangeSox]

Pulling together data from 2 or 3 sources, found a court case that suggested ~10% of the students in chicago public schools in the 90's could be classified as special needs, and a different source suggested that nationwide on average a special needs student costs 1.9x as much as a non-special-needs student.

 

I know I recently posted that around here somewhere (a week or two ago). It's about 10% nationally IIRC.

[CrimsonWeltall]

The real problem is that there's nothing out there I've seen that really gives a good, fair, overarching scale by which teacher performance actually can be judged. The teachers might not have a good answer to your question, but when no one has that answer, does that mean they should settle for a bad answer to it?

 

No, but should parents and taxpayers settle for a system where bad teachers are hard to remove because they can claim any rating of their performance is somehow invalid?

[ptatc]

Because when you have 2 children who cant agree, you need an adult to supervise.

 

Id rather the school system took care of it themselves, but according to StrangeSox they are currently striking because they cant come to an agreement on how to resolve this.

 

That is inexcusable.

I agree it's a tough situation but throwing more money into more administrative functions and taking it away from instruction is not what I would want to do. The administration should just to what's fair.

[CrimsonWeltall]

Here's CPS's evaluation proposal from March

http://www.cps.edu/SiteCollectionDocuments...nalProposal.pdf

 

I believe the peer evaluation was to be performed by the "Mentor Teachers," so the "you scratch (stab) my back, I'll scratch (stab) yours" wouldn't really apply.

 

I don't know what PTA1s are, but I'm guessing those are new-ish teachers. Certainly a 20 year vet isn't going to have a mentor teacher. It looks like most teachers would be evaluated by departments heads or administrators.

[Soxbadger]

You were referring to "average people" and "taxpayers." How was I supposed to assume that you meant ex-educators or people who are familiar with teaching and evaluation?

 

I don't think you have the experience or knowledge to accurately assess a teacher. Having been a student throughout your life does not give you that ability. You would need to be knowledge of the actual field of education and have gone through similar education and training that teachers have to assess their performance.

 

What if a Superintendent said I did? What if teachers have requested me to come to classrooms to teach? What if I have passed all of the teacher certification tests?

 

Do I have enough requisite knowledge then?

 

Or is the only way Im qualified to be on the CPS payroll?

 

I just want to know what you think the rules should be for evaluating teachers. Because Im just not clear why if this is the most important issue, 2 sides cant sit down and resolve it.

[Soxbadger]

I agree it's a tough situation but throwing more money into more administrative functions and taking it away from instruction is not what I would want to do. The administration should just to what's fair.

 

Oh its the nuclear option. You make a proposal that no one likes, and then 2 parties sit down and realize they better come up with a solution.

 

This is how judges resolve cases every day. You tell 2 parties if they dont agree, Im coming up with a solution you will both hate.

 

 

[StrangeSox]

The first year of the new evaluations would only attribute 25% to the test scores. Those same tests were developed by CPS teachers, via negotiations with the CTU. The test are the typical standardized tests either, they were developed to give a more complete view of the students progress. They wouldn't even begin implementing the new system until the 2nd year of the new CBA.

 

They're part of the new Common Core standards, I'm a little familiar with what they are in general. For the first year, 25% of their jobs would be based on brand new tests with questionable precision and accuracy. A few years later, it's 40%. Do you want your job riding 50% on unproven and questionable metrics?

 

 

The current evaluation system is over 40 years old. It includes, I believe, a form that the students fill out that rate the teachers. In 2007, 98% of the teachers rated out as distinguished or above average.

 

Nobody questions that the evaluation system needs to be updated.

 

The 25% would go up by 5% increments up until it reaches (I think) 40%. Florida uses the test scores for 50% of evaluation. NYC uses a similar number AND posts the numbers to the public. The metric the CPS would be using would include three parts, the test, student feedback, and principal observation.

 

You're right, it's 40%, I was mixing up the FL number.

 

I haven't seen anything to tell me that these tests are accurately measuring what they say they're measuring and that these are the best things to measure. I would not want my job performance based on something like that.

[StrangeSox]

Because when you have 2 children who cant agree, you need an adult to supervise.

 

Id rather the school system took care of it themselves, but according to StrangeSox they are currently striking because they cant come to an agreement on how to resolve this.

 

That is inexcusable.

 

Hiring random people or ex-teachers off the street would not solve the dispute.

[StrangeSox]

Sadly, his point is valid. That's the mentality of a lot of teachers. They b**** and moan and you'd think they were putting in 12 hour days, when in reality they're doing what normal people do on a daily basis, but it's a culture shock since they've been sitting on their asses for 2.5 straight months.

He also said a first-year teacher, so it's probably someone who's been in college for the last four years.

[Balta1701]

No, but should parents and taxpayers settle for a system where bad teachers are hard to remove because they can claim any rating of their performance is somehow invalid?

The question in reply is...how exactly are the parents judging bad teachers? If there was an easy answer to that, then the answer to your question would be "no". But if there's no standard metric of student performance that correlates with the actual performance of a teacher...and you remove teachers based on those metrics, you have a situation where both good and bad teachers face removal because the system cannot differentiate between them.

 

Should parents and taxpayers settle for a system where good teachers are removed because the system itself does a poor job of evaluating teacher quality?

[StrangeSox]

What if a Superintendent said I did? What if teachers have requested me to come to classrooms to teach? What if I have passed all of the teacher certification tests?

 

Do I have enough requisite knowledge then?

 

Or is the only way Im qualified to be on the CPS payroll?

 

I just want to know what you think the rules should be for evaluating teachers. Because Im just not clear why if this is the most important issue, 2 sides cant sit down and resolve it.

 

The issue they're disputing isn't your plan to hire outside evaluators.

[StrangeSox]

Oh its the nuclear option. You make a proposal that no one likes, and then 2 parties sit down and realize they better come up with a solution.

 

This is how judges resolve cases every day. You tell 2 parties if they dont agree, Im coming up with a solution you will both hate.

 

They tried arbitration this summer but both sides rejected the conclusion.

[Soxbadger]

Hiring random people or ex-teachers off the street would not solve the dispute.

 

Nope, but hiring ex-educators who have no stake with either CPS or CTU would.

 

I dont recall saying that it should be like jury selection where anyone could be it. They would set up a committee, the committee would have people who have experience in education, and they would make independent decisions.

 

Or hell just they look over appeals if either side doesnt agree with the ruling.

 

It really isnt that hard to come up with a solution that is beneficial to the children. Its very difficult to come up with a solution that is beneficial to teachers being able to keep their jobs and beneficial to administrators being able to fire teachers.

 

 

[Soxbadger]

The issue they're disputing isn't your plan to hire outside evaluators.

 

Then what is the issue? I still dont understand. Evaluations are s***ty at every job. Unless you are at a job where it is simply economics, we pay you X, you better make more Y than X or else youre gone.

 

We cant fix that evaluations are s***ty. Its like trying to fix standardized testing or some other thing that never can be fixed. There is no good way to judge people without actually being there every single day.

 

They tried arbitration this summer but both sides rejected the conclusion.

 

Non-binding arbitration.

 

Binding arbitration means if the judge says something, you HAVE to do it. Non-binding is a good way to pay a bunch of lawyers a lot of money. I wonder how much money was wasted on that stupid nonsense.

[Y2HH]

Nope, but hiring ex-educators who have no stake with either CPS or CTU would.

 

I dont recall saying that it should be like jury selection where anyone could be it. They would set up a committee, the committee would have people who have experience in education, and they would make independent decisions.

 

Or hell just they look over appeals if either side doesnt agree with the ruling.

 

It really isnt that hard to come up with a solution that is beneficial to the children. Its very difficult to come up with a solution that is beneficial to teachers being able to keep their jobs and beneficial to administrators being able to fire teachers.

 

Or do nothing because it's so expensive...

 

But give them all raises, regardless of their deserving of them (good vs bad teachers), because unlike in every other job in the universe, there is no way to gauge if they suck at what they do.

 

I call bs on all of that.

 

There are ways to figure out if teachers are good or bad, use them. Colleges do it, private schools do it...get it done. Or don't...and let the kids grow up in a world where they have no chance to even be middle class.

[Balta1701]

There are ways to figure out if teachers are good or bad, use them. Colleges do it, private schools do it...get it done. Or don't...and let the kids grow up in a world where they have no chance to even be middle class.

And how many of them do those evaluations based on the students performance on standardized tests? I haven't seen a college do that. Know nothing of private schools.

 

The colleges I've been through evaluate such things in house. They take student comments into account as a portion of it, then they have people within the same department do the evaluations with some outside guidance as to the person's scholarship or performance. But applied here, that'd be "Teachers evaluating teachers" which is considered unacceptable in this case.

[Harry Chappas]

If the CTU was represented by somebody that you could gravitate toward it would help their cause greatly. This seemed to be the case in the 1980's as well when they went on strike annually. They need a spokesperson to explain the situation not just stand there and tell me how wronged they are.

 

[StrangeSox]

Nope, but hiring ex-educators who have no stake with either CPS or CTU would.

 

No, it wouldn't. You're not talking about anything either CPS or CTU has a problem with. I don't think either side has an issue with peer review, and if they do, it's not the only issue.

Edited September 12, 2012 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

If the CTU was represented by somebody that you could gravitate toward it would help their cause greatly. This seemed to be the case in the 1980's as well when they went on strike annually. They need a spokesperson to explain the situation not just stand there and tell me how wronged they are.

 

One of their leaders was calling some plan or another "RACIST!"

[Soxbadger]

No, it wouldn't. You're not talking about anything either CPS or CTU has a problem with. I don't think either side has an issue with peer review, and if they do, it's not the only issue.

 

Isnt it the unions job to inform me of what the issues are, and why the proposals by CPS are so bad that they literally can not go to work because of the gravity of the situation.

 

Is that really so much to ask?

 

I just dont trust either side. I dont trust anyone. So when I hear that a strike issue is something that is nonsensical and should easily be resolved, I wonder, what the hell is really going on.

 

 

[bmags]

They also lacked any sort of national support. But no, I don't think one recall election puts an end to the idea that unions a good base support for progressive politics. Recall elections are rare, usually unsuccessful and widely disliked.

 

LOL

[LittleHurt05]

The average CPS teacher scored a 19 on their ACT.