Chicago Teachers Union contract demands are totally divorced from reality – Wirepoints
May 8, 2024
36 Comments
Details emerging about Chicago Teachers Union’s upcoming contract show just how divorced its demands, both extreme and expensive, are from the reality at Chicago schools. It’s not just about massive salary increases, but also about money for migrant students, climate initiatives, abortions and gender-affirming care. About blocking parental notification. Count on CTU’s demands to veer further from reality until the public finally says no.
Weekly crime statistics from the Chicago Police Department: Report through 5/4/2024.
Gov. JB Pritzker calls it “ethics” reform.
It’s rare to see city leaders in Chicago take an open, unabashed stance on the collapse of literacy. To complain is deemed as too political, too racist or too anti-public schools. So it’s refreshing to see Willie Wilson, a successful businessman and leader of the black community, call for a literacy initiative “with the goal of getting 100% of Black students reading at grade level.”
Maybe these kids are just training to be Chicago aldermen. That’s the perfect job for them. Not much attendance required, so they have lots of time for the extracurricular activities that aldermen are infamous for.
The parents should be publicly shamed.
Wouldn’t work – theirs is a culture immune to shaming.
This letter is based on the false assumption that CPS and their puppet masters at CTU actually give a crap about students and about education.
So, please tell me just how much anxiety and frustration are teachers expected to show and feel as compared to the parents of such students. Those student absentees are under the ongoing legal custody of their parents who presumably could be subjected to legal action when they are thought delinquent in their oversight responsibilities. If the parents can’t/won’t have enough oversight to make sure their offspring are in school, then I’d have to say they are greatly complicit in the poor education their children receive. Generally speaking, each day spent in school has learning activities meant for the student’s success… Read more »
The problem is that administrators pass on these absentees in large numbers, no matter their achievement or skill level. I would hazard a guess that racial identity politics plays an outsize role in this harmful practice.
All too few teachers can swim againt the prevailing tide for an entire career. There are too many pressures brought to bear against you. Sooner or later you have to succumb to the flow of realizing what’s doable and having to feel more than a little diminished by any efforts trying to be more heroic in your attempts. The system has too many roadblocks to feeling more successful in the larger sense in many, many cases. Poor student attendance is but one thing that causes such problems, and there are a variety of other causes as well.
How did this get to be the prevailing tide? Who has been running the schools for decades? This wasn’t imposed on schools; it’s the consequence of ideas they have pushed for a long time.
A great many parents are prone to thinking two things that are problematical in regard to this topic: their child is an unrecognized genius needing special privileges and that academic proficiency is totally due to what happens inside the schools. Such people are not likely to consider that what they do or fail to do as a parent has any significant, ongoing role in the child’s academic progress. That type-casting certainly doesn’t apply to all parents, but where you find a miscreant or unproductive child you’ll usually find it applies.
I’m sure that’s true. But the comment was about the prevailing tide of social promotion schools have been practicing for quite a while.
Find baby sitters for non-performing students and dismiss absentee teachers. Better to use the budget to hire lawyers to fight the inevitable litigation. Don’t settle those suits but appeal adverse decisions. If this bankrupts the district(s) and/or the unions we’ll be better off. The more adverse court decisions the faster the bankruptcy. Nothing chills a plaintiff lawyer faster than a judgment that can’t be collected.
If only life in that atmosphere were as simplistic and easily solvable as you wish. But, much of what you want left the world of legal possibilities many decades ago. “Hang ’em high” administrative policies as a permissible work or school culture no longer apply except in movies.
If I were permitted to retain the actual number of students in my 8th grade who truly were not prepared for high school, the graduation rate would be about 30%. It’s unsustainable.
It hasn’t been about education in a looooooong time.
The only answer is to dismantle the entire system.
Waggs, we really value comments from teachers like you. Can you tell us what city that was in?
Chicago Public Schools, baby. Where the best and brightest are left to fend for themselves, while the rest are fed a steady diet of watered-down curricula, SEL, and on-demand excuses for why they can’t succeed.
This is also true in other cities around the state but not all. Here is an article from WREX TV in Rockford from 2019. This was happening way before 2019. Rockford school district has had many problems in the past like the People who Care vs the board of education lawsuit which cost the district (taxpayers) over a quarter of a billion. Declining enrollment while steadily increasing the budget year over year. The highest penalties for pension spiking in the state at $3M and counting and on and on. Seems like the most emphasis are put on sports and not… Read more »
Thanks for your efforts, Waggs! God bless.
You know how you calculate education cost per pupil? Extrapolate it based on days actually in school: cost per pupil per days attended.
This item appears to reference the letter at https://chicago.suntimes.com/2023/11/24/23970871/cps-must-solve-chronic-absenteeism-education-schools-letters-larry-vigon