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Staffing remains a major concern, Pedro Martinez said, and declining enrollment is a key challenge. But he said he also sees an opportunity to explore innovative models for the district’s smallest schools — for example, as career high schools focused on specific high-demand industries, from aviation to cybersecurity to construction.
Summary and audio linked here.
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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Amazing that generations managed to graduate and either go on to higher learning or the trades with ‘reimagined’ learning.
With little more than the basics teachers have managed to educate students in reading, math, science, history, and language arts. They didn’t require reimagining.
Perhaps reimagining means reading, writing, and math illiteracy but strong command of critical race theory, gender ideology, activism, and victimization.
Bah!
Spot on Pat,
When I think of what nuns who taught me in the 60’s were able accomplish my head spins. They did so much with so little for so long that they literally could do anything with nothing.
What they did for me was impart the skills necessary to become self taught in any area I so desired.
I don’t ever remember them going on strike, missing school due to snow days because the convent was right next door to the school and there were no active shooting drills!
They were quite amazing accomplishing what they did with the basic resources they had. We learned math and reading from the same texts my mother had used decades earlier.
The raw material, children, haven’t changed, but teachers’ skills and societal norms have.
And we walked to school, uphill both ways in snow, rain, cold, dark, whatever. We had to be in church, at mass or else everyday. Kneeling on the hard floor of the church was a bit painful but insured you were on time the next day. Sister used that hard wood pointer like a swashbuckling pirate and I think my knuckles still hurt a little. None the worse for wear with loads of memories.
Ours weren’t that tough on girls, but the boys got more than their share from SOME of them. Most were kind human beings wrangling up to 30 kids in a class and dealing with frustration … that comes with wrangling 30 squirming kids in a class.
I, too, have great memories and a few not-so-great. Happy my folks could afford the $3.50/month tuition in the 50s.
“In an ideal world, he said, he wants to see every student graduate bilingual and biliterate.”
Most students already read and write two languages, but both poorly.
The equitable grading is complete nonsense.
The article notes a problem with teacher and staff shortages, then points out that is partially due to adding 600 new teaching postions. This in a district with plunging enrollment.
An article stuffed full of the usual progressive-n-woke rah rah-n-blah blah that doesn’t illuminate how he plans on placing students who “graduate” without being able to read and write jobs in “high-demand industries, from aviation to cybersecurity to construction.”