Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'm sorry that beautiful English teacher turned out to be a lesbian. I really am.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

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).

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

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?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

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.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

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.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

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.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

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.

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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.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

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.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

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.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

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.