StrangeSox

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 04:01 PM) 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.

QUOTE (MurcieOne @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 03:55 PM) 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? Nobody questions that the evaluation system needs to be updated. 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.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 03:59 PM) 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.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 03:53 PM) Yep, I am completely unfamiliar with teachers. I only spent 21 years of life in schools, spent over $250k on education. I have no experience to say, this teacher is competent and that teacher is not. Im sure that it would be impossible to find 3-5 ex-educators who have no relation to CTU/CPS who live in Chicago, who would be impartial. Right from your proposal: Mentor Teachers will be CPS employees. Why do we need conflicts of interest? Why cant we just get impartial people? You act like Im suggesting to hire a random person off the street. I just want people who are not connected to CPS or CTU. 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.

Not sure. Can you source your data for the Chicago per-pupil costs and the private per-pupil costs?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 03:50 PM) And they want it to be impossible to do anything based on those evaluations. Because we don't really know what's being measured nor how precisely nor if it's the best indicator of teacher performance and merit.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 03:49 PM) In 2010, the top funding per student of any state/territory in the country was Washington DC at over $18,000 per kid. Anyone want to tell me that DC has the best students in the country? Chicago is already spending $15,800 per student, per year. The overlapping private schools are under $9000 per kid in Chicago. Private schools do not have to take special needs children that substantially drive up per-pupil costs. That's one way they get their numbers to look good in comparison.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 03:47 PM) 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? I think that's their position: they are open to using these metrics, just not at the (eventually) 50% level they'll reach by the end of the proposed contract.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 03:44 PM) Its not easy to quantify a good teacher versus a bad teacher, but its like pornography, I know them when I see them. I have dealt with plenty of teacher grievances and I have won for many teachers who I would not trust to teach my cat. I dont know if we should be pursuing policies to allow the administration to fire older teachers and hire new ones. I do know that it seems backwards to simply say more experience is always better. I think that since the taxpayers are footing the bills, that there should be an independent evaluation, not by peers, not by administrators, but by average humans who are actually paying the freight. That doesnt seem to unreasonable to me. I disagree completely that "taxpayers" should have any direct input on the evaluation of teachers beyond the normal interactions with teachers and administration. Having non-experts who are not familiar with the field judge your performance seems really unreasonable.

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 can't find a CTU proposal for teacher evaluation, but the concerns were discussed on Chicago Tonight (no I won't shut up about it, they were good segments!)

QUOTE (SoxFan1 @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 03:29 PM) This is from another teach friend of mine (but who does not work for CPS and is not on strike): "I eat, breath, and sleep teaching. Love that i'm living my dream but I'm physically and mentally exhausted. Thinking of just moving into my classroom since I don't leave until 5:30 anyways. The sad life of a first year teacher." 5:30!?!?!? Wow. That must be rough. How early do they get there? edit: 5:30 for a first-year teacher (if they're done with class around 3) doesn't seem that late from my anecdotal knowledge

QUOTE (CrimsonWeltall @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 03:27 PM) What do they WANT for teacher evaluations? They don't want to be judged on student outcomes. They don't want to be judged by administrators. They don't want to be tied too strongly to unproven standardized tests that may or may not accurately measure specific metrics of "student outcomes" and have margins of error of +/- 50%. Thanks to the Chicago Tonight segments, I know that part of it would be peer evaluations. I believe both sides agree on that and having the standardized testing be a part of it as well, it's just a matter of how much and how rigidly. I'm not opposed to teacher evaluations, but first you have to show that you're actually evaluating what you think you are and why that's the most appropriate thing to evaluate. For instance, the new Common Core testing evaluates how much knowledge a student gains in a year but doesn't really assess cognitive or learning ability enhancement. Is 1-year knowledge gain a good metric? Is it a good metric in all schools? Is it being accurately measured? Before my performance was 50% tied to that, I'd want those all firmly answered.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 03:21 PM) Crab standing on the head of other crab drowning mentality. If Chicago hires back those teachers at their very high salary rate, then Chicago cant hire newer teachers at a lower rate, which means that you have larger class sizes. Why dont we hire people based on merit/cost? Why is that such a bad concept? Whose merit? Is cost the best metric? Should we really be pursuing policies that allow administrators to fire older, experienced teachers and replace them with younger ones? To get that sort of replacement effect, wouldn't you need to seriously drive down the average wages of teachers? That doesn't seem like the best way to get a competent and capable workforce. I don't know their exact opposition, but I'm guessing that they fear administrators using lay-offs as a way to get around tenure protection. "lay off" a bunch of teachers, then only hire some of them back while replacing them with other people. I don't know what you mean here. The CPS is proposing one way to evaluate teachers. The CTU feels that it's too heavily tied to unproven standardized testing methods that, at least according to one of the Chicago Tonight guests, has a 50% margin of error. I sure as hell wouldn't want my "merit" being based on such an imprecise tool.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 03:11 PM) lol come on now, you cant have it both ways. You cant tell me the whole system is f***ed and that we are underfunding education. But the main issue is only barriers of entry for our job. Let me just be clear, I hate barriers of entry, I absolutely hate them. My job has them, I think they are unfair and bulls***. If it was up to me, there would be no bar and no accredited law school requirement. But believe me, a thousand lawyers will chime in telling you how its in the interest of the public that lawyers are trained, etc. BULLs***, its in the interest of lawyers who have jobs to prevent others from taking their jobs. They're not striking over job-entry barriers. Their #1 concern is teacher evaluations, and their #2 concern is to get already-tenured teachers who were laid off due to the numerous school closings re-hired ahead of others. I'm not saying that their other concerns are a smoke-screen, but the big issue funding stuff is clearly not what's on the table in these negotiations.

Should point out again, as ptact has said several times now, the main issues aren't even budgetary. However, thanks to the SB 7 law passed earlier this year, it's illegal for CTU to strike for non-economic reasons, so they have to play that aspect up. The main issues of concern are teacher evaluations and the re-hiring of laid-off teachers.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 03:03 PM) How has this strike brought broader focus? I havent heard Karen Lewis one time say: "The real problem here is the state budget not Chicago. And its not Rahms fault that the state of Illinois isnt properly funding the school system. I feel bad for Rahm not getting the right funding." The CTU seems pretty crappy at messaging.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 03:01 PM) /points up Who here is saying education shouldnt receive a higher priority? Education receives the priority it receives right now. CTU believes it should receive more of a priority than it does. Raises the issues up for discussion? I don't claim to know the CTU's long-term strategy, but I don't know what choice they really have besides signing the offered contract that they strongly disagreed with or striking.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 02:58 PM) Okay great. [snip] All great points, but a strike action (much like a protest) can bring broader issues into focus. If this isn't the right time to strike, when would be? Should they work under the previous contract for another year, with none of their issues and concerns addressed? Could they even do that, given all of the changes?

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 02:50 PM) Okay sure, take away the administrator raises, lets be generous and say that is $200k a year. Now what. The problem is that each of these schools, teachers are out for themselves. Do you think that Whitney Young wants to give up money to another school? The CTU proposes a variety of ways to increase educational funding. You may not agree, but they are there. The school budget isn't a zero-sum game. The city and state budgets are, but that's the point: education should receive a higher priority. I don't think they thought that line all the way through.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 02:49 PM) With all the tax, service fee and various increases in this city/state over the past few years, you'd think they'd have made a dent in their budgetary holes...but they haven't. Taxes in Chicago are insane. Name the service, taxes/fees have gone up on it drastically over the last few years, including property taxes...yet nothing has changed. So I'm pretty f***ing sick and tired of people bringing up further tax increases. How about you f***ing pay them since you want them so bad. They propose shifting state and local budget priorities, return of TIF money (?) to local areas and a more progressive state tax scheme for the top 5%.

You can look at page 33 of CTU's plan for better schools to see their answers on funding. You can disagree with them policy-wise on raising or shifting taxes in Chicago or on city and state resource allocation, but you can't pretend that the school budget is some fixed, impossible-to-change number. If we want to prioritize education over some other program or service, we can. There is not necessarily a direct trade-off required between classroom and school resources and teachers' wages.

I did find this on CTU's daily strike flyer: Not sure about the strategy of telling the public how little you matter will work out...

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 02:28 PM) The solution of: more money is simply not a solution in this economic climate. Part of what they are fighting for is more equitable distribution of resources among CPS schools, so "more money" is a realistic option for many of the struggling schools. I believe they could also shift money from other parts of Chicago's budget or even from other parts of the CPS budget (like, say, recent administrator raises). There is nothing that says they only have exactly $x dollars and that this amount is completely inflexible. edit: I'm looking to see if I can find something about proposed budget or funding from CTU. The above is my supposition. If you started college with 1.5 years worth of credit, you definitely benefited. Hell, the fact that you were able to go to college shows that you benefited from better schools.

QUOTE (flippedoutpunk @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 02:07 PM) We already have a freakin water bottle tax. I think they're running out of ideas for ways to tax us Chicagoans. That was a waste/littering thing, like the DC plastic bag tax that drastically cut down on the number of plastic bags winding up in the Potomac.

QUOTE (bmags @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 02:03 PM) Surely the recall election can put an end to all this yeah? They couldn't even deliver all of their members, and were terrible at delivering union households. 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.