-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
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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Once again folks, don’t confuse the CPS with education. It’s a government funded jobs program for the Democratic Party. There, at least we can now start from a known quantity.
So why not expel them? Schools are becoming a baby sitting exercise. Imagine though if these students were expelled what would the teachers, who are skilled at role taking, do for living?
Although many years ago, when our kids where at cps, the other group that’s ‘chronically absent’ are the teachers. With endless, sometimes a week of substitute teachers. As ctu has negotiated so many ways for teachers to take days off and absolute minimum # of school days…would make a great study/articale to compare # of days cps teachers are in classroom vrs other dist or states.
The still get passed on to the next grade. Teachers are only in it for the money.
Teachers are not the authority on passing students. That responsibility is with the administration.
The students aren’t even showing up and yet you blame the teachers. Clearly you were denied an education. Must be why you have such hatred for educators.
So are you saying that teachers have given 80% of the class the failing grades they have earned, but the administrators are passing them anyway? And that evaluators are giving glowing reviews to teachers who have given failing grades to 80% of their students? Sorry, not buying it. We both know the teachers are complicit in giving students passing grades that they don’t deserve.
Utilize some critical thinking skills instead of just relying on your hatred for unionized teachers. What motive do teachers have for promoting kids to the next grade? Do they get some type of bonus? A better raise? No. So why would they happily promote and graduate kids that don’t deserve it? If anything their life would be easier if they could fail the non-performing student. Eventually you would only have kids that truly want to be there and their jobs would be so much easier. Who more likely benefits? Teachers who receive nothing and if anything are frustrated by someone… Read more »
Well, we can agree on something. Failing students are not the cause of their teachers.
So much malfunction going back decades, as you point out. But somehow it has nothing to do with those who have been most involved in planning, implementing and running the system.
Time to close the whole CPS enterprise down and begin again. Start by hiring teachers who can pass a reading comprehension exam. Then make performance demands on parents and guardians and the students themselves.
Let’s blame the teachers for kids at CPS not getting an education. I mean what responsibility do the kids and parents have getting their children to attend school? Never mind actually trying to learn anything.
Education in inner cities will always be a problem until those same families value education. You can spend all the money you want but this will always be the problem.
While I pretty much agree, it doesn’t help the teaching profession to label them as such passive participants in the education process. If the kids don’t show up, if the kids don’t care, if the parents don’t care…why are you here again? Why do I need to hire more of you?
The market (students) is telling you something. For better or worse, much of your customer base does not value your product, yet they are required to consume it. What are you doing to change your product (education)?
What are YOU doing to change it? Teachers are merely employees of the district. The district is run by the board and the voters hired the board. The district rates the teachers proficiency as to teaching and the board over sees the district.
The voters want this system otherwise they would demand change. Don’t blame police for increases in crime based on policies outside their control and don’t blame teachers while working under a similar system outside their control.
The teachers want this system otherwise they would demand change.
The VOTERs want this system otherwise they would demand change.
Teachers are merely employees that are hired to do the job that the public has deemed a necessity. They are not miracle workers nor are they doing volunteer work. You’ve hired them to perform a service and according to official records, most are performing at or above the required level.
I engineered the new Ford Explorer (curriculum) and handed off manufacturing and assembly to my union-factories (local teacher union). Customers (students) enter my showroom (classroom), the salesmen (teachers) engage the customers and educate them on the product (subjects), some customers take the cars for a test drive (lab), but many of those customers leave without an Explorer (education). The dealership, and ones with similar issues, closes shop. It doesn’t matter why – customers couldn’t afford my product or understand what I was selling – they simply did not purchase (receive education). At the end of the day, that dealership is… Read more »
Business vs education. Education will never be run like a business.
Those students/familes (customers) don’t want or value an education (Explorer). The problem is we know that those families will never get out of poverty without an education. Are we willing to walk away from them and stop providing an education? In business that’s an easy decision. When it comes to society and its views about public education, clearly we are not there yet.
Your argument regarding teacher’s lack of blame isn’t helped by the fact that their union has its’ fingerprints all over the poor policy and procedure decisions that have resulted in all these horrible outcomes.
There’s plenty of “blame” to go around, and CPS teachers and their union bear a unique, and large, part of that burden. They’re voters too –
“their union has its’ fingerprints all over the poor policy and procedure decisions that have resulted in all these horrible outcomes.” You made the accusation but can you point to a policy decision that is impacting low performing students that is the result of the teachers contract that their union negotiated? During the last contract negotiation teachers bargained for more money as well as more staff. How did that negotiation cause bad results? Sure it costs taxpayers more money but it doesn’t cause lower performance. Teachers don’t decide curriculum. Teachers don’t decide the rules for passing students to the next… Read more »
Let’s start out by having you agree that whatever it is that CTU “negotiated” has only happened because teachers have voted in favor of it. I might also mention that my wife was a teacher (high school and college) while working through her two masters and her PhD (in Counselor Education). Works with disabled veterans now. Both of my parents started out as teachers – music (Mom) and English Language (Dad). Both of my Dad’s parent’s were teachers. They started out in consolidated-grades one or two room Kansas schoolhouses. Grandpa, after taking a break from college to drag telegraph cables… Read more »
I appreciate some of your family back story but you didn’t answer my question.
How did the teacher contract/negotiation cause these poor results?
They are employees and are working their contract. If something is wrong in the contract then CPS needs to make sure that’s a priority in the next contract and hold the line. I have yet to read a cogent argument that this low performance is caused by the teachers contracts. It’s always vague blame without any substance.
“[Poor outcomes] happen in every major city as the parents and students just don’t care enough.”
No one cares, not even the woke commies CTU teachers. We’d be better off just hiring community members to baby sit.
I’ve seen the third or fourth season of The Wire about the Baltimore education system. There is nothing anyone can do. The system is beyond broken. There’s literally nothing anyone can do from within the system to fix it. The best case scenario is that forces from the outside overhaul the system. But Chicago would be the first major city to successfully overhaul their system where every other district around the country has failed.
No argument here. I’m not sure how it can be fixed until the families that send their kid to Chicago Public Schools actually start to care. I won’t hold my breath.
The parents that send their kids to CPS have the least clout of any stakeholder in the system. For goodness sake, CPS can groom your children into the opposite sex and then keep it secret from the parents. If they can change your kids gender behind your back, what power do parents have to effectuate any real change, other than to leave? This has been happening at least since 2018. CPS has been hemorrhaging students. The only people left are the parents that either agree with CPS philosophies, or, are too stupid to care. https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/08/20/chicago-public-schools-hide-childrens-gender-identity-from-parents/ Journalist and author Abigail Shrier… Read more »
Passive participants when the issue is education results, vaunted professionals when issuing their demands.
Read the article, and the articles linked to it.
Short story is that lots and lots of various “intervention” programs and policies involving no end of this-n-that CPS woke-n-progressive administration and school apparatchiks, at vast taxpayer expense, have failed to keep the CPS truancy rate from doubling.
But, no worries says CPS. We’ll spend more money and time doing more of the same, and that’ll make things better.
How can graduation rates be meaningful with such significant truancy?
Yep, exactly.
CPS bragged relentlessly about their 2022 four year high school “graduation” rate of 83%.
Half, perhaps more, of whom were apparently chronically truant, and yet “graduated” anyway.
I wonder how many of those chronically truant high school “graduates” went on to enroll in some taxpayer subsidized “college” program? One that’s intended to make up for their dismal K-12 education by continuing to make sure they get a free lunch every day while they’re a chronically truant college student, who’s pretending to learn how to read, write and add.
An 83% graduation rate is orders of magnitude above what it was even a generation ago when half of students dropped out. But back teachers at least attempted to teach students to read and write. My my, how things have changed since then. Schools today are woke madrassas where students become fully indoctrinated in grievance studies through CRT, Trans and communism overload.
By video and lecturing of course, since they can’t read.