Negotiations between the Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union continue, with teachers on strike for a second day. According to the
New York Times:
... school officials have said the only unresolved issues are how to evaluate teachers and whether teaching openings should automatically go to laid-off teachers. They say they have made significant concessions in contract talks, including what would amount to a 16 percent pay increase for teachers over four years.
But union leaders say there continues to be an array of differences, including benefits, raises based on experience level, the lack of air-conditioning in classrooms and training days for teachers. The school system faces what is projected to be a $1 billion deficit in the system’s operating budget next year.
The distance between school district management and the teachers on teacher evaluations is a product of the push by the Chicago schools and Mayor Rahm Emanuel (as part of a broader national push) toward education based more and more on standardized testing, with teacher evaluations depending heavily on student scores. The
Washington Post's invaluable Valerie Strauss
explains:
A number of states have passed laws — including Illinois — that require teacher evaluations to be based in some large measure on their students standardized test scores. Assessment experts have said repeatedly this is a bad idea — including a group of Illinois researchers and academics who sent an open letter last March to Emanuel school officials warning against implementing a teacher evaluation system based on standardized test scores. But Emanuel is insisting anyway, and in fact wants to the scores to count for more than the state law says.
Teacher training? As I wrote
Monday, a school system that decides to bring in a new curriculum and evaluate teachers in a new way yet does not increase teacher training is a school system that is looking for excuses to penalize teachers, not educate students more effectively. And a school system in a city that gets damned hot in the summer that drags its feet on air-conditioning, keeping kids in sweltering classrooms, is not putting students' ability to learn high on its priority list.
But what if the Chicago Public Schools just don't have the money for air-conditioning and teacher training? That makes this an austerity debate. The United States, this, the Greatest Nation in the History of Ever, does not have enough money to educate poor kids, is the line. In response, we could look at the fact that the Chicago Public Schools budget has been shifting funds to favor charter schools and special programs over traditional public schools, and that the school district's central office has increased the number of administrators paid more than $150,000 from 14 in 2010 to 30 today, while cutting staff overall. But while those are interesting tells about management's priorities within the school system, this is a bigger issue. It's the outcome of government starved at all levels by the refusal to make the rich pay their fair share, by corporations demanding and getting tax breaks to create jobs even as the jobs they create pay so little that they don't begin to make up for the revenues lost through those corporate tax breaks.
This fight is about Chicago teachers and students, but it's much bigger. It's about how we educate—do we teach to the test and evaluate teachers by the test, regardless of whether the test measures anything about education or teacher performance reliably or accurately? Do we vilify teachers while giving big contracts to standardized testing and curriculum companies? And it's about our economic priorities writ large—kids or corporations? Teachers or testing companies?
Let Chicago teachers know you're standing with them as they fight for better schools and educational justice.