I was driven from this once-great site by abusive mods and admins, who create rules out of thin air to punish people for breaking them (meaning the rule does not exist under forum rules) and selectively enforce the rules that are written on the forum rules. I am currently lurking while deleting 6 years and 2 months of posting history. I will return when ExpiredRascals, Teia Rabishu and Blinking Spirit are no longer in power.
16%.... wow I'd be greatful if my job wanted to give me that kinda raise. Seems rather silly to go on strike, but I dont know what else was going on at the talking table.
Teachers have no business going on strike during the school year. A 16% pay raise is huge, and they should have been thankful as government paid employees to receive such a boon.
Still, as a union based machine, it's not many of the individual teachers' faults.
The city of Chicago, rather cash strapped at the moment like the entire state of Illinois, offered it's teacher's union a 16% raise in the new contract. This would have taken the average CPS teacher's pay from $76,000/yr to $88,160/yr - an average raise of $12,160/yr. The union said it was not enough, and went on strike.
Do you feel the union is being greedy and demanding too much from the cash strapped city, or that the city was being stingy by only offering a 16% pay raise?
Here's the first article on Google which actually criticizes your dichotomy about "too much money"/"Give us more money!" from the teachers, because that is NOT why they are on strike. I find it hilarious that you actually exemplify the exact thing the teachers union criticized about the portrayal of their efforts.
Asking people to remove quotes in their signatures is tyranny! If I can't say something just because someone's feelings are hurt then no one would ever be able to say anything! Political correctness is stupid.
Its about more then money. The teachers are teaching out of 10-15 year old books with pages missing. The conditions at some of the city schools are terrible. Let alone having to deal with very aggressive kids on a daily basis. They actually take their lives in their hands every time the go to work.
Turning down the raise makes it look bad for the teachers and the union, but thats not the point of the strike.
Here's the first article on Google which actually criticizes your dichotomy about "too much money"/"Give us more money!" from the teachers, because that is NOT why they are on strike. I find it hilarious that you actually exemplify the exact thing the teachers union criticized about the portrayal of their efforts.
I was with the article with regards to the standardized test. They lost me with the air conditioning argument. My school was one of the top in our state, and there was air conditioning in maybe a quarter of the building (i.e. the library and computer labs). Standardized tests are a crumby evaluation method, but I'd go tell them to pound sand on the work environment complaints.
Edit: Had not realized bocephus's bit about the crumby supplies and dangerous students. A bit of a conundrum. Would it possibly have made for a better PR move if they opted to forgo a raise, and use the savings to update/upgrade the schools?
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As a parent of nearly school age children I would be so pissed at these teachers that I wouldn't be thinking rationally about anything they had to say. I certainly wouldn't want my kids learning in their classroom.
But that's how I feel about the cesspool that is public ed in this country anyway (I just don't normally blame the teachers).
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Out of the blackness and stench of the engulfing swamp emerged a shimmering figure. Only the splattered armor and ichor-stained sword hinted at the unfathomable evil the knight had just laid waste.
I'm generally very pro union, but this one leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I don't agree with the criticism of many teachers that seems to be popular these days. Teachers work hard and they are payed well for it. I'm not advocating any major shift in this, higher or lower.
I do think there needs to be more accountability. Imagine a private sector employee upset because their boss gave them progress reports that evaluated their performance. But teachers don't think they should have any part of this accountability. The problem is that there are so many legitimate problems with student performance equating to teacher pay or performance that it makes it a hard issue to solve.
Doesn't matter how much pay I would get if some random student gets violent enough to put me into the hospital because they failed the test they didn't study for...
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Premise I: "Knowledge is Power" ~ Sir Francis Bacon, 1597
Premise II: "Power {tends to} Corrupt" ~ Baron Acton, 1887
Conclusion: "Knowledge Corrupts"
To play devil's advocate, if you believe in capitalism, isn't holding out for the best pay and benefits you can get the rational and correct action?
Fine. If we can all agree that teachers are only looking out for their own interests and then your arguments stands that they are being completely rational.
It is also completely rational for a company to pursue a monopoly and screw over the consumer in a capitalistic society.
We as a society however reserve the right to reject this reasoning as we often value the consumer or the student above pure capitalistic principle. It may be rational for teachers to want higher pay, no accountability, and huge roadblocks to firing any of them. It is also rational for us to tell them that they don't deserve these benefits and push back against them.
16% over four years. They're not getting an immediate $12k pay increase.
Yes, the pay issue is being addressed...but what about huge class sizes and all the other problems effecting the children? Should the teachers just say "Well, we got what we wanted. To hell with the kids...back to work!"
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A tier 3 Legacy deck was named after me. What have you done with your life?
Can anyone deny the benefits that teachers get? The average worker works something like 230 days a year including vacation time. The average teacher works something like 150 days a year + vacation. That is 65% of the work days of the average private sector worker, and they make on average over 70k in Chicago compared to the average person who makes I think around 50k. They also get to retire with huge pensions of 70% of their wages, and are almost impossible to fire. They work less than 8 hour days (only required to be there 7 hours I believe?) and have a paid free period and paid lunch every day.
Again, teachers have an important job and they are payed well for what they do. I think the above benefits are necessary to attract good teachers. But I don't buy into the line that they are immensely overworked and underpaid.
To play devil's advocate, if you believe in capitalism, isn't holding out for the best pay and benefits you can get the rational and correct action?
Private Sector unions work because of the self interest of the workers to get higher wages and benefits being counterbalanced by the self interest of the management to make more money.
Public Sector unions fail because the self interest of the workers is only counterbalanced by the self interest of the management (Politicians) of being elected, if the unions prove to be soo powerful that they can greatly help the politician stay in power the politician will be all to willing to in his self interest cave to their demands.
“All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.”- FDR
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Don't you see that the whole aim of Moderators is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make infractions literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten.
THIS ISN'T ABOUT MORE MONEY PEOPLE. Jeebus. The pay increase was pretty much the ONLY thing they actually agreed about. Stop buying into Solaran's mischaracterization of this crap.
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Asking people to remove quotes in their signatures is tyranny! If I can't say something just because someone's feelings are hurt then no one would ever be able to say anything! Political correctness is stupid.
The city of Chicago, rather cash strapped at the moment like the entire state of Illinois, offered it's teacher's union a 16% raise in the new contract. This would have taken the average CPS teacher's pay from $76,000/yr to $88,160/yr - an average raise of $12,160/yr. The union said it was not enough, and went on strike.
Do you feel the union is being greedy and demanding too much from the cash strapped city, or that the city was being stingy by only offering a 16% pay raise?
As it's already been stated, it's not a blanket 16% raise... it's 4% per year for 4 years. Also interesting is that the city of Chicago cancelled their 4% raise last year, so if I were in Chicago I wouldn't trust the city either.
In addition, the union agrees to the money AND the longer school day (which is why the larger raise). What they don't agree to is the new evaluation system that is being put into place, with its high focus on standardized test results. They don't agree to this because standardized test results are a terrible indicator of academic progress for a few reasons:
1. These tests are rather grueling. The MCAS (Massachusetts test) for English is a THREE DAY EXAM! Imagine how you would feel on the third day of testing, knowing that you have another 4 days of testing to go later in the year (2 for math, 2 for science).
2. A lot of students don't particularly test well. That's why there is an increased focus in Education for providing alternate assessment.
3. None of the tests actually matter for the students except for the one they have to pass in order to graduate. Students in MA consider the 6th, 7th, and 8th grade MCAS exams a joke because they don't count. As a teacher, I don't want my evaluation determined by students who just answer every question "C" so they can grab a nap.
4. I happen to teach a subject that isn't tested at my school (Chemistry) because all of the students pass the Bio MCAS. How would you evaluate me based on standardized testing data, when I have no such data to provide?
Can anyone deny the benefits that teachers get? The average worker works something like 230 days a year including vacation time. The average teacher works something like 150 days a year + vacation. That is 65% of the work days of the average private sector worker, and they make on average over 70k in Chicago compared to the average person who makes I think around 50k. They also get to retire with huge pensions of 70% of their wages, and are almost impossible to fire. They work less than 8 hour days (only required to be there 7 hours I believe?) and have a paid free period and paid lunch every day.
Again, teachers have an important job and they are payed well for what they do. I think the above benefits are necessary to attract good teachers. But I don't buy into the line that they are immensely overworked and underpaid.
Just to correct a couple of things:
1. The school year is 185 days for teachers, not 150.
2. If by paid lunch, you mean that I get 20 minutes to scarf down whatever food (which I have to pay an increased price for) I can, then sure.
3. The teachers pay their own pension costs, though the city of Chicago does offer a slight differential to compensate so they can be competitive.
4. If you think that a 1 hour prep period every day is adequate for me to do everything I need to do, you are sorely mistaken. During my prep period, I need to attend IEP/504/parent meetings, set up labs (including making and standardizing all of the solutions and unknowns), grade papers (Even if it takes me 10 minutes to grade a lab report, that's 12.5 hours of grading for a single lab... and that doesn't count tests/quizzes), and oh by the way... make lesson plans for my classes. For me, a 9-10 hour day (and 4-5 hours on the weekend) is the norm, not the exception.
Indeed, can't relate that closely to #4 with those I'm intimately familiar with - but the bro-in-law just started working as a professor this year, and visiting him on his "vacation time" most of the time involved him taking us out somewhere and grabbing his laptop in the middle of things to get an hour of work on his class plans done in the midst of us swimming or doing karaoke or whatever.
Can't imagine how he'll have any time beyond classes and prep once they're successful at having a kid.
Fine. If we can all agree that teachers are only looking out for their own interests and then your arguments stands that they are being completely rational.
It is also completely rational for a company to pursue a monopoly and screw over the consumer in a capitalistic society.
We as a society however reserve the right to reject this reasoning as we often value the consumer or the student above pure capitalistic principle. It may be rational for teachers to want higher pay, no accountability, and huge roadblocks to firing any of them. It is also rational for us to tell them that they don't deserve these benefits and push back against them.
So do teachers have a special responsibility to sell us their labor at below market value?
3. The teachers pay their own pension costs, though the city of Chicago does offer a slight differential to compensate so they can be competitive.
Just wanted to note, the pension issue in the CPS is a much larger issue than most people realize. The CPS pension fund is one of the worst pension funds in the country, underfunded by almost $30B at this point -- or 60%.
It is going to be one of the first major pension funds in this country to literally run out of money, and is being watched closely by a lot of financial analysts. The current position of the curator is essentially "state law guarantee the pensions, if we run out of money, we're just going to send the bill to Springfield". Many in Springfield have a different take on the law.
This might actually be the first shot in what's going to be a long ugly battle over who ends up eating the bill. Either teachers take a cut, or taxpayers make up the liability. At their current funding level there is no other alternative -- there simply isn't any fund that can produce the needed revenue stream given their current assets.
Considering Chi-town (like almost all the major cities) is out of the recession as a region that's relatively moot and absolutely even then for the areas I'm familiar with considering they've had multiple years of raises put off already.
Average MINIMUM raise my company did for salaried employees even for untrained labor type positions like cashiers was 8% annually until you hit a cap at which point it was a flat $2k/year.
Now we did rate in the Top 10 employers in the nation, so my opinion might be a little bit biased with 15 years of history with Wegman's where we were Top 10'ing for the majority of my years. (and I don't think we were big enough for them to count us previous)
So do teachers have a special responsibility to sell us their labor at below market value?
Nah, but it was already established in _'s article that money wasn't the issue.
Quote from "Chuu" »
The current position of the curator is essentially "state law guarantee the pensions, if we run out of money, we're just going to send the bill to Springfield". Many in Springfield have a different take on the law.
This just made my night Going in the sig!
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"Proving god exists isn't hard. Proving god is God is the tricky part" - Roommate
I heard the reason they turned it down is that the 16% raise is going to be performance-based. Washington DC went through something similar a few years ago. The teachers were offered a salary of $100k as long as they received a positive performance appraisal. They rejected the offer because they would have to actually start doing their jobs.
I heard the reason they turned it down is that the 16% raise is going to be performance-based. Washington DC went through something similar a few years ago. The teachers were offered a salary of $100k as long as they received a positive performance appraisal. They rejected the offer because they would have to actually start doing their jobs.
Or you know, when merit based systems are put into place, it forces the bad teachers to cheat =/
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Truth has a liberal bias.
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Still, as a union based machine, it's not many of the individual teachers' faults.
Here's the first article on Google which actually criticizes your dichotomy about "too much money"/"Give us more money!" from the teachers, because that is NOT why they are on strike. I find it hilarious that you actually exemplify the exact thing the teachers union criticized about the portrayal of their efforts.
http://blogs.desmoinesregister.com/dmr/index.php/2012/09/11/what-the-chicago-teachers-union-strike-means-to-teachers/
A CNN article that also explains it's not about money. http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/10/us/illinois-chicago-teachers-strike/index.html
Re: People misusing the term Vanilla to describe a flying, unleash (sometimes trample) critter.
Turning down the raise makes it look bad for the teachers and the union, but thats not the point of the strike.
I was with the article with regards to the standardized test. They lost me with the air conditioning argument. My school was one of the top in our state, and there was air conditioning in maybe a quarter of the building (i.e. the library and computer labs). Standardized tests are a crumby evaluation method, but I'd go tell them to pound sand on the work environment complaints.
Edit: Had not realized bocephus's bit about the crumby supplies and dangerous students. A bit of a conundrum. Would it possibly have made for a better PR move if they opted to forgo a raise, and use the savings to update/upgrade the schools?
But that's how I feel about the cesspool that is public ed in this country anyway (I just don't normally blame the teachers).
I do think there needs to be more accountability. Imagine a private sector employee upset because their boss gave them progress reports that evaluated their performance. But teachers don't think they should have any part of this accountability. The problem is that there are so many legitimate problems with student performance equating to teacher pay or performance that it makes it a hard issue to solve.
Premise II: "Power {tends to} Corrupt" ~ Baron Acton, 1887
Conclusion: "Knowledge Corrupts"
Fine. If we can all agree that teachers are only looking out for their own interests and then your arguments stands that they are being completely rational.
It is also completely rational for a company to pursue a monopoly and screw over the consumer in a capitalistic society.
We as a society however reserve the right to reject this reasoning as we often value the consumer or the student above pure capitalistic principle. It may be rational for teachers to want higher pay, no accountability, and huge roadblocks to firing any of them. It is also rational for us to tell them that they don't deserve these benefits and push back against them.
Yes, the pay issue is being addressed...but what about huge class sizes and all the other problems effecting the children? Should the teachers just say "Well, we got what we wanted. To hell with the kids...back to work!"
Again, teachers have an important job and they are payed well for what they do. I think the above benefits are necessary to attract good teachers. But I don't buy into the line that they are immensely overworked and underpaid.
Private Sector unions work because of the self interest of the workers to get higher wages and benefits being counterbalanced by the self interest of the management to make more money.
Public Sector unions fail because the self interest of the workers is only counterbalanced by the self interest of the management (Politicians) of being elected, if the unions prove to be soo powerful that they can greatly help the politician stay in power the politician will be all to willing to in his self interest cave to their demands.
“All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.”- FDR
As it's already been stated, it's not a blanket 16% raise... it's 4% per year for 4 years. Also interesting is that the city of Chicago cancelled their 4% raise last year, so if I were in Chicago I wouldn't trust the city either.
In addition, the union agrees to the money AND the longer school day (which is why the larger raise). What they don't agree to is the new evaluation system that is being put into place, with its high focus on standardized test results. They don't agree to this because standardized test results are a terrible indicator of academic progress for a few reasons:
1. These tests are rather grueling. The MCAS (Massachusetts test) for English is a THREE DAY EXAM! Imagine how you would feel on the third day of testing, knowing that you have another 4 days of testing to go later in the year (2 for math, 2 for science).
2. A lot of students don't particularly test well. That's why there is an increased focus in Education for providing alternate assessment.
3. None of the tests actually matter for the students except for the one they have to pass in order to graduate. Students in MA consider the 6th, 7th, and 8th grade MCAS exams a joke because they don't count. As a teacher, I don't want my evaluation determined by students who just answer every question "C" so they can grab a nap.
4. I happen to teach a subject that isn't tested at my school (Chemistry) because all of the students pass the Bio MCAS. How would you evaluate me based on standardized testing data, when I have no such data to provide?
Just to correct a couple of things:
1. The school year is 185 days for teachers, not 150.
2. If by paid lunch, you mean that I get 20 minutes to scarf down whatever food (which I have to pay an increased price for) I can, then sure.
3. The teachers pay their own pension costs, though the city of Chicago does offer a slight differential to compensate so they can be competitive.
4. If you think that a 1 hour prep period every day is adequate for me to do everything I need to do, you are sorely mistaken. During my prep period, I need to attend IEP/504/parent meetings, set up labs (including making and standardizing all of the solutions and unknowns), grade papers (Even if it takes me 10 minutes to grade a lab report, that's 12.5 hours of grading for a single lab... and that doesn't count tests/quizzes), and oh by the way... make lesson plans for my classes. For me, a 9-10 hour day (and 4-5 hours on the weekend) is the norm, not the exception.
Can't imagine how he'll have any time beyond classes and prep once they're successful at having a kid.
Re: People misusing the term Vanilla to describe a flying, unleash (sometimes trample) critter.
During a recession? Really now?
So do teachers have a special responsibility to sell us their labor at below market value?
Just wanted to note, the pension issue in the CPS is a much larger issue than most people realize. The CPS pension fund is one of the worst pension funds in the country, underfunded by almost $30B at this point -- or 60%.
It is going to be one of the first major pension funds in this country to literally run out of money, and is being watched closely by a lot of financial analysts. The current position of the curator is essentially "state law guarantee the pensions, if we run out of money, we're just going to send the bill to Springfield". Many in Springfield have a different take on the law.
This might actually be the first shot in what's going to be a long ugly battle over who ends up eating the bill. Either teachers take a cut, or taxpayers make up the liability. At their current funding level there is no other alternative -- there simply isn't any fund that can produce the needed revenue stream given their current assets.
Considering Chi-town (like almost all the major cities) is out of the recession as a region that's relatively moot and absolutely even then for the areas I'm familiar with considering they've had multiple years of raises put off already.
Average MINIMUM raise my company did for salaried employees even for untrained labor type positions like cashiers was 8% annually until you hit a cap at which point it was a flat $2k/year.
Now we did rate in the Top 10 employers in the nation, so my opinion might be a little bit biased with 15 years of history with Wegman's where we were Top 10'ing for the majority of my years. (and I don't think we were big enough for them to count us previous)
Re: People misusing the term Vanilla to describe a flying, unleash (sometimes trample) critter.
Nah, but it was already established in _'s article that money wasn't the issue.
This just made my night Going in the sig!
Or you know, when merit based systems are put into place, it forces the bad teachers to cheat =/