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Davis Gates stressed that the pension payment and potential loan were not her responsibility. “This is not the fifth floor of Chicago City Hall. It’s not,” Davis Gates said.
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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The issues facing the Chicago Public School system are beyond challenging and may be impossible to fix. But no one really is focused on fixing them as far as I know. They are interested on getting paid as much as they can. Show me where Stacy talks about anything but money, money money. Let them go on strike, it won’t change the trajectory of the dismal performance of the CPS system.
Instead of focusing on what children “deserve” the focus should be on what teachers’ responsibilities are. Most people have interactions with children and, deservedly, children are a protected minority. Other than parents, relatives and friends, teachers likely have the most contact. Accordingly they have large role to play. There are endless online versions of a teacher’s role and for an urban school attention should be paid to: https://www.edutopia.org/discussion/5-muhammad-ali-quotes-every-teacher-needs-classroom. Few argue that teaching in an urban setting is an easy job. Test scores are not the only metric but persistent low test scores followed by grade advancement are evidence that the… Read more »
Great; fire all of them. But, what results other than empty buildings? There won’t be drove of highly skilled people lining up to replace them. Would you?
There are already (mostly) empty buildings masquerading as full enrollment schools.
Are you really claiming that CTU members are highly skilled? If the buildings are empty and the children allowed to go feral, will the educational results be any different than now?
I make no judgment as professional skills of literally anyone I’ve never met or known in some other less personal, infrequent way. Having a well educated, personable, dedicated teacher is part of the mix required for successful educational outcomes, but other factors exert their influences as well. I listed the key ones some 10-15 minutes ago elsewhere. If you’re all that intrigued you’ll find them easily enough.
Hello James. Let’s say for arguments sake they are all fired but not likely. What are the options? Many people home school and it is growing. Here are some options. https://www.homeschoolof1.com/free-online-homeschool-curriculum/ https://www.k12.com/online-homeschool/ Now look at the cost for private school via the K12 school at most $7K per year vs the estimated CPS at $32K per student if they get all their demands. Students should get every opportunity to learn regardless of where the education comes from (home-private-public). These home school programs like Khan/K12/etc should be tailored to educate both the parent(s) and child together if necessary. Many people from… Read more »
Sure, there are various alternate educational schemes that can be employed, but the key ingredients are a properly educated teacher who can fluently use the student’s language, a student who is relatively interested and engaged by his nature, a set of parents literally all working in a dedicated manner with a set of mutually desirable goals and all of that done in a harmonious way. Subtract anything in that list and things start to unravel sooner than not.
I’m sure you remember a time when education was touted as the way to eradicate the ills of society. It was through education that we could eliminate poverty and the dysfunction that comes from it. Education helped build the melting pot of America. In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, millions of immigrant children received some education in our schools. They did not have teachers who spoke their native language. They were taught in English. They lived in tenements, not always with attentive parents. Yet they learned, and the literacy rate rose. It’s amazing to hear teachers today say they… Read more »
Okay, please tell me when and the reasons it all went went awry somewhat nationally and how to get the whole system back to a widely accepted sense of productivity. I think we can agree it’s not primarily a local problem but a national one. To almost every constituency involved the whole process today on balance probably generally seems tilted more towards enforced incarceration for every person there than education, and I’ve come to that viewpoint as well.
Thumbs up James. That’s how to start fixing it- ask how it went wrong. Recognize that changes must be made, not just “investing” more money into failure.
How did we go from a country that recognized education as the stepping stone to a better society to demanding a better society before we can have education?
I don’t have the answers. But we need to ask the questions. And I’m certain that nothing will change without teachers demanding real change, not just more money.
I really wonder why you speak as if the only alternatives are keep the status quo or fire them all and have no teachers. It sounds like a veiled threat.
I didn’t have any veiled threat in mind here and was simply stating what seemed to be the conclusion that writer had in mind.
Why don’t you just cut to the chase and turn over the Chicago treasury to CTU. You know they are going to get it anyway and it would save the article space for something newsworthy.
“ We demands the money! We won’t repays the money! And we won’t work for the money!” says Gates.
Stacy is fighting for a contract that will “reshape the way education is meted out” in Chicago. The teacher administrator for the program that evaluates teachers bemoans the fact that it doesn’t matter how many prom dresses she bought. It’s so unfair.
Where do they find such inspirational leaders?