-- 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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Move students out of empty schools. Segregate classes by ability and good behavior. Stop promoting kids beyond third grade if they aren’t at grade level. Have windows of re-entry for students who demonstrate behavior reformation and interest in learning. Burden of proof is on the kids. In Chicago. teachers and students and parents are all demoralized for obvious reasons. It’s become worse with COVID. For those who are unable to move away AND who have K-12 students in their households, the system has created several lost generations. The rest of the world will just continue to outpace these students. Tech… Read more »
Per my original post there is no shortage. Go to the university placement office and opn your eyes. More lies from the usual in Illinois and next up…forgive loans blah blah for teachers in Illinois.
Sure, and imagine you’d jump at the chance to live in, say, Cairo, IL. What a resort town with so much to do!
Cairo is the whole state?
Laughing here your post really isn’t worth responding to.
Cairo…and have you polled the recent graduates I was referring to?
You would fit in much better at the Crapital Fax blog…as if we didn’t know.
Well, of course Cairo isn’t the whole state, but much of it is like Cairo economically, and chances are that’s where you’d find a lot of job openings. You won’t find nearly so much percentage-wise in Chicago’s suburbs, I’d bet, and that likely can be said for other areas of some affluence in IL. So, all I’m saying, is check where you find those job openings and you’ll have a better understanding of why certain places have a history of them. Now, you want to diss me, yet you want me to poll your small sample and presume that mirrors… Read more »
Let’s compare test scores: Cairo vs Chicago.
I’ll make it simple. Let’s see who can piss farther and be done with this stupid exchange.
as long as the contest is in Chicago.
When you let a particular group of workers retire at age 55 then you shouldn’t be surprised if there’s employee shortages in that field. Never see that mentioned as a factor when they discuss it in the media. Wonder how many of these “smart” democrat voters can connect the dots.
Indeed. Allowing employees to retire 5-10 years earlier than the rest of society then wondering why there is a shortage. Twenty-five years ago, teachers had to work 38 years to fully vest in their pension. Now, it’s 32 years when you account for 2 years of accrued sick leave. They’re high-tailing it out immediately upon first vesting and I can’t say I blame them.
Here’s a fix: Let all teachers retire at 45. We’ll never have a shortage again. Our best-and-brightest will duke it out to get to see who can work the shortest careers.
Again, zero context is given regarding the teaching profession in regards to how other states are doing as versus Illinois and how staffing “shortages” stack up against every other business sector. Does Illinois have a worse problem than, say, Indiana or California? Is every state having the same staffing issues? Are teachers quitting and leaving more vacancies that accountants/engineers/nurses? Where does this “shortage” leave student/teacher ratios historically?
Department of Labor has shows that government workers are the least likely to quit their jobs. Now what?
All the more reason to break the union, reform the districts and hire these graduates ASAP
Interesting how they blame it on COVID and not the ridiculous mandates being handed down by the governor. Those mandates have marginalized the pool of candidates as well as burned out educators, parents, healthcare workers, first responders, etc.
When will Pritzker’s administration wake up?
When will Pritzker’s administration wake up, When they are out of office
Kinda true. Many subs are retired teachers looking to earn some money on the side. If you’re over 65, you might not want to take the risk.
I’ll also add that increasingly lucrative pensions also limit the substitute pool. Long gone are the days of teachers retiring with $40,000 pensions and might look to make some money on the side subbing a day or two here and there. What’s your motivation to sub if your pension is over $80,000?
You’ll need to offer up more money. Maybe let them work at the full time pay rate and “double dip”.
Then again, maybe all the people that spend their day commenting on this site that teaching is so easy and lucrative will change careers and show us how it’s done.
The teacher factory known as ISU isn’t making enough teachers to meet school districts’ insatiable demands to educate poor, underperforming students that receive free breakfast and lunch at school. The lack of teachers is just a symptom of the larger problem we discuss frequently here: young, educated Illinoisans are leaving and are replaced by poor immigrants who have lots of children who don’t and won’t go to college. It was only a matter of time before we reached an inflection point, where there are too few teachers for too many students. I think we are there and there’s no good… Read more »
The student/teacher ratio is better than it’s ever been. Take a teacher from 1982 and plop them in a 2022 classroom and they’d be shocked at how small it is. They’d probably ask the 2022 teacher, “What’s your problem?!”
Illinois spends a lot on education. I’d wager the typical teacher salary in Chicagoland tops 95% of what’s offered elsewhere. If we have a problem, the other states must be faring much worse than us.
Yes high school students are leaving the state. The cost of in-state tuition for an Illinois resident is higher than what they (high performing student) would pay in many surrounding states. If Illinois wants to keep more students then they will need to start lowering tuition for the high performers. That would require more spending and raising taxes. Can’t have that. I’m not familiar with ISU teacher graduation statistics but if fewer people are going into teaching then you need to ask why. Is it money, substandard tier 2 pensions, class size, unrealistic expectations, etc… It’s no different than police… Read more »
But how does a Tier 2 pension compare nationally? Many states are on their 2nd/3rd/6th tier pensions by now. Teachers in most states pay into Social Security as well, further cutting into their salaries and pension benefits. Those teachers already have to work longer than IL teachers due to SS requirements. You honestly think a 19 year old kid thinking about becoming a teacher won’t because of a possible pension 40 years down the road? And one that could be enhanced anytime between now and then? I’ll call that bluff. Remember, teacher salaries here, especially in Chicagoland, are in the… Read more »
“Remember, teacher salaries here, especially in Chicagoland, are in the top percentile nationally.” Is that where we are short teachers? My guess is it’s in the lower paying rural districts. Money talks. “You honestly think a 19 year old kid…” I don’t disagree about 19 year olds but how many tier 2 teachers leave the profession after a few years because they realize what a bad deal they are getting. They are paying 9% but only getting about 7% back in benefits. While I don’t think it’s all about money and benefits it’s clearly a component. Also remember that the… Read more »
“My guess is it’s in the lower paying rural districts.”
Right, rural areas are having issues attracting ANY professionals, let alone teachers. How much would it take to get a teacher in Elmhurst to move downstate?
“It’s about the same as social security even though they pay in more than SS.”
Well, their salaries are 6.2% higher because there is no employer SS contribution. So they got that going for them.
The teacher shortage seems like a self-licking ice cream cone. They always claim there a perpetual teacher shortage, which means higher pay for current teachers, and when higher pay doesn’t fill the gaps, they come back and say “oh we need MORE money”…
and maybe EVENTUALLY they will discover that teachers are really that important and the best ones need to be paid accordingly. You want quality? You have to pay for it here just as you do everywhere in America.
You just proved my point James, according to teachers, no salary is ever high enough to attract enough quality teachers. And when the system says “there’s not enough teachers” the inevitable answer is “we need more pay”. This happens in the CEO world too – Board of Directors point to other companies paying seven, eight figure salaries to their CEO’s and say “That’s the going rate”, and then the Board says saying “There’s so few qualified CEOs, we need to offer even more money to attract quality CEO’s”. It’s a racket, a self-licking ice cream cone. Maybe, just maybe, there… Read more »
But, where I disagree is that all teachers should not be thought of as clones as your CEO analogy suggests. There are some terrible teachers, many average teachers and a precious few stellar teachers all treated essentially the same for pre-determined salary purposes. That’s happened because of local teachers unions who have demanded it to minimize the building politics that otherwise often pertains. But, I think the truly stellar teachers—those who clearly have superior teaching skills, a relentlessly happy and persuasive manner, are endlessly creative and inspirational, and clearly have the admiration of their students and parents—should receive superior pay… Read more »
I have no issue with bonuses, but it needs to come out of the existing pie. High performing teachers and teachers in hard-to-fill positions should be making more than their equivalents in the teaching pool. Let’s see the union agree to that using the existing pie.
The problem these days is that pie has to be divvied up into increasingly smaller slices: More counselors, more equity directors, more assistant principals, etc. Seems like less money is making it into the classroom.
The system I proposed has varioius “gotchas” that make it less desirable than one might imagine at first blush. Some are obvious problems while other problems are more subtle. Such problems likely are well known and why teachers in general still oppose “merit pay.” I have no quarrel with doing any such incentive program out of the existing pool of financial resources, but again even having teachers in general agree to that means that the average teacher would get either no raise or a lesser one for the school year its first acopted. So, I can almost guarantee that teachers… Read more »
Next teacher contract, have the school district and union negotiate whatever total compensation increase they can. Then have the district go back and allocate 20% of that increase to performance bonuses as you described, the remaining 80% gets divvied up into the regular salary schedule. For example, each step on the salary schedule has a 2% increase instead of 2.5%. That other 0.5% is allocated towards performance bonuses. Overall education spending remains the same. High performers are rewarded with the difference picked up by the rest of the teachers. Again, same spend, same overall teacher compensation. Show me the union… Read more »
Sure, I’m agreeable to that but neither your opinion nor mine matters to any set of teachers who would be asked to approve that idea. To ever be approved by teachers, the bonus has to be a BONUS to be approved rather than a detriment to any on-going current alternate step-increase salary schedules. For the great majority of teachers that means their salary is going to be eroded in its purchasing power for every year “merit pay” is used to reward the prolaimed top performers among them. I’m not affected and I think its safe to say you are not… Read more »
Funny being the local university here graduates many teachers annually that can’t find jobs. Perhaps the shortage is in certain areas like math and science and not in social studies.
Yep. Guessing STEM/SpEd/ESL has the most shortages. Seems like most of the teaching pool just wants to be general educators, so the market is inundated with a bunch of Liberal Arts degrees and no sciences.