Talk Elections

General Politics => U.S. General Discussion => Topic started by: krazen1211 on February 18, 2012, 07:24:33 PM



Title: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: krazen1211 on February 18, 2012, 07:24:33 PM
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/education/ct-met-ctu-proposals-0217-20120217,0,2167323,full.story

The Chicago Teachers Union is asking for raises amounting to 30 percent over the next two years, the opening salvo in heated contract negotiations with school officials who are implementing a longer school day across Chicago Public Schools next school year.

Some more facts:

1. Chicago school districts perform lousy.

http://nationsreportcard.gov/reading_2009/district_g8.asp

2. Chicago teacher salaries average $75k salary.

http://www.cps.edu/about_cps/at-a-glance/pages/stats_and_facts.aspx

3. Chicago public schools spend a massive whopping $13,078 per student per year.

4. The Chicago School day runs from 9 to 2:45.

5. The Chicago public school teachers get 4% raises annually.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/cityhall/4852856-418/chicago-public-school-students-your-day-will-grow-emanuel-says.html





No wonder the city and the state are both broke when they're being looted like this.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: freepcrusher on February 18, 2012, 09:07:14 PM
have you ever done anything productive aside from incessantly ranting and whining?


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Filuwaúrdjan on February 18, 2012, 09:10:23 PM
Did a teacher once set your teddy bear on fire or something?


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: TheDeadFlagBlues on February 18, 2012, 09:11:42 PM
Are you still mad that you failed Algebra 2?


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: World politics is up Schmitt creek on February 18, 2012, 09:12:31 PM
I'm sorry that beautiful English teacher turned out to be a lesbian. I really am.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: krazen1211 on February 18, 2012, 09:46:16 PM
Did a teacher once set your teddy bear on fire or something?

New Jersey property taxes are of course outrageous primarily due to the rampant spending on the government education industry complex.

So maybe a thousand teddy bears or so.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: freepcrusher on February 18, 2012, 09:47:57 PM
Did a teacher once set your teddy bear on fire or something?

New Jersey property taxes are of course outrageous primarily due to the rampant spending on the government education industry complex.

So maybe a thousand teddy bears or so.

Howie Jarvis, is that you?


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Filuwaúrdjan on February 18, 2012, 09:49:38 PM

lol


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Sbane on February 18, 2012, 09:52:49 PM
Krazen's obsession notwithstanding, you guys really think teachers should get a 30% raise? Maybe they can at least tie it to performance?


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Torie on February 18, 2012, 10:15:37 PM
Krazen's obsession notwithstanding, you guys really think teachers should get a 30% raise? Maybe they can at least tie it to performance?

If the worst 30% get fired, the best 30% can get a 30% raise.  The way this industry is run just drives me nuts, but then you, and presumably everyone else around here, already knew that.

The proposal on its face of course is ludicrous. Let's reward failure.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Хahar 🤔 on February 18, 2012, 10:26:27 PM
Krazen's obsession notwithstanding, you guys really think teachers should get a 30% raise? Maybe they can at least tie it to performance?

What is "performance"?


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Marokai Backbeat on February 18, 2012, 10:32:26 PM
Krazen's obsession notwithstanding, you guys really think teachers should get a 30% raise? Maybe they can at least tie it to performance?

In this case, no, I don't think they should get the raise, but I don't buy the "pay by performance" argument that much, partially because of what Xahar said, what it's difficult to agree on what "performance" is anyway, but also because it's not always fair to single out the teacher because of the nature of the work.

But aren't all jobs essentially "merit" based? If you are a bad factory worker, you get fired. If you suck at flipping burgers at Burger King, you get fired. The idea that you can't fire a teacher because her students aren't learning is absurd.

I suppose you could consider them such, but there's a difference between educational positions and flipping burgers. In the latter scenario, pretty much everything is provided to you. You have co-workers to rely on, the patties to cook, and a stove to cook them on, the tools to do it, and people to serve them to who are willing to eat.

In the former, the teacher may not have willing students to deal with. The teacher might be from an inner-city school with alot of cultural issues, or a poor school that needs repairs, or a school that lacks the necessary resources to compete with all the others. While the Burger King employee has everything there with him, it's almost entirely about his or her performance, while the teacher relies on everything that may not always be there. So there is more to blame for failing grades than just the teacher.

To make the burger flipper and the teacher on equal footing, you would have to throw a number of cogs in burger boy's machine. Unwilling customers, defective stoves, lack of burgers in stock, employees that are unreliable, etc.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Snowstalker Mk. II on February 18, 2012, 10:37:44 PM
The proposed pay raise is dumb. Merit pay, as at least 2 conservative teachers of mine have explained, is even dumber. This idea of teaching to a standardized test is ineffective and useless.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Rooney on February 18, 2012, 10:38:22 PM
Of course teachers are overpaid. I spend all day around them and can assure you they hardly deserve their salaries. I educate students who threaten to beat me up and have to deal with countless state and federal SPED mandates and I can assure you that I am overpaid.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Sbane on February 18, 2012, 11:06:53 PM
Krazen's obsession notwithstanding, you guys really think teachers should get a 30% raise? Maybe they can at least tie it to performance?

In this case, no, I don't think they should get the raise, but I don't buy the "pay by performance" argument that much, partially because of what Xahar said, what it's difficult to agree on what "performance" is anyway, but also because it's not always fair to single out the teacher because of the nature of the work.

But aren't all jobs essentially "merit" based? If you are a bad factory worker, you get fired. If you suck at flipping burgers at Burger King, you get fired. The idea that you can't fire a teacher because her students aren't learning is absurd.

I suppose you could consider them such, but there's a difference between educational positions and flipping burgers. In the latter scenario, pretty much everything is provided to you. You have co-workers to rely on, the patties to cook, and a stove to cook them on, the tools to do it, and people to serve them to who are willing to eat.

In the former, the teacher may not have willing students to deal with. The teacher might be from an inner-city school with alot of cultural issues, or a poor school that needs repairs, or a school that lacks the necessary resources to compete with all the others. While the Burger King employee has everything there with him, it's almost entirely about his or her performance, while the teacher relies on everything that may not always be there. So there is more to blame for failing grades than just the teacher.

To make the burger flipper and the teacher on equal footing, you would have to throw a number of cogs in burger boy's machine. Unwilling customers, defective stoves, lack of burgers in stock, employees that are unreliable, etc.

Yeah, it's not that simple. Agreed. But I would look at maybe measuring teachers within schools? Obviously it is unfair to compare teachers in the suburbs with teachers in the inner cities. I just don't like how all the teachers get paid the same regardless of what they teach and how they do compared to other teachers teaching the same subject in their school. We all know there are good teachers and there are bad teachers. We know this from our experiences, don't we? Hell, a lot of the problem could be solved if some teachers could be fired from time to time, but it's not like the teacher's union will allow that. Or rewarding a young teacher who cares about teaching and is inspiring his students as compared to some old lazy ass who doesn't care much but still makes way more than that young teacher. That's another big no no from the teacher's union. When a self described communist (my AP US history teacher) has a problem with the teacher's union, you know there are some issues.

Also Science and Math teachers should be paid more. I know this will offend many people, but it must be so. Teachers who teach AP classes should be paid more as well. I know this is done in affluent school districts to a certain extent but is it done in poorer school districts?


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: krazen1211 on February 19, 2012, 12:20:36 AM
Of course teachers are overpaid. I spend all day around them and can assure you they hardly deserve their salaries. I educate students who threaten to beat me up and have to deal with countless state and federal SPED mandates and I can assure you that I am overpaid.

The numbers clearly indicate so. $75k + lavish pension and benefits for a 30 hour week!


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: bgwah on February 19, 2012, 12:36:48 AM
I did some Googling and every number I found was lower than $75k, which your source says is from 2008. This 2011 article (http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-06-16/news/ct-met-cps-teachers-0617-20110616_1_teacher-with-five-years-cps-teachers-average-teacher-salary), for example, says the number is 69k. Perhaps the source you cited is adding other forms of compensation to the salary. Generous either way, though.

And 30% is of course ridiculous, but that's how bargaining works.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: World politics is up Schmitt creek on February 19, 2012, 12:39:50 AM
I'm not sure several of you really understand the intensity of what a lot of teachers do (Rooney does, obviously, but krazen's fixating on the length of the workweek is...chimerical, I would say).


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: they don't love you like i love you on February 19, 2012, 12:45:13 AM
Now's a good time to remind everyone of one of the most ignorant and idiotic things ever posted on the forum:


The standard is quite obvious. The productivity of a teacher can reasonably be measured by the number of students one teachers. For some reason that number keeps declining.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Fuzzybigfoot on February 19, 2012, 12:51:01 AM
Now's a good time to remind everyone of one of the most ignorant and idiotic things ever posted on the forum:


The standard is quite obvious. The productivity of a teacher can reasonably be measured by the number of students one teachers. For some reason that number keeps declining.

lol


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Marokai Backbeat on February 19, 2012, 01:03:12 AM
Now's a good time to remind everyone of one of the most ignorant and idiotic things ever posted on the forum:


The standard is quite obvious. The productivity of a teacher can reasonably be measured by the number of students one teachers. For some reason that number keeps declining.

A George W. Bush level of eloquence.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자) on February 19, 2012, 01:20:27 AM

Because of course assessing student work and making out lesson plans takes absolutely no time at all.

Classroom time is important, but an effective teacher ends up spending at least one hour outside the classroom preparing for what happens inside the classroom.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Хahar 🤔 on February 19, 2012, 03:51:23 AM
Also Science and Math teachers should be paid more. I know this will offend many people, but it must be so.

Why must it be so? Or is it so self-evident that it needs no explanation?


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Sbane on February 19, 2012, 04:12:34 AM
Also Science and Math teachers should be paid more. I know this will offend many people, but it must be so.

Why must it be so? Or is it so self-evident that it needs no explanation?

Because they can many times find a job that pays them more? How do you get someone with a masters or PhD in Chemistry to teach AP Chem when you will only pay them 40k? At the same time some old timer who teaches computer skills or some other crap gets paid 80k just because they have been around for much longer.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: opebo on February 19, 2012, 04:23:11 AM
I'm completely befuddled as to what krazen's on about here.  krazen, 75,000 is a middle class salary. 


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Tetro Kornbluth on February 19, 2012, 08:35:16 AM
Krazen's obsession notwithstanding, you guys really think teachers should get a 30% raise? Maybe they can at least tie it to performance?

What is "performance"?

Again, can someone please answer this question...


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: muon2 on February 19, 2012, 08:54:35 AM
I'm completely befuddled as to what krazen's on about here.  krazen, 75,000 is a middle class salary. 

75K sits in the second highest quintile that goes from about 60 to 100K according the 2010 data from the Census.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: memphis on February 19, 2012, 09:39:10 AM
Krazen's obsession notwithstanding, you guys really think teachers should get a 30% raise? Maybe they can at least tie it to performance?

If the worst 30% get fired, the best 30% can get a 30% raise.  The way this industry is run just drives me nuts, but then you, and presumably everyone else around here, already knew that.

The proposal on its face of course is ludicrous. Let's reward failure.
I doubt very much this best 30% (however defined) wants a 30% increase in work load. That would put average class size at nearly 50.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: memphis on February 19, 2012, 09:42:37 AM
I'm completely befuddled as to what krazen's on about here.  krazen, 75,000 is a middle class salary. 

75K sits in the second highest quintile that goes from about 60 to 100K according the 2010 data from the Census.

Among people with advanced degrees living in one the nation's largest cities?
And just last year, the GOP was saying that $250k/year was middle-class. Make up your minds already.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: krazen1211 on February 19, 2012, 10:52:13 AM

Because of course assessing student work and making out lesson plans takes absolutely no time at all.

Classroom time is important, but an effective teacher ends up spending at least one hour outside the classroom preparing for what happens inside the classroom.

Of course, the Chicago Public schools aren't really composed of effective teachers based on their NAEP results.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: krazen1211 on February 19, 2012, 10:53:26 AM
I did some Googling and every number I found was lower than $75k, which your source says is from 2008. This 2011 article (http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-06-16/news/ct-met-cps-teachers-0617-20110616_1_teacher-with-five-years-cps-teachers-average-teacher-salary), for example, says the number is 69k. Perhaps the source you cited is adding other forms of compensation to the salary. Generous either way, though.

And 30% is of course ridiculous, but that's how bargaining works.

Well, you can either believe the Chicago Public Schools on their own compensation, or not. Up to you.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Torie on February 19, 2012, 11:04:08 AM
Krazen's obsession notwithstanding, you guys really think teachers should get a 30% raise? Maybe they can at least tie it to performance?

What is "performance"?

Again, can someone please answer this question...

It is about measuring student progress from point A to B, given the type of student in the class. And yes, you have to test the students to measure it. Evaluation the performance of anyone has a subjective element of course, but most of us are so measured in our careers, and some of us advance, and some of us do not, and some of us are fired. Any other formula is a recipe for mediocrity or worse. You simply will not get the best and brightest to teach if everyone is paid basically the same, at a middle class salary. The best need to be paid much more, and the worst not allowed to stay in the classroom for long. You do that, and the profession will have much more prestige, and attract more motivated and talented individuals. And we need to start with the inner city schools, and do it ASAP. What we are doing there is just outrageous, and immoral. To me, it is the civil rights issue of the 21st century.

It is just so freaking obvious really.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Badger on February 19, 2012, 11:31:20 AM
I'm completely befuddled as to what krazen's on about here.  krazen, 75,000 is a middle class salary. 

75K sits in the second highest quintile that goes from about 60 to 100K according the 2010 data from the Census.

Not in chicago my friend.

 It always seems like these horrors of unionized teacher stories come from a metro area like nyc or chi twon where thecost of living is MUCH higher than normal. It serves to distort the middle-class standard of living such teacher's earn and likewise project it as a false 'coming soon to your community' warning to the rest of middle america.

Effecive ploy. Misleading, but effective.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: © tweed on February 19, 2012, 12:06:37 PM
child poverty is at about 1/3 in Chicago.  let's talk about that instead.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자) on February 19, 2012, 01:29:35 PM

Because of course assessing student work and making out lesson plans takes absolutely no time at all.

Classroom time is important, but an effective teacher ends up spending at least one hour outside the classroom preparing for what happens inside the classroom.

Of course, the Chicago Public schools aren't really composed of effective teachers based on their NAEP results.

Why did I know you were going to make another jab about the teachers rather than admit that your idea of them having only a 30-hour work week was ludicrous nonsense.

I'll grant that many school districts fail miserably when it comes to hiring good teachers, but the solution to that problem is not to make the pay worse so that only bad teachers are willing to take the job.  This is not the 1950's krazen.  Educated females have far more options in employment than teaching and nursing, so there is no longer a pool of competent cheap labor for those professions.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Tetro Kornbluth on February 19, 2012, 04:46:08 PM
Krazen's obsession notwithstanding, you guys really think teachers should get a 30% raise? Maybe they can at least tie it to performance?

What is "performance"?

Again, can someone please answer this question...

Quote
It is about measuring student progress from point A to B

How do you do that?

Quote
given the type of student in the class.

How do you 'divide' students into types? I wish for specifics here. Not overly large liberal-capitalist-moralistic statements about 'performance' (or at least, not just those)

Quote
And yes, you have to test the students to measure it. Evaluation the performance of anyone has a subjective element of course, but most of us are so measured in our careers, and some of us advance, and some of us do not, and some of us are fired.

What type of testing? How regular? What are these students being tested on?

Quote
Any other formula is a recipe for mediocrity or worse. You simply will not get the best and brightest to teach if everyone is paid basically the same, at a middle class salary. The best need to be paid much more, and the worst not allowed to stay in the classroom for long.

So basically what you want is for teachers to be paid depending on how you well their students do at tests. In other words, you will reward people financially by gaming the test system. Yeah, can't see any problems here....

Quote
You do that, and the profession will have much more prestige, and attract more motivated and talented individuals. And we need to start with the inner city schools, and do it ASAP. What we are doing there is just outrageous, and immoral. To me, it is the civil rights issue of the 21st century.

And yet you seem to think the best way to do this is to launch a campaign against teachers' organizations (otherwise known as "unions"), demonizing "bad teachers" and often teachers in general and portraying them as parasites on the state (well, perhaps not you, but this is where the GOP rhetoric is heading). Yep, can't see any problem here....

Quote
It is just so freaking obvious really.

You want to replace learning with testing (which proves ability... to do tests) and in the process destroy teachers' independence all in the name of their benefit and prestige. Got you.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: muon2 on February 19, 2012, 04:49:19 PM
I'm completely befuddled as to what krazen's on about here.  krazen, 75,000 is a middle class salary. 

75K sits in the second highest quintile that goes from about 60 to 100K according the 2010 data from the Census.

Among people with advanced degrees living in one the nation's largest cities?
And just last year, the GOP was saying that $250k/year was middle-class. Make up your minds already.

I'm completely befuddled as to what krazen's on about here.  krazen, 75,000 is a middle class salary. 

75K sits in the second highest quintile that goes from about 60 to 100K according the 2010 data from the Census.

Not in chicago my friend.

 It always seems like these horrors of unionized teacher stories come from a metro area like nyc or chi twon where thecost of living is MUCH higher than normal. It serves to distort the middle-class standard of living such teacher's earn and likewise project it as a false 'coming soon to your community' warning to the rest of middle america.

Effecive ploy. Misleading, but effective.

The median income in Chicago is about 5K less than the nation as a whole. The upper quintiles for household income are generally similar to the US based on 2010 data. 30.3% of households in Chicago make more than 75K. If I expand to include all of Cook County with a median income about 2K higher than the US, 35.4% of households make more than 75K.

Either way my statement about 75K sitting in the second highest quintile is true for Chicago or Cook County, too.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Torie on February 19, 2012, 06:04:54 PM
How does one evaluate anyone then, given the long list of reasons as to why it is impossible?  How do you fire anyone? How do you ascertain competence?  And how do you find out if the students are learning anything? Are you telling me you can't fairly test for reading comprehension? Just ask the students to read a text they have not seen before, and then explain what it means. How could one teach to the test for that? Reading comprehension of course is the key here. The rest is more peripheral. If you can't read, you are going to fail, and have a menial job for life most likely.

Here's an idea. Why don't we try this approach for one major school district with problems, and see what happens over say 10 years, monitoring progress as we go?  Why don't we experiment?  What we do now ain't working, and there is no evidence spending more money on these dysfunctional school systems helps either. Read the Kansas City school district study, when a judge ordered the state to spend something like 15K a year per high school pupil, in 1980's to 1990's dollars. The result? No improvement in student performance at all.  None.

The quality of the teachers needs to be improved. What is an objective fact, is that most, particularly in the dysfunctional school districts (it would be interesting to get a percentage from a study here) go to third rate colleges and get C averages. They tend to be drones.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: freepcrusher on February 22, 2012, 05:33:27 PM
How does one evaluate anyone then, given the long list of reasons as to why it is impossible?  How do you fire anyone? How do you ascertain competence?  And how do you find out if the students are learning anything? Are you telling me you can't fairly test for reading comprehension? Just ask the students to read a text they have not seen before, and then explain what it means. How could one teach to the test for that? Reading comprehension of course is the key here. The rest is more peripheral. If you can't read, you are going to fail, and have a menial job for life most likely.

Here's an idea. Why don't we try this approach for one major school district with problems, and see what happens over say 10 years, monitoring progress as we go?  Why don't we experiment?  What we do now ain't working, and there is no evidence spending more money on these dysfunctional school systems helps either. Read the Kansas City school district study, when a judge ordered the state to spend something like 15K a year per high school pupil, in 1980's to 1990's dollars. The result? No improvement in student performance at all.  None.

The quality of the teachers needs to be improved. What is an objective fact, is that most, particularly in the dysfunctional school districts (it would be interesting to get a percentage from a study here) go to third rate colleges and get C averages. They tend to be drones.

Anyone here agree that there should be stricter tests in who in terms of teachers gets hired. I think it should be sort of like passing the bar exams or passing your boards. A master's in Education might help. Another issue is that administrators should decide which level of school needs the most cash poured into. Some say elementary is the most important, some say jr high is, while others say high school is. Some food for thought I guess.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: World politics is up Schmitt creek on February 22, 2012, 10:45:35 PM
I'm completely befuddled as to what krazen's on about here.  krazen, 75,000 is a middle class salary. 

75K sits in the second highest quintile that goes from about 60 to 100K according the 2010 data from the Census.

Among people with advanced degrees living in one the nation's largest cities?
And just last year, the GOP was saying that $250k/year was middle-class. Make up your minds already.

I'm completely befuddled as to what krazen's on about here.  krazen, 75,000 is a middle class salary. 

75K sits in the second highest quintile that goes from about 60 to 100K according the 2010 data from the Census.

Not in chicago my friend.

 It always seems like these horrors of unionized teacher stories come from a metro area like nyc or chi twon where thecost of living is MUCH higher than normal. It serves to distort the middle-class standard of living such teacher's earn and likewise project it as a false 'coming soon to your community' warning to the rest of middle america.

Effecive ploy. Misleading, but effective.

The median income in Chicago is about 5K less than the nation as a whole. The upper quintiles for household income are generally similar to the US based on 2010 data. 30.3% of households in Chicago make more than 75K. If I expand to include all of Cook County with a median income about 2K higher than the US, 35.4% of households make more than 75K.

Either way my statement about 75K sitting in the second highest quintile is true for Chicago or Cook County, too.

And why is public school teachers being in the 69.7th percentile or higher at all wrong, considering the importance of what they do?


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: krazen1211 on February 23, 2012, 10:15:38 AM
Why did I know you were going to make another jab about the teachers rather than admit that your idea of them having only a 30-hour work week was ludicrous nonsense.

I'll grant that many school districts fail miserably when it comes to hiring good teachers, but the solution to that problem is not to make the pay worse so that only bad teachers are willing to take the job.  This is not the 1950's krazen.  Educated females have far more options in employment than teaching and nursing, so there is no longer a pool of competent cheap labor for those professions.

There's no compelling evidence of course that the average chicago school teacher actually bothers to put in more than the 30 hours measured.

Nor is there compelling evidence that they actually do better at teaching than fewer, cheaper teachers did 30 years ago with lesser technology.

http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d09/tables/dt09_069.asp

The real problem is of course this number:

Average number of pupils per class                                       
Elementary teachers, not departmentalized   29       28   27   25   25   24   23   24   21

Salaries have of course skyrocketed.


http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d09/tables/dt09_078.asp


Expenditures for employee benefits have about tripled since 1990. Got to make sure those bus drivers get their lavish benefits, heh.

http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d09/tables/dt09_180.asp


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: World politics is up Schmitt creek on February 23, 2012, 12:29:07 PM
Why did I know you were going to make another jab about the teachers rather than admit that your idea of them having only a 30-hour work week was ludicrous nonsense.

I'll grant that many school districts fail miserably when it comes to hiring good teachers, but the solution to that problem is not to make the pay worse so that only bad teachers are willing to take the job.  This is not the 1950's krazen.  Educated females have far more options in employment than teaching and nursing, so there is no longer a pool of competent cheap labor for those professions.

There's no compelling evidence of course that the average chicago school teacher actually bothers to put in more than the 30 hours measured.

The fact that lesson plans, even bad ones, exist.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: krazen1211 on February 23, 2012, 12:43:00 PM
Why did I know you were going to make another jab about the teachers rather than admit that your idea of them having only a 30-hour work week was ludicrous nonsense.

I'll grant that many school districts fail miserably when it comes to hiring good teachers, but the solution to that problem is not to make the pay worse so that only bad teachers are willing to take the job.  This is not the 1950's krazen.  Educated females have far more options in employment than teaching and nursing, so there is no longer a pool of competent cheap labor for those professions.

There's no compelling evidence of course that the average chicago school teacher actually bothers to put in more than the 30 hours measured.

The fact that lesson plans, even bad ones, exist.

What about it? Teacher instructional time is 5 hours 15 minutes a day, and of course, they get 23 days off per year out of 180, or a massive cash windfall profit upon retirement. That adds up to a mere ~808 hours!

Of course, maybe it takes them 1200 hours to prepare lesson plans.






http://www.cps-humanresources.org/careers/benefits.htm

10 sick days and 3 personal leave days per school year (new teachers must complete a 60-school-day waiting period prior to receiving this benefit)
10 vacation days per school year


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: lowtech redneck on February 23, 2012, 01:14:18 PM
And why is public school teachers being in the 69.7th percentile or higher at all wrong, considering the importance of what they do?

Because tax-payers are providing their salary and municipalities are going bankrupt; the point is to maximize results per dollars spent, not validate the role of teachers.



Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: World politics is up Schmitt creek on February 23, 2012, 01:18:21 PM
Why did I know you were going to make another jab about the teachers rather than admit that your idea of them having only a 30-hour work week was ludicrous nonsense.

I'll grant that many school districts fail miserably when it comes to hiring good teachers, but the solution to that problem is not to make the pay worse so that only bad teachers are willing to take the job.  This is not the 1950's krazen.  Educated females have far more options in employment than teaching and nursing, so there is no longer a pool of competent cheap labor for those professions.

There's no compelling evidence of course that the average chicago school teacher actually bothers to put in more than the 30 hours measured.

The fact that lesson plans, even bad ones, exist.

What about it? Teacher instructional time is 5 hours 15 minutes a day, and of course, they get 23 days off per year out of 180, or a massive cash windfall profit upon retirement. That adds up to a mere ~808 hours!

Of course, maybe it takes them 1200 hours to prepare lesson plans.






http://www.cps-humanresources.org/careers/benefits.htm

10 sick days and 3 personal leave days per school year (new teachers must complete a 60-school-day waiting period prior to receiving this benefit)
10 vacation days per school year

It takes an immense amount of time and mental energy to prepare lessons and do other such administrative work, yes. Depending on the school and the subject, typically at least ten to twelve hours a week or thereabouts.

And why is public school teachers being in the 69.7th percentile or higher at all wrong, considering the importance of what they do?

Because tax-payers are providing their salary and municipalities are going bankrupt; the point is to maximize results per dollars spent, not validate the role of teachers.



If this was being suggested as a one-off emergency measure it would be one thing, but this is exactly the sort of instrumentalist thinking that's damaging our social institutions. Validating the role of teachers is itself a desirable result.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: lowtech redneck on February 23, 2012, 01:28:36 PM
Validating the role of teachers is itself a desirable result.

That's a fair point, but not at the expense of fiscal responability....they (not to be confused with the unions) can be validated in other ways, just like the military. 


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: krazen1211 on February 23, 2012, 01:38:02 PM
Why did I know you were going to make another jab about the teachers rather than admit that your idea of them having only a 30-hour work week was ludicrous nonsense.

I'll grant that many school districts fail miserably when it comes to hiring good teachers, but the solution to that problem is not to make the pay worse so that only bad teachers are willing to take the job.  This is not the 1950's krazen.  Educated females have far more options in employment than teaching and nursing, so there is no longer a pool of competent cheap labor for those professions.

There's no compelling evidence of course that the average chicago school teacher actually bothers to put in more than the 30 hours measured.

The fact that lesson plans, even bad ones, exist.

What about it? Teacher instructional time is 5 hours 15 minutes a day, and of course, they get 23 days off per year out of 180, or a massive cash windfall profit upon retirement. That adds up to a mere ~808 hours!

Of course, maybe it takes them 1200 hours to prepare lesson plans.






http://www.cps-humanresources.org/careers/benefits.htm

10 sick days and 3 personal leave days per school year (new teachers must complete a 60-school-day waiting period prior to receiving this benefit)
10 vacation days per school year

It takes an immense amount of time and mental energy to prepare lessons and do other such administrative work, yes. Depending on the school and the subject, typically at least ten to twelve hours a week or thereabouts.

And why is public school teachers being in the 69.7th percentile or higher at all wrong, considering the importance of what they do?

Because tax-payers are providing their salary and municipalities are going bankrupt; the point is to maximize results per dollars spent, not validate the role of teachers.



If this was being suggested as a one-off emergency measure it would be one thing, but this is exactly the sort of instrumentalist thinking that's damaging our social institutions. Validating the role of teachers is itself a desirable result.

I am certainly not surprised that the unions would say that, but of course 12 hours a week for a mere 40 weeks only totals to 480 hours.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: World politics is up Schmitt creek on February 23, 2012, 02:10:29 PM
This isn't a pattern of work that the big bad evil krazen-emasculating teachers' unions are making up to further emasculate you. It is in fact what being a schoolteacher entails. I also wonder if you understand how much mental energy is expended in this profession relative to time spent and to most other jobs. Just because you can't wrap your head around how teaching could possibly entail more than just sitting in a classroom during school hours doesn't mean that you have the right to dictate public policy to people who actually have some conception of how these things work.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: krazen1211 on February 23, 2012, 02:43:24 PM
This isn't a pattern of work that the big bad evil krazen-emasculating teachers' unions are making up to further emasculate you. It is in fact what being a schoolteacher entails. I also wonder if you understand how much mental energy is expended in this profession relative to time spent and to most other jobs. Just because you can't wrap your head around how teaching could possibly entail more than just sitting in a classroom during school hours doesn't mean that you have the right to dictate public policy to people who actually have some conception of how these things work.

Nobody is dictating. But just as the NJEA has used their lobbying influence in the NJ legislature to swindle the public, well, others have the right to stand up for our financial interest.

I find the fact that you have to resort to simply making up numbers highly amusing, though, especially when those numbers are contradicted by the CPS itself. Heck, even the former mayor of Chicago admitted that his teachers work 6 hour days!


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: opebo on February 23, 2012, 02:56:24 PM
krazen, you would do better to blame the rich,who absorb a far greater share of the worker's production than the humble teacher, and thus leave children in a state of poverty and hopelessness.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: World politics is up Schmitt creek on February 23, 2012, 03:09:38 PM
This isn't a pattern of work that the big bad evil krazen-emasculating teachers' unions are making up to further emasculate you. It is in fact what being a schoolteacher entails. I also wonder if you understand how much mental energy is expended in this profession relative to time spent and to most other jobs. Just because you can't wrap your head around how teaching could possibly entail more than just sitting in a classroom during school hours doesn't mean that you have the right to dictate public policy to people who actually have some conception of how these things work.

Nobody is dictating. But just as the NJEA has used their lobbying influence in the NJ legislature to swindle the public, well, others have the right to stand up for our financial interest.

There are more important things in the world than money.

Quote
I find the fact that you have to resort to simply making up numbers highly amusing, though, especially when those numbers are contradicted by the CPS itself. Heck, even the former mayor of Chicago admitted that his teachers work 6 hour days!

Then in that case you're right, that school system probably isn't run particularly well (at a guess, I would say it's most likely overburdened by inadequate commitments from the city government and the people), but it really would behoove you to recognize the nature of the work and the fact that most teachers do quite a bit of off-the-clock work, which is of course very hard to measure (hence why I didn't try beyond giving as deliberately vague an over-under as possible, which you view as making things up because of your quaintly quantitative worldview). How much do you know, exactly, about the nature of the working day of a public schoolteacher?

I find it highly amusing that you're obsessed with numerating and quantifying every single aspect of human experience, from this downright unhealthy bean-counting about number of hours worked in specific contexts to your constant evocation of the untold monetary sufferings and depredations visited upon you and your fellow members of the American white suburban middle class by the evil union workers, so I guess we're even.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자) on February 23, 2012, 06:12:03 PM
krazen, I could post some more rebutting your view, but I won't as it would be wasted effort.

I have no expectation that you will pay attention to any arguments contrary to your viewpoint even if only for the purpose of offering a counterargument.  That you continue to act as if all teachers are bad teachers, and refuse to enter into any discussion of whether the pay the Chicago teachers get and want is appropriate for good teachers is but one proof of this.

There are other posters here who I get into discussions with who while I doubt I will persuade them of my opinions are at least have the courtesy to read and respond to what I write.  You do not, preferring to act as if you were writing in some alternate universe where you hear only what you want to hear.  I will waste no more of my time on you and urge others to do the same.

Politico, CARL, and jmfcst are all conservative posters who I have gotten into disputations with who while they have a different viewpoint on certain topics than I do can at least acknowledge there are other viewpoints, even tho they consider them wrong.  krazen, I cannot recall you ever showing others that bare minimum of common courtesy and common sense.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: krazen1211 on February 23, 2012, 06:29:56 PM
krazen, you would do better to blame the rich,who absorb a far greater share of the worker's production than the humble teacher, and thus leave children in a state of poverty and hopelessness.

Well, the massive tax hike inflicted on the 'rich' and everyone else went directly to the chosen constituency.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-state-0223-20120223,0,3088174.story

In the next budget, virtually every penny of that $7 billion in new revenue goes to pension obligations.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: krazen1211 on February 23, 2012, 06:52:28 PM
This isn't a pattern of work that the big bad evil krazen-emasculating teachers' unions are making up to further emasculate you. It is in fact what being a schoolteacher entails. I also wonder if you understand how much mental energy is expended in this profession relative to time spent and to most other jobs. Just because you can't wrap your head around how teaching could possibly entail more than just sitting in a classroom during school hours doesn't mean that you have the right to dictate public policy to people who actually have some conception of how these things work.

Nobody is dictating. But just as the NJEA has used their lobbying influence in the NJ legislature to swindle the public, well, others have the right to stand up for our financial interest.

There are more important things in the world than money.

Quote
I find the fact that you have to resort to simply making up numbers highly amusing, though, especially when those numbers are contradicted by the CPS itself. Heck, even the former mayor of Chicago admitted that his teachers work 6 hour days!

Then in that case you're right, that school system probably isn't run particularly well (at a guess, I would say it's most likely overburdened by inadequate commitments from the city government and the people), but it really would behoove you to recognize the nature of the work and the fact that most teachers do quite a bit of off-the-clock work, which is of course very hard to measure (hence why I didn't try beyond giving as deliberately vague an over-under as possible, which you view as making things up because of your quaintly quantitative worldview). How much do you know, exactly, about the nature of the working day of a public schoolteacher?


https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/249299-bls-teachers-work-patterns.html

Data from the BLS constitutes that extra 'weekend' time at somewhere between 2 and 3 hours per week, along with a mere 7 hour workday. Of course, this is national data, which is far more favorable to them than the plum schedule obtained by the CPS teachers union.


Even under these most generous figures, of course, they don't even cross the 40 hour mark, and only for 3/4 of the year!


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: World politics is up Schmitt creek on February 23, 2012, 11:32:38 PM
This isn't a pattern of work that the big bad evil krazen-emasculating teachers' unions are making up to further emasculate you. It is in fact what being a schoolteacher entails. I also wonder if you understand how much mental energy is expended in this profession relative to time spent and to most other jobs. Just because you can't wrap your head around how teaching could possibly entail more than just sitting in a classroom during school hours doesn't mean that you have the right to dictate public policy to people who actually have some conception of how these things work.

Nobody is dictating. But just as the NJEA has used their lobbying influence in the NJ legislature to swindle the public, well, others have the right to stand up for our financial interest.

There are more important things in the world than money.

Quote
I find the fact that you have to resort to simply making up numbers highly amusing, though, especially when those numbers are contradicted by the CPS itself. Heck, even the former mayor of Chicago admitted that his teachers work 6 hour days!

Then in that case you're right, that school system probably isn't run particularly well (at a guess, I would say it's most likely overburdened by inadequate commitments from the city government and the people), but it really would behoove you to recognize the nature of the work and the fact that most teachers do quite a bit of off-the-clock work, which is of course very hard to measure (hence why I didn't try beyond giving as deliberately vague an over-under as possible, which you view as making things up because of your quaintly quantitative worldview). How much do you know, exactly, about the nature of the working day of a public schoolteacher?


https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/249299-bls-teachers-work-patterns.html

Data from the BLS constitutes that extra 'weekend' time at somewhere between 2 and 3 hours per week, along with a mere 7 hour workday. Of course, this is national data, which is far more favorable to them than the plum schedule obtained by the CPS teachers union.


Even under these most generous figures, of course, they don't even cross the 40 hour mark, and only for 3/4 of the year!

I note you still don't discuss the nature of your quantificatory obsession and in particular note your unwillingness to even attempt to refute any part of my argument other than that which you feel you can refute using little statistics. You've entirely failed to address the nature of the work, the way the time is spread through a teacher's life (a teacher's workday for one thing begins comparatively very early), and the questions about the nature of the work and the sort of work that we should be valuing and the kinds of work that we should be encouraging. You don't care about that, presumably because it cannot be easily quantified and used to score cheap points to advance your petit bourgeoisie reactionary agitprop class rhetoric.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: muon2 on February 24, 2012, 07:14:06 PM
krazen, you would do better to blame the rich,who absorb a far greater share of the worker's production than the humble teacher, and thus leave children in a state of poverty and hopelessness.

Well, the massive tax hike inflicted on the 'rich' and everyone else went directly to the chosen constituency.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-state-0223-20120223,0,3088174.story

In the next budget, virtually every penny of that $7 billion in new revenue goes to pension obligations.

That's not exactly true. Increases in Medicaid costs are rising rapidly and are projected to make the bulk of the budget shortfall. The majority of the pension cost increase is not from the regular payment into the pension system, but is due to payments on the back-loaded loans IL took so they could avoid paying past unfunded pension liability. IL constitutional law prevents the legislature from collecting past liability from the employees, so options are limited.

The irony in citing the link above is that Chicago is the only school system in IL where the state does not pick up the pension cost (except for a small transfer payment). The Gov has suggested that local schools throughout the state also pick up the employer cost as does Chicago. Of course that effectively acts to transfer money from the suburbs to Chicago within the picture of the state budget.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: opebo on February 25, 2012, 02:36:27 PM
krazen, you would do better to blame the rich,who absorb a far greater share of the worker's production than the humble teacher, and thus leave children in a state of poverty and hopelessness.

Well, the massive tax hike inflicted on the 'rich' and everyone else went directly to the chosen constituency.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-state-0223-20120223,0,3088174.story

In the next budget, virtually every penny of that $7 billion in new revenue goes to pension obligations.

Well, that's good, but you're missing the point that the entirety of the incomes of the rich are theft in the first place.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: krazen1211 on June 18, 2012, 10:00:22 AM
Well, here comes the strike.


http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/11/12166509-chicago-teachers-vote-for-strike-in-battle-over-pay-longer-school-days





Of course, Chicago has only about 403,000 students, a shrinking population and tax base, and a massive 25,000 teaching force.

The next battleground is brewing.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: muon2 on June 18, 2012, 10:17:02 AM
Well, here comes the strike.


http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/11/12166509-chicago-teachers-vote-for-strike-in-battle-over-pay-longer-school-days





Of course, Chicago has only about 403,000 students, a shrinking population and tax base, and a massive 25,000 teaching force.

The next battleground is brewing.

Earlier the teachers asked for mediation and the report comes out in July. To guard against a mediation report that convinces some teachers to accept it without more hard negotiation the union got a strike authorization vote so that they can use that threat at the bargaining table. The bottom line is that mayor Emanuel wants a significantly longer school day (Chicago has one of the shortest in the US) without much in additional wages. His position is generally popular, but this is his first contract negotiation with the Chicago teachers so the union wants to set a standard for the future.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: BigSkyBob on June 18, 2012, 10:24:26 AM
I did some Googling and every number I found was lower than $75k, which your source says is from 2008. This 2011 article (http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-06-16/news/ct-met-cps-teachers-0617-20110616_1_teacher-with-five-years-cps-teachers-average-teacher-salary), for example, says the number is 69k. Perhaps the source you cited is adding other forms of compensation to the salary. Generous either way, though.

And 30% is of course ridiculous, but that's how bargaining works.

No, that's not how bargaining works. "Bargaining" is suppose to be done in good faith. A good faith position would involve first asking for the upper limit of what is in probable range of outcomes, and negotiating from there. Asking for a fantastic number is tantamount to announcing your intention to strike.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: BigSkyBob on June 18, 2012, 10:39:32 AM
krazen, you would do better to blame the rich,who absorb a far greater share of the worker's production than the humble teacher, and thus leave children in a state of poverty and hopelessness.

Teacher unions that try to prevent the termination of teachers whom can't or won't effectively teach children adds to hopelessness of the unfortunate students whom have to study in those teacher's classes.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: BigSkyBob on June 18, 2012, 10:45:39 AM
Well, here comes the strike.


http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/11/12166509-chicago-teachers-vote-for-strike-in-battle-over-pay-longer-school-days





Of course, Chicago has only about 403,000 students, a shrinking population and tax base, and a massive 25,000 teaching force.

The next battleground is brewing.

Earlier the teachers asked for mediation and the report comes out in July. To guard against a mediation report that convinces some teachers to accept it without more hard negotiation the union got a strike authorization vote so that they can use that threat at the bargaining table.


So, threatening to strike was their initial bargaining position.

Quote
The bottom line is that mayor Emanuel wants a significantly longer school day (Chicago has one of the shortest in the US) without much in additional wages. His position is generally popular, but this is his first contract negotiation with the Chicago teachers so the union wants to set a standard for the future.

The longer workday is in all probablity a one-time demand.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: BigSkyBob on June 18, 2012, 10:59:28 AM
I'm completely befuddled as to what krazen's on about here.  krazen, 75,000 is a middle class salary. 

75K sits in the second highest quintile that goes from about 60 to 100K according the 2010 data from the Census.

Not in chicago my friend.

 It always seems like these horrors of unionized teacher stories come from a metro area like nyc or chi twon where thecost of living is MUCH higher than normal. It serves to distort the middle-class standard of living such teacher's earn and likewise project it as a false 'coming soon to your community' warning to the rest of middle america.

Effecive ploy. Misleading, but effective.

The second quintile of 60K to 100K is for family income, so two teachers both earning 75K are in the top quintile nationally.

That aside, based on individual salaries in Chicago, what quintile are you claiming Chicago teachers are in, and what is the minimum salary necessary to be "middle-class" in Chicago?


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: tpfkaw on June 18, 2012, 11:48:49 AM
The reason why the cost of living in Chicago is so much higher than in Futtbuck, PA, is because it's considered more desirable to live in Chicago than in Futtbuck.  People will willingly pay more for the "same thing" to live in Chicago rather than in Futtbuck because the resources and opportunities available in a thriving major city dwarf those in depressed rural areas.  $75k will therefore provide you with just about the same standard of living elsewhere - an austere lifestyle where people want to live and a lavish one where people want to leave, which have been judged by the collective body of people to be equivalent.

75% of Americans would love to be making $75k in Chicago, as would quite a few teachers (who are now being graduated from college at three times the rate of new positions opening up, which among normal people would mean salaries in the industry would drop instead of astronomically increasing at the expense of newly-qualified individuals entering the industry, and the taxpayer).

Of course, there's also nothing preventing teachers from (horror upon horrors) living in one of the cheaper suburbs and commuting, like normal people.  If they do insist on living in the city it might in fact be a win-win to reduce their salaries enough that they have to live among the scary brown/black people.  It would certainly be quite the motivator to improve their students' performance, no?

As an aside, Chicago has objectively terrible teachers.  As Stephen Leavitt pointed out in his bestselling book of pop-statistics, Freakonomics, a statistical analysis of standardized test results revealed widespread cheating by teachers - patterns of answers filled out the same way on every test sheet in the class.  Not only that, but many of the answers in those patterns were wrong, unmasking them as not only dishonest and incompetent but also idiots.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: krazen1211 on June 18, 2012, 12:09:44 PM
I'm completely befuddled as to what krazen's on about here.  krazen, 75,000 is a middle class salary. 

75K sits in the second highest quintile that goes from about 60 to 100K according the 2010 data from the Census.

Not in chicago my friend.

 It always seems like these horrors of unionized teacher stories come from a metro area like nyc or chi twon where thecost of living is MUCH higher than normal. It serves to distort the middle-class standard of living such teacher's earn and likewise project it as a false 'coming soon to your community' warning to the rest of middle america.

Effecive ploy. Misleading, but effective.

The second quintile of 60K to 100K is for family income, so two teachers both earning 75K are in the top quintile nationally.

That aside, based on individual salaries in Chicago, what quintile are you claiming Chicago teachers are in, and what is the minimum salary necessary to be "middle-class" in Chicago?

1 teacher making $75k of course already makes twice the cities' average salary.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: All Along The Watchtower on June 18, 2012, 02:27:07 PM
In other news:http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/business/executive-pay-still-climbing-despite-a-shareholder-din.html?pagewanted=all (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/business/executive-pay-still-climbing-despite-a-shareholder-din.html?pagewanted=all)

Quote
Median pay of the nation’s 200 top-paid C.E.O.’s was $14.5 million, according to a study conducted for The New York Times by Equilar, a compensation data firm based in Redwood City, Calif. The median pay raise among those C.E.O.’s was 5 percent.

But let's continue to demonize the five-figure salary teachers!


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: BigSkyBob on June 18, 2012, 03:59:20 PM
I'm completely befuddled as to what krazen's on about here.  krazen, 75,000 is a middle class salary. 

75K sits in the second highest quintile that goes from about 60 to 100K according the 2010 data from the Census.

Not in chicago my friend.

 It always seems like these horrors of unionized teacher stories come from a metro area like nyc or chi twon where thecost of living is MUCH higher than normal. It serves to distort the middle-class standard of living such teacher's earn and likewise project it as a false 'coming soon to your community' warning to the rest of middle america.

Effecive ploy. Misleading, but effective.

The second quintile of 60K to 100K is for family income, so two teachers both earning 75K are in the top quintile nationally.

That aside, based on individual salaries in Chicago, what quintile are you claiming Chicago teachers are in, and what is the minimum salary necessary to be "middle-class" in Chicago?

1 teacher making $75k of course already makes twice the cities' average salary.


As cited at

http://www.illinoispolicy.org/blog/blog.asp?ArticleSource=4685

average family income in Chicago is $46,877.

I don't see the logic in claiming that a single worker making 50% more than the average family income of a city doesn't already live at a middle-class level.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Indy Texas on June 18, 2012, 04:21:02 PM
Of course teachers are overpaid. I spend all day around them and can assure you they hardly deserve their salaries. I educate students who threaten to beat me up and have to deal with countless state and federal SPED mandates and I can assure you that I am overpaid.

The numbers clearly indicate so. $75k + lavish pension and benefits for a 30 hour week!

If you think it's a 30 hour week, you're delusional. They grade papers at home in the evenings. They have to be at school at least an hour beforehand to get things ready and often have to stay after school to help students or monitor carpool and buses or look after some kid whose parent is late getting them.
That "lavish" pension you speak of requires you be vested in order to receive it. You usually have to be there at least 10 years before you're fully vested. And if you decide you want to move and teach in another state, poof! you have to start all over from square one with your new state/district's retirement plan.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Indy Texas on June 18, 2012, 04:24:16 PM
I'm completely befuddled as to what krazen's on about here.  krazen, 75,000 is a middle class salary. 

75K sits in the second highest quintile that goes from about 60 to 100K according the 2010 data from the Census.

Not in chicago my friend.

 It always seems like these horrors of unionized teacher stories come from a metro area like nyc or chi twon where thecost of living is MUCH higher than normal. It serves to distort the middle-class standard of living such teacher's earn and likewise project it as a false 'coming soon to your community' warning to the rest of middle america.

Effecive ploy. Misleading, but effective.

The second quintile of 60K to 100K is for family income, so two teachers both earning 75K are in the top quintile nationally.

That aside, based on individual salaries in Chicago, what quintile are you claiming Chicago teachers are in, and what is the minimum salary necessary to be "middle-class" in Chicago?

1 teacher making $75k of course already makes twice the cities' average salary.


As cited at

http://www.illinoispolicy.org/blog/blog.asp?ArticleSource=4685

average family income in Chicago is $46,877.

I don't see the logic in claiming that a single worker making 50% more than the average family income of a city doesn't already live at a middle-class level.


Who decided that educators aren't allowed to earn an "above-average" salary? Different professions get paid more than others. 70% of Americans don't have a college degree, which is heavily tied to earnings. All teachers have at least a bachelor's degree, so wouldn't it make sense that someone with an above-average education is making an above-average income?


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: opebo on June 18, 2012, 04:27:15 PM
krazen, you would do better to blame the rich,who absorb a far greater share of the worker's production than the humble teacher, and thus leave children in a state of poverty and hopelessness.

Teacher unions that try to prevent the termination of teachers whom can't or won't effectively teach children adds to hopelessness of the unfortunate students whom have to study in those teacher's classes.

Not at all, BSB, the hopelessness of those students is entirely gained from their oppression at the hands of the rich - they are poors, and their lives are utterly without hope, and no poor overworked public servant, teacher or other, will ever change that as long as the rich are allowed to continue their predations.

As cited at

http://www.illinoispolicy.org/blog/blog.asp?ArticleSource=4685

average family income in Chicago is $46,877.

Those people are about 40% unemployed, 20% cleaning ladies, and the rest mostly garbagemen and sandwichmakers - only a tiny elite in places like Chicago have proper incomes.  The new America is one of appallingly low incomes - a reality caused by you right-wingers, not by the poor downtrodden public servant.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: BigSkyBob on June 18, 2012, 09:00:00 PM
I'm completely befuddled as to what krazen's on about here.  krazen, 75,000 is a middle class salary. 

75K sits in the second highest quintile that goes from about 60 to 100K according the 2010 data from the Census.

Not in chicago my friend.

 It always seems like these horrors of unionized teacher stories come from a metro area like nyc or chi twon where thecost of living is MUCH higher than normal. It serves to distort the middle-class standard of living such teacher's earn and likewise project it as a false 'coming soon to your community' warning to the rest of middle america.

Effecive ploy. Misleading, but effective.

The second quintile of 60K to 100K is for family income, so two teachers both earning 75K are in the top quintile nationally.

That aside, based on individual salaries in Chicago, what quintile are you claiming Chicago teachers are in, and what is the minimum salary necessary to be "middle-class" in Chicago?

1 teacher making $75k of course already makes twice the cities' average salary.


As cited at

http://www.illinoispolicy.org/blog/blog.asp?ArticleSource=4685

average family income in Chicago is $46,877.

I don't see the logic in claiming that a single worker making 50% more than the average family income of a city doesn't already live at a middle-class level.


Who decided that educators aren't allowed to earn an "above-average" salary?

I am noting that claims that 75K doesn't constitute a middle-class income in Chicago are bogus.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Badger on June 22, 2012, 08:16:57 PM
Krazen, as a kid did something...er..."happen" to you involving a teacher?


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: krazen1211 on June 27, 2012, 04:36:20 PM
Krazen, as a kid did something...er..."happen" to you involving a teacher?

Actually, something more recently. These union thugs who have broken the budget managed to bully the Democratic party into preserving LIFO!

It's amazing how legislation needs support from a teachers union in order to be passed. Wisconsin did not tolerate such nonsense.



http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2012/06/seniority_not_challenged_in_la.html
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2012/06/gov_chris_christie_may_not_sig.html


"What happens, of course, as a result is that a lot of the younger and most enthusiastic teachers automatically get taken out," Christie told the audience of nearly 750. "Whether I sign it or I veto it, the bottom line is we have to get back to considering ‘last in, first out.’"

Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex), the sponsor, left seniority rights unaltered to secure support from the state’s largest teachers union, the New Jersey Education Association, which called the issue a "line in the sand" Tuesday.






Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: BritishDixie on June 29, 2012, 08:45:13 AM
This kind of thing is normal in Britain.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: krazen1211 on September 09, 2012, 04:07:28 PM
http://www.npr.org/2012/09/09/160821554/chicago-teachers-may-strike-teach-political-lesson



Doomsday is coming. It is interesting to see who will win this war for the treasury.



"Parents like Gutierrez and others, who support the teachers union, are up against a school district and a mayor who have a very different idea about what the public schools should look like."


Stockholm syndrome. Lower class sizes? Student:teacher ratios are a lavish and expensive 16:1!


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Sbane on September 09, 2012, 04:44:48 PM
I support Rahm and hope he succeeds.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: krazen1211 on September 09, 2012, 11:45:18 PM
The strike is on!

Chicago liberals are getting what they vote for. It's glorious comeuppance.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: © tweed on September 10, 2012, 11:11:02 AM
perhaps the last stand in the fight against privatization of education -- while I'm not optimistic, God bless.

()


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Donerail on September 10, 2012, 02:07:24 PM
One of the things I hate most about Florida law is a ban on strikes by public employees. My best to the teachers and people of Chicago.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Tetro Kornbluth on September 10, 2012, 02:31:09 PM
The Neoliberal technocrat notion of "Education reform" which seems to be popular on a bipartisan basis in the US right now is simply one of the worst ideas ever. And so while I'm not really following this strike, I hope Rahm loses.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Insula Dei on September 10, 2012, 02:39:17 PM
The Neoliberal technocrat notion of "Education reform" which seems to be popular on a bipartisan basis in the US right now is simply one of the worst ideas ever. And so I'm not really following this strike, I hope Rahm loses.

The rhetoric of reform applied to an agenda of destruction is at the heart of the neo-liberal project, of course.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Tetro Kornbluth on September 10, 2012, 02:57:42 PM
The Neoliberal technocrat notion of "Education reform" which seems to be popular on a bipartisan basis in the US right now is simply one of the worst ideas ever. And so I'm not really following this strike, I hope Rahm loses.

The rhetoric of reform applied to an agenda of destruction is at the heart of the neo-liberal project, of course.

Of course. But American "Education reform" is particularly fashionable right now despite its obvious odiousness so I felt a comment was necessary. Don't wish to sit on the fence and all that...


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: LastVoter on September 10, 2012, 04:11:15 PM
Didn't know you were a neoliberal too.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: © tweed on September 10, 2012, 04:14:14 PM

"we are all neoliberals now"  -George Monbiot


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: © tweed on September 10, 2012, 04:15:04 PM
One of the things I hate most about Florida law is a ban on strikes by public employees. My best to the teachers and people of Chicago.

New York law too :(  as many other places too.  it was effectively common law illegal in plenty of places before it was statutory.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Donerail on September 10, 2012, 05:25:20 PM
One of the things I hate most about Florida law is a ban on strikes by public employees. My best to the teachers and people of Chicago.

New York law too :(  as many other places too.  it was effectively common law illegal in plenty of places before it was statutory.

That isn't that bad, simply because if it's statutory it can be repealed by a legislature. In Florida it's written into the Constitution and would take an amendment and 6/10ths of the voters to undo it :(


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: © tweed on September 10, 2012, 05:29:19 PM
One of the things I hate most about Florida law is a ban on strikes by public employees. My best to the teachers and people of Chicago.

New York law too :(  as many other places too.  it was effectively common law illegal in plenty of places before it was statutory.

That isn't that bad, simply because if it's statutory it can be repealed by a legislature. In Florida it's written into the Constitution and would take an amendment and 6/10ths of the voters to undo it :(

and/or a whole lot of blood on the streets.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Simfan34 on September 10, 2012, 05:52:30 PM
God bless Rahm Emanuel, God bless Andrew Cuomo. God bless reformists.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: 後援会 on September 10, 2012, 08:37:32 PM


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: krazen1211 on September 10, 2012, 09:30:29 PM
The teachers are likely to continue the strike tomorrow. Clearly they think they can smash Rahm Emanuel and the people of Chicago and run off with the treasury.

Of course, the city of Chicago is plagued with a $650ish million deficit.


It apparently takes a massive 30,000 staff to educate a mere 350,000 students nowadays.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: 後援会 on September 10, 2012, 10:57:17 PM
I've always found the American obsession with class sizes to be bizarre. After all, Japanese/Korean schools run 50 student classes with very few administrative personnel and they do fine.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: krazen1211 on September 10, 2012, 11:00:11 PM
I've always found the American obsession with class sizes to be bizarre. After all, Japanese/Korean schools run 50 student classes with very few administrative personnel and they do fine.

The union lords get more profit with more teachers, and can funnel more money to the Democratic party.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: patrick1 on September 10, 2012, 11:08:14 PM
I've always found the American obsession with class sizes to be bizarre. After all, Japanese/Korean schools run 50 student classes with very few administrative personnel and they do fine.

The union lords get more profit with more teachers, and can funnel more money to the Democratic party.

Good grief to both of these posts....

There are slight culture differences between the US and those countries. This is especially so in how one treats their elders, the higher level of respect given to teachers and there are less broken homes. You have a stable environment/upbringing and you have better behaved students.  Now class sizes in Catholic schools were larger and it wasn't an issue. Of course that is largely because if you misbehaved they could just kick you out. Public schools don't really have the option of culling the flock.




Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: © tweed on September 11, 2012, 09:08:02 AM
Chicago Teachers Union
Teachers went into 63rd street police station to use bathroom and got a standing ovation from police



getting the cops on board w/strikes is always a HUGE deal


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Sbane on September 11, 2012, 12:48:28 PM

I would support a reduction in pension benefits with increases in salary (which actually would be opposed by most politicians since it would require immediate tax increases). I don't believe in burdening our generation with paying for the political capital of current politicians.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Torie on September 11, 2012, 12:58:39 PM

I would support a reduction in pension benefits with increases in salary (which actually would be opposed by most politicians since it would require immediate tax increases). I don't believe in burdening our generation with paying for the political capital of current politicians.

Posts like the above are the reason that I still have hope for you guy.  Underneath that PC mantle of yours is a seething core of hard headed thinking and realism, and a sense of Old Testament justice. :P


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Joe Republic on September 11, 2012, 02:53:26 PM
The strikers have gone waaay too far:

()

Krazey was right all along.  These people are savages.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: LastVoter on September 11, 2012, 03:54:52 PM

I would support a reduction in pension benefits with increases in salary (which actually would be opposed by most politicians since it would require immediate tax increases). I don't believe in burdening our generation with paying for the political capital of current politicians.

Posts like the above are the reason that I still have hope for you guy.  Underneath that PC mantle of yours is a seething core of hard headed thinking and realism, and a sense of Old Testament justice. :P
What's wrong with higher pensions? It allows for better lifestyles for everyone, since the retirees tend to move to nice places, and if they control higher GDP, more people will follow?


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: mondale84 on September 11, 2012, 04:03:43 PM
The problem is the kids not the teachers. The kids nowadays are lazy f[inks] who don't try and whose parents are too inept to motivate them to study and do well in school. If kids actually studied and worked hard in school, these schools would be performing fine. Instead, parents excuse their terrible parenting by blaming teachers.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Tetro Kornbluth on September 11, 2012, 04:13:38 PM
This is a ready-made solution looking for its problem. No matter what the problems with the American education system actually were, this would be the recommended 'cure' of the Emmanuel Rahm's of this world. But I do repeat myself.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: © tweed on September 11, 2012, 04:16:39 PM
This is a ready-made solution looking for its problem.

well-said


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Insula Dei on September 11, 2012, 04:17:09 PM


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Sbane on September 11, 2012, 04:34:16 PM

I would support a reduction in pension benefits with increases in salary (which actually would be opposed by most politicians since it would require immediate tax increases). I don't believe in burdening our generation with paying for the political capital of current politicians.

Posts like the above are the reason that I still have hope for you guy.  Underneath that PC mantle of yours is a seething core of hard headed thinking and realism, and a sense of Old Testament justice. :P

Uhh...thanks? :P


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: krazen1211 on September 11, 2012, 04:56:04 PM
The strikers have gone waaay too far:

()

Krazey was right all along.  These people are savages.

Hmph. Well at least they are enacting punishment on Chicago liberals.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Vosem on September 11, 2012, 05:06:22 PM
The problem is the kids not the teachers. The kids nowadays are lazy f[inks] who don't try and whose parents are too inept to motivate them to study and do well in school. If kids actually studied and worked hard in school, these schools would be performing fine. Instead, parents excuse their terrible parenting by blaming teachers.

This goes against all of the data out there. IQ is rising, and has to be rejiggered every so often so that the average is still 100 (by 1914 standards, the average IQ today is 124): http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2001/04/22/are-we-getting-smarter.html

Students are reading more and doing better in mathematics: http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=38

Graduation rates are on a sharp increase: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d04/figures/fig_03.asp?referrer=figures


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: krazen1211 on September 11, 2012, 07:28:54 PM
()


This guy wearing communist red gets $75k.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: patrick1 on September 11, 2012, 07:33:32 PM
()

This guy wearing communist red gets $75k.

Wow, some unabashed trolling right there


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Donerail on September 11, 2012, 07:37:45 PM
This guy wearing communist red gets $75k.

()

Reminds me of this shade of red, no? Which major party is typically symbolized by (in most contexts) the color red...


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: krazen1211 on September 11, 2012, 07:50:55 PM
()

This guy wearing communist red gets $75k.

Wow, some unabashed trolling right there

Well, yes, I can't figure out why the neiborhood pays that guy $75k either.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: All Along The Watchtower on September 11, 2012, 09:12:41 PM
Rahm Emmanuel is a f-ng asshole and the embodiment of everything wrong with the Democratic Party these days.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: TJ in Oregon on September 11, 2012, 09:17:58 PM
Rahm Emmanuel is a f-ng asshole and the embodiment of everything wrong with the Democratic Party these days.

Reminds me of this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXeEJk7vGO4). :P


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Gass3268 on September 11, 2012, 10:30:44 PM
47% of Chicago voters back teachers

http://www.suntimes.com/15081881-761/story.html


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Marokai Backbeat on September 11, 2012, 10:37:17 PM
Rahm Emmanuel is a f-ng asshole and the embodiment of everything wrong with the Democratic Party these days.

+1


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: muon2 on September 11, 2012, 10:53:35 PM
47% of Chicago voters back teachers

http://www.suntimes.com/15081881-761/story.html

A subtext to this dispute is that teachers have pretty much had their way for the last two decades in Chitown along with the other public sector workers. The old machine was built on handing out public sector jobs. That's a hard culture to move against.

18 months ago while running for mayor, Rahm supported legislation that put pressure on the teachers of Chicago and was designed to prevent a CTU strike. Then he came in, cut last year's scheduled raise, and demanded longer school days and a longer school year without compensation. The CTU was very much geared for a fight after all that. A strike is hardly surprising. Now can Rahm move the voters of the city to his side?


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: MaxQue on September 11, 2012, 11:37:46 PM
This guy wearing communist red gets $75k.

Jealous?
You were too dumb to get an education and are stuck working at minimum wage?


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: ○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└ on September 11, 2012, 11:40:19 PM
Romney fail, he tried to claim that Obama backs the teachers. Wouldn't he back his buddy Rahm?


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Mister Twister on September 11, 2012, 11:54:30 PM

That`s an awfully small percentage for such a huge, liberal pro-union city.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: anvi on September 12, 2012, 04:31:01 AM
If it were up to me, I'd offer concessions on pay, pension and school-day and school-year length.  But I'd wouldn't go along with tying merit pay or contracts to students' standardized test scores. 

Well, I guess that makes a lot of people happy that so little is up to me.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: SUSAN CRUSHBONE on September 12, 2012, 07:03:40 AM
This guy wearing communist red gets $75k.

Jealous?
You were too dumb to get an education and are stuck working at minimum wage?

...and he blames the teachers for it! Brilliant!


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: opebo on September 12, 2012, 07:20:29 AM
()

This guy wearing communist red gets $75k.

Um, krazen, do you seriously propose that a teacher in Chicago should make less than $75,000?  How could they possibly live?

Teachers in rural Missouri start at about $28,000 and max out around $45,000 - this is merely a subsistence level salary there, as is $75,000 in a large, expensive urban center like Chicago.

Salaries for public workers should be doubled across the board and the money taken from the wealthy.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: krazen1211 on September 12, 2012, 07:22:09 AM
()

This guy wearing communist red gets $75k.

Um, krazen, do you seriously propose that a teacher in Chicago should make less than $75,000?  How could they possibly live?


The same way that others do with $45k household income.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: krazen1211 on September 12, 2012, 07:23:01 AM
This guy wearing communist red gets $75k.

Jealous?
You were too dumb to get an education and are stuck working at minimum wage?

Or course there is jealousy for these greedy teachers feeding at the trough. Why would there not be in today's America?


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: opebo on September 12, 2012, 07:27:01 AM
The same way that others do with $45k household income.

So, we should really all make the same income?  Are you a communist?


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: krazen1211 on September 12, 2012, 08:18:29 AM
The same way that others do with $45k household income.

So, we should really all make the same income?  Are you a communist?

Not the same, no. You asked how $75k teachers could live with less income in Chicago. And the answer is pretty obvious given how millions of Chicagoans live in such a manner.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: anvi on September 12, 2012, 08:34:25 AM
Um, krazen, do you seriously propose that a teacher in Chicago should make less than $75,000?  How could they possibly live?

Teachers in rural Missouri start at about $28,000 and max out around $45,000 - this is merely a subsistence level salary there, as is $75,000 in a large, expensive urban center like Chicago.

The starting salary of $28,000 is definitely criminal, and I have friends teaching 5-5 course loads in St. Louis itself, never mind rural Missouri, for $29,000.  A friend of mine, when he started teaching at DePaul about eight years ago, had a starting salary in the low 40's.  And, just in case anybody thinks that's a killing salary-wise, it would be good to remember that teachers are also taxpayers, so it's not like any of these people clear those amounts--and this after at least ten years of training in college and grad school.  

On the other hand, I lived and taught in the Chicago area for four years--I left earning a little over 60K, and I had an apartment in Evanston and was pretty content pay-wise, I would have been able to save around $1,000 a month had I not needed to travel so much to keep up the thing with the gf.  If I had had a family there, on the other hand, the partner would have needed to be earning a decent wage.   The work, however, was very dissatisfying, so I took a pretty substantial pay cut to teach elsewhere in the state.  

But one thing I really don't like, as a kind-a sort-a "younger" teacher (early 40's)  in Illinois is that, in both institutions where I've worked, we are barred from paying into and earning Social Security and have to be enrolled in the state pension fund instead.  And the "pension" plan I have is just a 403(b), to which the school is supposed to match my contributions, but my current school still doesn't even though I've worked in the state for ten years.  What all this means is that, as far as I can tell, if I continue to teach in Illinois, I will never be able to retire.  The teachers in the state who have gone before me have pretty effectively emptied the till, both in terms of salary and benefits, and Illinois is busted several times over.

Striking for more salary and benefits in a state whose pockets have holes in the bottom just doesn't accomplish anything except incur the community's ire.  If there were money available, then everyone everywhere would be happier and there would be more point to negotiating, but as it is, agitating for anything other than better facilities so we can have better teaching conditions and resisting completely fallacious methods for improving the system like merit-pay tied to standardized testing doesn't make sense to me.  There was a strike at my university last year, and the teachers' union was basically in it for the maintaining of tenure language in the contract and a 1% raise over the course of two years.  That shook out, for me, to an extra $1.62 per day gross, and getting it meant that non-tenure track faculty would certainly be laid off (as they have since been).  So I weighed that against my students' needs and my real solidarity with junior colleagues and decided to stay in the classroom.  So, if I were in Chicago now, if the strike was just about the merit-pay scheme as currently constituted, I would strongly consider striking, because such schemes have never worked anywhere, and there are very clear reasons why they don't.  But if it was just about the money, I myself would keep going to work.

Maybe that all makes me a "slave" to the system.  I'll admit that I have a kind of underdeveloped sense of self-interest.  I want my work to be meaningful, and as long as it is, if I can live on the pay, I'll do the work.  But that's just me.  Like I said above, no one on either the state government's or the union's side would ever want these things to be up to me.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: BigSkyBob on September 12, 2012, 11:41:04 AM
Um, krazen, do you seriously propose that a teacher in Chicago should make less than $75,000?  How could they possibly live?

Teachers in rural Missouri start at about $28,000 and max out around $45,000 - this is merely a subsistence level salary there, as is $75,000 in a large, expensive urban center like Chicago.

The starting salary of $28,000 is definitely criminal,

In a free market, wages are set at a level for which every job opening that occurs at least one qualified applicant is willing to take the job. That seems to be the case in rural Missouri. Advocating raising that wage seems to be to me more an exercize in rent seeking than a moral imperative.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: BigSkyBob on September 12, 2012, 11:45:20 AM
47% of Chicago voters back teachers

http://www.suntimes.com/15081881-761/story.html

A subtext to this dispute is that teachers have pretty much had their way for the last two decades in Chitown along with the other public sector workers. The old machine was built on handing out public sector jobs. That's a hard culture to move against.



But, it is an easy culture to leave! People who objected to that culture have had the option of fleeing to the suburbs those two decades. Perhaps, they did.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Torie on September 12, 2012, 12:01:29 PM
The grand bargain, that I think "the right" will embrace (they certainly should), is that teachers can be fired like anyone else who are substandard (rather than have a sinecure where they are only fired for serial child molestation captured on a video), while on the other hand, the best and brightest after 10 years or whatever, become master teachers, and make like 150K a year, adjusted regionally by the cost of living. That is the way to attract the talent we need, while getting rid of the drones. You have a career track, and if you have the knowledge, and the talent to teach (which includes acting ability) to achieve excellence, you get rewarded in a serious way - with an upper middle class standard of living. Will it cost more?  Of course! But it is a moral imperative that we make this "investment" with, and only with, the ground rules that I outlined. Make sense?  Anyone disagree?


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Franzl on September 12, 2012, 12:12:34 PM
The grand bargain, that I think "the right" will embrace (they certainly should), is that teachers can be fired like anyone else who are substandard (rather than have a sinecure where they are only fired for serial child molestation captured on a video), while on the other hand, the best and brightest after 10 years or whatever, become master teachers, and make like 150K a year, adjusted regionally by the cost of living. That is the way to attract the talent we need, while getting rid of the drones. You have a career track, and if you have the knowledge, and the talent to teach (which includes acting ability) to achieve excellence, you get rewarded in a serious way - with an upper middle class standard of living. Will it cost more?  Of course! But it is a moral imperative that we make this "investment" with, and only with, the ground rules that I outlined. Make sense?  Anyone disagree?

I agree in principle, but I do have one question that I feel hasn't been adequately answered.

How do we objectively judge merit? Test scores? Teacher grading by the pupils? I see some problems with judging who to promote to a "Master Teacher".


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: krazen1211 on September 12, 2012, 12:15:04 PM
The grand bargain, that I think "the right" will embrace (they certainly should), is that teachers can be fired like anyone else who are substandard (rather than have a sinecure where they are only fired for serial child molestation captured on a video), while on the other hand, the best and brightest after 10 years or whatever, become master teachers, and make like 150K a year, adjusted regionally by the cost of living. That is the way to attract the talent we need, while getting rid of the drones. You have a career track, and if you have the knowledge, and the talent to teach (which includes acting ability) to achieve excellence, you get rewarded in a serious way - with an upper middle class standard of living. Will it cost more?  Of course! But it is a moral imperative that we make this "investment" with, and only with, the ground rules that I outlined. Make sense?  Anyone disagree?

Take a look at the salaries of private school teachers.


http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d09/tables/dt09_075.asp




These chicago teachers are already getting a massive salary and a massive investment of $13,000 per student per year.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Torie on September 12, 2012, 12:21:45 PM
The grand bargain, that I think "the right" will embrace (they certainly should), is that teachers can be fired like anyone else who are substandard (rather than have a sinecure where they are only fired for serial child molestation captured on a video), while on the other hand, the best and brightest after 10 years or whatever, become master teachers, and make like 150K a year, adjusted regionally by the cost of living. That is the way to attract the talent we need, while getting rid of the drones. You have a career track, and if you have the knowledge, and the talent to teach (which includes acting ability) to achieve excellence, you get rewarded in a serious way - with an upper middle class standard of living. Will it cost more?  Of course! But it is a moral imperative that we make this "investment" with, and only with, the ground rules that I outlined. Make sense?  Anyone disagree?

I agree in principle, but I do have one question that I feel hasn't been adequately answered.

How do we objectively judge merit? Test scores? Teacher grading by the pupils? I see some problems with judging who to promote to a "Master Teacher".

The issue of evaluation attends any professional occupation, including lawyers. Just because it is subjective, does not mean that going through the exercise is not worthwhile. I would start by firing all the teachers who are functionally illiterate, and there are a lot of them. 

Krazen, private school pay is not applicable. Sure, teachers will teach for less if their students are well behaved middle to upper middle class kids. We are talking about a much tougher and more demanding environment here, where the kids have a lot more obstacles. It takes a special kind of teacher to make a difference. I would also focus on the early grades first, and also offer preschool education for the deprived, to get their vocabularies closer to the median when they hit first grade.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: LastVoter on September 12, 2012, 12:49:45 PM
The grand bargain, that I think "the right" will embrace (they certainly should), is that teachers can be fired like anyone else who are substandard (rather than have a sinecure where they are only fired for serial child molestation captured on a video), while on the other hand, the best and brightest after 10 years or whatever, become master teachers, and make like 150K a year, adjusted regionally by the cost of living. That is the way to attract the talent we need, while getting rid of the drones. You have a career track, and if you have the knowledge, and the talent to teach (which includes acting ability) to achieve excellence, you get rewarded in a serious way - with an upper middle class standard of living. Will it cost more?  Of course! But it is a moral imperative that we make this "investment" with, and only with, the ground rules that I outlined. Make sense?  Anyone disagree?
So you want teaching to become a good-ol' boys network, where everything depends on who is evaluating?


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Torie on September 12, 2012, 12:53:19 PM
The grand bargain, that I think "the right" will embrace (they certainly should), is that teachers can be fired like anyone else who are substandard (rather than have a sinecure where they are only fired for serial child molestation captured on a video), while on the other hand, the best and brightest after 10 years or whatever, become master teachers, and make like 150K a year, adjusted regionally by the cost of living. That is the way to attract the talent we need, while getting rid of the drones. You have a career track, and if you have the knowledge, and the talent to teach (which includes acting ability) to achieve excellence, you get rewarded in a serious way - with an upper middle class standard of living. Will it cost more?  Of course! But it is a moral imperative that we make this "investment" with, and only with, the ground rules that I outlined. Make sense?  Anyone disagree?
So you want teaching to become a good-ol' boys network, where everything depends on who is evaluating?

Surely you can do better than that as a riposte, can't you?


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Link on September 12, 2012, 01:09:43 PM
Krazen's obsession notwithstanding, you guys really think teachers should get a 30% raise?

Here's what Kraisins won't tell you...

Quote from: usatoday.com
Recent findings by Richard Ingersoll at the University of Pennsylvania show that as teacher attrition rates have risen, from about 10% to 13% for first-year teachers, schools are having to hire large numbers of new teachers. Between 40% to 50% of those entering the profession now leave within five years in what Ingersoll calls a "constant replenishment of beginners."

Link. (http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/backtoschool/story/2012-09-05/new-teachers/57581638/1)

How many of you would walk out of a $75,000 cake job?  I want the free market capitalist on this forum to explain this REALITY.  Don't just throw up a cherry picked string of statistics.  Explain to the forum inspite of all the wonderful benefits and three months off, and blah, blah, blah HALF of the people throw up their hand within 5 years.  Free market capitalism says if you have such a sweet lucrative cake deal you stick with it.  So is free market capitalism wrong or is the right wing teacher fantasy garbage?

To answer your question Senator, I don't know.  I need a lot more real information before I can say whether what they are demanding is reasonable or crazy.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Grumpier Than Uncle Joe on September 12, 2012, 01:19:24 PM
I wouldn't be a teacher for $75K anywhere....I'm far too impatient and cranky.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: anvi on September 12, 2012, 01:45:52 PM
In response to BigSkyBob's post to me.

I know full-time entry level teachers who are earning that in St. Louis too.  But, let's think through this for a second.  How about we think in terms of hourly wages in a free market and see how a beginning teacher makes out compared to one minimum wage worker with no education requirements beyond high school? Let's then compare their salary to that of other average entry-level workers with equivalent educational levels?  

Let's assume a new single teacher has a load of four or five courses to teach per term.  Their pay is $28,000 a year gross, which after 15% in federal taxes and about 6% in Missouri state taxes comes down to a net of $22,120 per year.  Now, that pay is compensation for for 36 weeks, two 18 week terms.  That would shake out to $614,44 per week net.  Now, a very recent study just released by the Gates Foundation, which surveyed 40,000 public school teachers, concluded that the average teacher works 10.4 hours a workday, which includes contact hours, preparation, grading and administrative responsibilities.  That's a 53-hour work week.  That would make the hourly compensation for a new teacher, $11.60 per hour, net.  

Minimum wage for a 40-hour work week in Missouri is $7.25, but a full-time single minimum-wage worker in Missouri would pay about the same 21% in federal and state taxes, so their net hourly pay would be about $5.73.  

So, a new teacher in Missouri makes just barely over twice the minimum wage in Missouri net.   But, here is the kicker.  Let's say the minimum wage worker in Missouri finished high school (though not all need to, of course).  The new teacher with at least a masters degree, and possibly a doctoral degree, which would be required to qualify for the job has an extra six to twelve years of higher education.  All that education makes the new teacher only double the minimum wage.

Now, let's compare people in other professions with masters and Ph.D. degrees.  The new teacher in Missouri makes $28,000.  The BLS puts the average new full-time social worker with a masters degree at a salary at $40,000 per year.  An MBA working for an average bank in 2009 made about $120,000 per year, before bonuses.  How about Ph.D's?  In 2009, according to the BLS, the bottom 10% of people with chemistry Ph.Ds who worked in industry earned about $36,000 per year, with the median salary for industry-empolyed Ph.Ds in this field at $72,000.  But let's even forget for a second about advanced degrees and take a peek at just technical training.  An entry-level computer-aided design drafter with a high school degree and some community college courses can pull in an average entry-level salary of $42,000 a year.  

So, to put all this in perspective, if we think $28,000 per year for a new full-time teacher in Missouri is an adequate salary, then we think new teachers should be earning twice the minimum wage, 66% of the salary of a community-college educated CAD-drafter 70% of the wages of a new social worker, 77% of the wages of a new industry-employed chem Ph.D., and 23% of an average MBA newly hired at a bank.  

Now, obviously, most teachers who have been in the field for a long time earn a lot more than $28,000 a year.  But if we think that's a fair entry-level wage, it seems to me that our market doesn't value new teachers very much, especially when one considers how much more heavily colleges and universities are now relying on them relative to how many tenure-track positions they offer.  And, if this is how much we value them, I wouldn't expect to draw too many talented people into the profession or expect much in the way of educational quality from those there now.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: anvi on September 12, 2012, 01:58:39 PM
As to evaluation standards, I'm fine with letting schools retain firing options for every teacher's entire career, and I think rational evaluation procedures by peers, mixed in with incentives for continuous professional development and offering to teach for periods of time in poor urban and rural schools all make sense.

I don't think teacher compensation or careers should be linked to standardized test scores.  Here is why.

If you do that while leaving the rest of the current system in place, then teachers will be hired or fired, promoted or demoted, on the basis of their students' test performances, but there will still be tons of financial aid money and open enrollment available at colleges and universities.  All this does is give teachers incentives to cheat and students no incentive to learn anything.  That's like making dentist licenses depend on their patients' dental health, but then letting even the patients with lousy teeth get leading roles in Hollywood flicks.  The dentists will just find creative ways to get good reports filed to whoever is on the oversight boards.

If you want to use standardized testing, then you have to do systemic reform where scores on those tests will determine what schools and career training opportunities students can qualify for as well as how much aid they can get for what.  That puts the incentive to learn back in the students' court, where it belongs.  On the teachers' end, you ensure that they get requisite training, qualify to teach the subjects they are assigned, mentor them, have them peer monitored, and give them incentives to improve and the school the option to let them go.  If the systemic reforms are rational, then merit pay based on standardized test scores will be unnecessary.  And since that approach has never been proven to produce the desired results anyway, why not do things right instead?  So much of what passes politically for education reform nowadays really does nothing, and the financial incentives in education, from student aid to funding schools to the way teachers are handled is also all f-ed up.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: opebo on September 12, 2012, 02:46:38 PM
I would start by firing all the teachers who are functionally illiterate, and there are a lot of them.

Be very careful, Torie - intelligence and even knowledge does not predict the ability to 'do a job well'.  In fact, for many - perhaps most - jobs, a kind of doggedness which is usually associated with the moderately stupid works best.  After all, what is more stupid than getting up early every day and spending your life at a job?



Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자) on September 12, 2012, 03:06:11 PM
Anvi, one thing your posts show is that the teaching profession is highly over-credentialed these days.  (Nor is it the only profession that has suffered at the hands of the academic-industrial complex.)  We really ought to go back to the days when we had normal schools that offered people a chance to pick up the fundamentals of being prepared to educate students in a two-to-three year curriculum.  It should not require a master's degree to be a teacher.  However, the credentialing organizations look more favorably on the employment of teachers with higher degrees and the pay scale in most public schools depends on how much college you've slogged through.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: anvi on September 12, 2012, 03:30:40 PM
Yeah, Ernest, there is an oversupply of people with advanced degrees competing for teaching positions.  Allowing primary and some secondary school to be staffed by people who have earned teaching certificates along with their BA degrees would be ok with me.  But the current oversupply of people with advanced degrees gives institutions that hire free rein to nab the most credentialed people at the lowest prices they can.  And, since school facilities themselves, as opposed to their administrative and teaching staffs, have suffered from less and less state funding as the years have passed at the same time as population has risen, schools without major endowments have to draw more and more of their funding from tuition and fees, and that also motivates them to hire the best credentialed people they can afford so that they can survive in this competition.  The circle is many kinds of vicious. 


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: krazen1211 on September 12, 2012, 04:13:27 PM
Chicago Public School enrollment has plunged 17% in the last decade with the fine job done by these teachers.

http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Reports/Philadelphia_Research_Initiative/Closing-Public-Schools-Philadelphia.pdf



One wonders whether the number of teachers employed by CPS has plunged in the same fashion. It would be highly astonishing for there NOT to be school closures that the union is whining about!


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Snowstalker Mk. II on September 12, 2012, 04:34:22 PM
Rahm Emanuel is among the worst mayors in the country.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: © tweed on September 12, 2012, 04:45:08 PM
while on the other hand, the best and brightest after 10 years or whatever, become master teachers, and make like 150K a year, adjusted regionally by the cost of living.

"oh God, go to Hell"  - my spontaneous reaction


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Vosem on September 12, 2012, 04:47:52 PM
After all, what is more stupid than getting up early every day and spending your life at a job?

My initial reaction to this statement has to be 'not doing so'.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: opebo on September 12, 2012, 04:51:24 PM
while on the other hand, the best and brightest after 10 years or whatever, become master teachers, and make like 150K a year, adjusted regionally by the cost of living.

"oh God, go to Hell"  - my spontaneous reaction

Haha, well, to be fair, this is a natural reaction to any pontification by the insulated rich. 

After all, what is more stupid than getting up early every day and spending your life at a job?

My initial reaction to this statement has to be 'not doing so'.

Meh, dead end either way.  And anyway of course I was being facetious - for 99% of people there is no choice but to get up every day and go to work.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: mondale84 on September 12, 2012, 05:12:59 PM
Chicago Public School enrollment has plunged 17% in the last decade with the fine job done by these teachers.


As it has in most urban areas...your point?

No one cares about this strike btw...


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Link on September 12, 2012, 05:13:07 PM
Rahm Emanuel is among the worst mayors in the country.

Why do you say that?


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: krazen1211 on September 12, 2012, 05:48:09 PM
Chicago Public School enrollment has plunged 17% in the last decade with the fine job done by these teachers.


As it has in most urban areas...your point?

No one cares about this strike btw...


Obviously with a plunging school population, teachers need to be fired and schools need to be closed.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Link on September 12, 2012, 06:02:24 PM
Chicago Public School enrollment has plunged 17% in the last decade with the fine job done by these teachers.


As it has in most urban areas...your point?

No one cares about this strike btw...


Obviously with a plunging school population, teachers need to be fired and schools need to be closed.

Why?

If they need to reduce the work force it can be accomplished easily through attrition.

Quote from: usatoday.com
Recent findings by Richard Ingersoll at the University of Pennsylvania show that as teacher attrition rates have risen, from about 10% to 13% for first-year teachers, schools are having to hire large numbers of new teachers. Between 40% to 50% of those entering the profession now leave within five years in what Ingersoll calls a "constant replenishment of beginners."


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: krazen1211 on September 12, 2012, 06:30:38 PM
Why?

If they need to reduce the work force it can be accomplished easily through attrition.

Quote from: usatoday.com
Recent findings by Richard Ingersoll at the University of Pennsylvania show that as teacher attrition rates have risen, from about 10% to 13% for first-year teachers, schools are having to hire large numbers of new teachers. Between 40% to 50% of those entering the profession now leave within five years in what Ingersoll calls a "constant replenishment of beginners."

Their compensation structure makes it far more logical to get rid of the worst dinosaur tenured teachers.

See charts.

http://illinoispolicy.org/blog/blog.asp?ArticleSource=5041


In their own words, you can get 3 new teachers for the price of 1 old one.


The unions of course went to court to keep the high paid dinosaurs and Karen Lewis is making a fuss about school closures.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: opebo on September 13, 2012, 06:43:23 AM
Their compensation structure makes it far more logical to get rid of the worst dinosaur tenured teachers.

See charts.

http://illinoispolicy.org/blog/blog.asp?ArticleSource=5041

In their own words, you can get 3 new teachers for the price of 1 old one.

The unions of course went to court to keep the high paid dinosaurs and Karen Lewis is making a fuss about school closures.

Good lord man, you realize this line of thinking makes all raises impossible or very short-lived - just like in the private sector.  Anyone who gets a raise over time will inevitably be fired and replaced by someone cheaper.  Can't you see that this destroys any possibility of well-being, progress, or a decent life for ALL workers?


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: krazen1211 on September 13, 2012, 07:19:41 AM
Their compensation structure makes it far more logical to get rid of the worst dinosaur tenured teachers.

See charts.

http://illinoispolicy.org/blog/blog.asp?ArticleSource=5041

In their own words, you can get 3 new teachers for the price of 1 old one.

The unions of course went to court to keep the high paid dinosaurs and Karen Lewis is making a fuss about school closures.

Good lord man, you realize this line of thinking makes all raises impossible or very short-lived - just like in the private sector.  Anyone who gets a raise over time will inevitably be fired and replaced by someone cheaper.  Can't you see that this destroys any possibility of well-being, progress, or a decent life for ALL workers?

Not at all. One merely needs to display added value with something more than grey hairs.

Of course, displaying 3x added value is a tad more difficult than 1.5x added value.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: muon2 on September 13, 2012, 07:20:14 AM
The grand bargain, that I think "the right" will embrace (they certainly should), is that teachers can be fired like anyone else who are substandard (rather than have a sinecure where they are only fired for serial child molestation captured on a video), while on the other hand, the best and brightest after 10 years or whatever, become master teachers, and make like 150K a year, adjusted regionally by the cost of living. That is the way to attract the talent we need, while getting rid of the drones. You have a career track, and if you have the knowledge, and the talent to teach (which includes acting ability) to achieve excellence, you get rewarded in a serious way - with an upper middle class standard of living. Will it cost more?  Of course! But it is a moral imperative that we make this "investment" with, and only with, the ground rules that I outlined. Make sense?  Anyone disagree?

I agree in principle, but I do have one question that I feel hasn't been adequately answered.

How do we objectively judge merit? Test scores? Teacher grading by the pupils? I see some problems with judging who to promote to a "Master Teacher".

There are well-defined procedures that are used in higher education, including at public universities to judge merit for raises and promotion. Higher ed uses promotion to tenure and to the ranks of associate and full professor. There's a department-level committee that reviews the candidate's teaching and scholarship and recommends to a vote of the full department. Their approval in turn must be approved by the whole faculty and then to the board of trustees. It's a pretty good system for vetting promotions, though like any system there are instances that get it wrong.

As similar process can work for raises, too. A faculty committee (with forced rotation of membership) can assess members and create a ranking based on teaching, scholarship and departmental service. The rankings can be used by the college to award merit raises. By rotating the peer evaluators any bias tends to average out.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: muon2 on September 13, 2012, 07:28:16 AM


Chicago Public School enrollment has plunged 17% in the last decade with the fine job done by these teachers.


As it has in most urban areas...your point?

No one cares about this strike btw...


Obviously with a plunging school population, teachers need to be fired and schools need to be closed.

Why?

If they need to reduce the work force it can be accomplished easily through attrition.

Quote from: usatoday.com
Recent findings by Richard Ingersoll at the University of Pennsylvania show that as teacher attrition rates have risen, from about 10% to 13% for first-year teachers, schools are having to hire large numbers of new teachers. Between 40% to 50% of those entering the profession now leave within five years in what Ingersoll calls a "constant replenishment of beginners."

Their compensation structure makes it far more logical to get rid of the worst dinosaur tenured teachers.

See charts.

http://illinoispolicy.org/blog/blog.asp?ArticleSource=5041


In their own words, you can get 3 new teachers for the price of 1 old one.


The unions of course went to court to keep the high paid dinosaurs and Karen Lewis is making a fuss about school closures.

The threat of school closings are another big undercurrent to the strike. Emanuel has suggested massive closings to match the population loss. He's also made it clear that he'd like many more charter schools to accommodate the long waiting list, and that portends additional closings. The city he took over is deep in red ink, and the one time sale of assets like the Skyway and on street parking is not viable.

Though there is attrition, it wouldn't be enough to bring staffing down to the levels envisioned in the mayor's plan. That's why the recall provision is a big sticking point in negotiations. The CTU wants seniority control over which teachers are rehired as needed and the CPS wants the principals to have primary control of hiring from a pool of laid off teachers.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: BigSkyBob on September 13, 2012, 02:40:32 PM
Their compensation structure makes it far more logical to get rid of the worst dinosaur tenured teachers.

See charts.

http://illinoispolicy.org/blog/blog.asp?ArticleSource=5041

In their own words, you can get 3 new teachers for the price of 1 old one.

The unions of course went to court to keep the high paid dinosaurs and Karen Lewis is making a fuss about school closures.

Good lord man, you realize this line of thinking makes all raises impossible or very short-lived - just like in the private sector.  Anyone who gets a raise over time will inevitably be fired and replaced by someone cheaper.  Can't you see that this destroys any possibility of well-being, progress, or a decent life for ALL workers?

Your statement is predicated on the false premise that the amount of any raise would outweigh the added productivity of the person given the raise. While that may very well be true of seniority-based raises, a person given a merit-based pay raise could more than justify the additional salary.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: 後援会 on September 14, 2012, 04:58:16 PM
A good teacher is much much better than a bad teacher. I mean, if you're shoveling sh**t, the best sh**t-shoveller isn't going to be 10x better than the worst (lol Alexey Stakhanov).

But teachers? Absolutely. I think the best teacher I've had did 100x more for me than the worst teacher I've had. So I think merit pay makes sense. Everyone agrees on the concept of merit pay. It's the concept of how we measure merit that people debate on. And while I do think standardized tests are not a great way to measure merit, it's non-subjective and should be at the very least one of the factors in a holistic evaluation.

That being said, the CTU is run by scumbags.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: anvi on September 14, 2012, 09:26:59 PM
Depending on how well they are crafted, standardized tests are designed to be and often can be effective measures of student aptitudes for certain subjects, which is why they can be used to determine areas where students are more or less likely to excel in either their work or further instruction.  But standardized tests are not objective measures of teacher effectiveness; they are not designed for that purpose, and they are fundamentally unsound indicators of it.

First of all, in current circumstances, state education boards may variously assess, and school districts, schools or individual teachers may use, textbooks for their courses that may or may not have significant overlap with materials chosen by national standardized test designers to assess.  Students who perform well in classes using the instructional materials assigned in them may easily perform poorly on a highly generalized standardized test that measures different competencies than were covered in a class.  Inferring that teachers performed poorly under these circumstances would just be wrong.  If you had national standards that controlled curricula in all states and national boards that determined textbook usage everywhere that corresponded to standardized test assessments, some of this problem could be mitigated, but advocates for measuring teacher performance based on standardized test scores don't, as far as I'm aware, also advocate for this.  (EDIT: There is however a movement afoot in lots of schools to centralize curricular decisions away from departments to supervising college administrators, so while not much may be heard of this option openly, something portending it is going on in institutions at all levels.)

Standardized tests that are well-crafted to measure student aptitude in specific subject-areas are constructed with problems that are at least moderately difficult in that subject area.  That is so because the tests are constructed precisely to effectively differentiate student performance in their specific areas.  As a rule, only somewhere around half of the students who take such a standardized test on a well-defined content area will perform well.  Problems that will likely be answered correctly by a large majority of students will more often than not be excluded from a standardized test altogether.  By contrast, school classes are often designed to ensure that most of the students who take the class will become proficient at a defined and minimum set of skills that correspond to the level of the class being taught.  Therefore, student performance that could in every fair respect be judged above-average in classes available in a particular school's curriculum might only be middling on a standardized test.  That result does not lend itself to an accurate assessment of teacher effectiveness either.  Once again, I don't hear advocates of merit-pay or hiring and firing decisions based on the standardized test performance of students advocating for a nationalized student curriculum that would mitigate the effects of this situation either.

Finally, students have aptitudes for different subjects that have nothing to do with teacher performance.  Students with extraordinary verbal skills may simply not be very talented when it comes to math, and vice-versa.  Students who have extraordinary musical skills simply may not be able to figure out chemistry, and vice-versa.  Students who have native intellectual talents for history may struggle terribly with logic puzzles.  Should teachers be penalized because of variations in student aptitude?  

There are also areas that are more controversial, having to do with economic or socio-cultural disparities, that I won't emphasize here.  What I've already written should be enough to show that standardized tests ought to be employed as more or less "non-subjective" measures of student aptitude for different areas of study, which is precisely what they are designed to predict.  They are not objective measures of things they were never designed to measure.  Using a standardized test to assess teacher effectiveness in our educational framework will work about as well as using a lawnmower to fly to Japan.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Badger on September 16, 2012, 02:59:04 PM
This guy wearing communist red gets $75k.

()

Reminds me of this shade of red, no? Which major party is typically symbolized by (in most contexts) the color red...

Krazy, if you're going to try to represent blue avatars in these debates, please quit chronically walking into obvious walls and troll-traps.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: opebo on September 16, 2012, 03:15:01 PM
Not at all. One merely needs to display added value with something more than grey hairs.

...a person given a merit-based pay raise could more than justify the additional salary.

You poor young lad's misunderstanding of growing older is breathtaking!

You see, as you get older, you get worse, and life gets worse, and this will happen to you as well, inevitably.

People who devised these seniority systems recognized the basic despair of human life and tried to assuage the horror of it with a small palliative.  Seniority is a precious gift for all of us!  Your wanton disregard of this reality implies you are either millionaires or are entirely ignorant of the nature of human life and mortality.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Badger on September 16, 2012, 03:23:51 PM
Why?

If they need to reduce the work force it can be accomplished easily through attrition.

Quote from: usatoday.com
Recent findings by Richard Ingersoll at the University of Pennsylvania show that as teacher attrition rates have risen, from about 10% to 13% for first-year teachers, schools are having to hire large numbers of new teachers. Between 40% to 50% of those entering the profession now leave within five years in what Ingersoll calls a "constant replenishment of beginners."

Their compensation structure makes it far more logical to get rid of the worst dinosaur tenured teachers.

See charts.

http://illinoispolicy.org/blog/blog.asp?ArticleSource=5041


In their own words, you can get 3 new teachers for the price of 1 old one.


The unions of course went to court to keep the high paid dinosaurs and Karen Lewis is making a fuss about school closures.
You're quoting 'facts' from a decidedly anti-union 'think tank'. I'll seek a more unbiased source personally.

BTW: would you be upset krazen to discover the average member of the IL Policy Institute-yeducators, if you will--earn notably more than $75k per annium? It's a tax-exempt non-profit, and undoubtedly it's well-healed contribtors and sugar daddies would have more money in taxes to pay if they didn't have to support such over-paid educators, right?


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: muon2 on September 16, 2012, 06:07:37 PM
Despite a tentative deal reached yesterday, the teachers don't trust the administration (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-chicago-teachers-union-meets-on-contract-today-20120916,0,4830609.story) without time to digest an actual contract in writing. So the strike will continue.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: krazen1211 on September 16, 2012, 08:00:13 PM
Why?

If they need to reduce the work force it can be accomplished easily through attrition.

Quote from: usatoday.com
Recent findings by Richard Ingersoll at the University of Pennsylvania show that as teacher attrition rates have risen, from about 10% to 13% for first-year teachers, schools are having to hire large numbers of new teachers. Between 40% to 50% of those entering the profession now leave within five years in what Ingersoll calls a "constant replenishment of beginners."

Their compensation structure makes it far more logical to get rid of the worst dinosaur tenured teachers.

See charts.

http://illinoispolicy.org/blog/blog.asp?ArticleSource=5041


In their own words, you can get 3 new teachers for the price of 1 old one.


The unions of course went to court to keep the high paid dinosaurs and Karen Lewis is making a fuss about school closures.
You're quoting 'facts' from a decidedly anti-union 'think tank'. I'll seek a more unbiased source personally.

BTW: would you be upset krazen to discover the average member of the IL Policy Institute-yeducators, if you will--earn notably more than $75k per annium? It's a tax-exempt non-profit, and undoubtedly it's well-healed contribtors and sugar daddies would have more money in taxes to pay if they didn't have to support such over-paid educators, right?


You are quite a confused fellow. The Chicago teachers themselves claim that you can hire three young teachers for the price of a lavishly overpaid dinosaur.

But i suppose your post would be mildly upsetting if the IL Policy institute employed 30000, comparable to the size of the public sector legions attacking the treasury.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: muon2 on September 16, 2012, 10:04:53 PM
Despite a tentative deal reached yesterday, the teachers don't trust the administration (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-chicago-teachers-union-meets-on-contract-today-20120916,0,4830609.story) without time to digest an actual contract in writing. So the strike will continue.

Now the word is that Emanuel will file an injunction against the union to force them to the classroom (scrolling across the bottom of the football game).


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: anvi on September 16, 2012, 11:02:35 PM
Good grief.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: opebo on September 17, 2012, 09:53:15 AM
...you can hire three young teachers for the price of a lavishly overpaid dinosaur.

krazen advocates a Logan's Run America.

()


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: krazen1211 on September 17, 2012, 10:55:37 AM
I don't know what that is, but I find it funny that you think the collapsing student population of Chicago deserves 1 teacher rather than 3.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: © tweed on September 17, 2012, 11:13:00 AM
can anyone who knows this stuff tell us whether or not the injunction move will be successful?


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자) on September 17, 2012, 12:09:40 PM
I don't know what that is, but I find it funny that you think the collapsing student population of Chicago deserves 1 teacher rather than 3.

Logan's Run was a dystopian 1967 novel, 1976 film, and 1977 TV series.  The three all had different takes on the central premise of a future society in which once you reached a certain age (30 in the film and TV series) you were killed off to make way for the young.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Free Palestine on September 17, 2012, 01:05:29 PM
Isn't strike-buster Rahm Emmanuel supposed to be a "progressive"?


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Vosem on September 17, 2012, 01:47:04 PM
Isn't strike-buster Rahm Emmanuel supposed to be a "progressive"?

This is America, my friend. Strike-busting Rahm Emanuel isn't just supposed to be a progressive -- he is, by our standards, a progressive.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: World politics is up Schmitt creek on September 17, 2012, 01:51:00 PM
Isn't strike-buster Rahm Emmanuel supposed to be a "progressive"?

This is America, my friend. Strike-busting Rahm Emanuel isn't just supposed to be a progressive -- he is, by our standards, a progressive.

Sadly, Vosem is entirely right.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: BigSkyBob on September 18, 2012, 08:57:40 AM
Isn't strike-buster Rahm Emmanuel supposed to be a "progressive"?

At some point you reach the Thatcher endpoint. At that point, some "progressive" has to step forward and a prioritize which options are more "progressive," and which are least.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Associate Justice PiT on September 18, 2012, 09:46:55 AM
     Chicago teachers are massively overpaid. Some folks have business asking for a raise, but they're not among them.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Napoleon on September 18, 2012, 09:51:24 AM
     Chicago teachers are massively overpaid. Some folks have business asking for a raise, but they're not among them.

Yeah, joke strike.


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: Badger on September 18, 2012, 04:20:17 PM
Why?

If they need to reduce the work force it can be accomplished easily through attrition.

Quote from: usatoday.com
Recent findings by Richard Ingersoll at the University of Pennsylvania show that as teacher attrition rates have risen, from about 10% to 13% for first-year teachers, schools are having to hire large numbers of new teachers. Between 40% to 50% of those entering the profession now leave within five years in what Ingersoll calls a "constant replenishment of beginners."

Their compensation structure makes it far more logical to get rid of the worst dinosaur tenured teachers.

See charts.

http://illinoispolicy.org/blog/blog.asp?ArticleSource=5041


In their own words, you can get 3 new teachers for the price of 1 old one.


The unions of course went to court to keep the high paid dinosaurs and Karen Lewis is making a fuss about school closures.
You're quoting 'facts' from a decidedly anti-union 'think tank'. I'll seek a more unbiased source personally.

BTW: would you be upset krazen to discover the average member of the IL Policy Institute-yeducators, if you will--earn notably more than $75k per annium? It's a tax-exempt non-profit, and undoubtedly it's well-healed contribtors and sugar daddies would have more money in taxes to pay if they didn't have to support such over-paid educators, right?


You are quite a confused fellow. The Chicago teachers themselves claim that you can hire three young teachers for the price of a lavishly overpaid dinosaur.

But i suppose your post would be mildly upsetting if the IL Policy institute employed 30000, comparable to the size of the public sector legions attacking the treasury.

Good job at ducking the question.

Are you going to revert all your posts to merely sneering?


Title: Re: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
Post by: © tweed on September 18, 2012, 05:45:14 PM



Chicago Teachers Union · 38,092 like this.
23 minutes ago via Mobile ·
Delegates just voted to suspend the strike.