The grand themes of the current Chicago teacher’s strike opera are broadly similar to other union-agitated public work stoppages. The union makes demands (more money, etc.) the city/company balks (“We can’t afford that!”) and then makes overly generous counteroffers that the union still manages to find repugnant.
Ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
However, this particular teachers’ strike has a particularly vile motif lurking beneath its the already dis-harmonic melodies. The unionized teachers of Chicago don’t want to be held accountable for their student’s academic performance (as measured by standardized tests), because, they claim, teachers of inner-city youth are often tasked with educating the products of dysfunctional or non-existent family lives, crushing poverty, and violence-steeped neighborhood cultures.
Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis put it best when she pleaded on behalf of her members, ”Evaluate us on what we do, not the lives of our children we do not control.” Or as she put it on September 9:
There are too many factors beyond our control which impact how well some students perform on standardized tests, such as poverty, exposure to violence, homelessness, hunger and other social issues beyond our control.
How execrable is this excuse? Let us count the ways:
1) It forgives poor student performance by assuming that they can’t do any better due to forces beyond their control. Bull. There was once a dirt-poor young man who came from an abusive home in a violent culture who nonetheless managed to become an educated lawyer and, eventually, President of the United States. Or, if you prefer a more contemporary counter-example, from the Chicago Tribune:
A 2011 federal study showed impoverished inner-city kids in Boston, New York, Houston and other metro areas outperforming Chicago elementary students in math and science. The kids all shared similar backgrounds. Teachers in those other cities’ classrooms obviously didn’t think their students couldn’t learn.
2) It forgives poor teacher performance by excusing poor student performance due to circumstances beyond their control. See how convenient this is for teachers? If students can’t be expected to learn because of where they come from, then the teachers can’t be expected to teach! And teach they don’t, if the statistics on student achievement in Chicago Public Schools are even partly true.
The truly astounding thing about this argument is that it constitutes a veritable reducto-ad-unnecessarium for the very existence of the Chicago public teaching establishment. They are in essence openly professing their impotence as instructors, openly admitting the utter hopelessness of their cause. They are saying, basically, “We are nothing but babysitters. But we deserve more money.” Yes, they think they deserve more money, even though they already make an average annual salary of over $70K. That’s a lot of money for babysitting. But I guess it’s worth it if they keep the kids out of trouble.
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You are very wrong on this issue. How dare you blame these teachers and call them babysitters. Are you a teacher in Chicago? No. Have you been in an inner city Chicago classroom? No.
Go Home.
@Ce, be quiet, MOST people disagree with the teachers union strike as teachers are clearly making much more in earnings, pensions and benefits than the average person in the US. When you ‘normalize’ for a full work year (take away cushy summers off), it’s even more generous. Teachers should be smart enough to stop complaining, striking, and instead be grateful for such cushy government jobs…and no, not all of you work in the toughest neighborhoods in chicago, so quit waving that around like it entitles all teachers to make a ton of money and have early cushy retirements!
You know what… as pathetically vacuous and intellectually dishonest as it is to suggest that teachers acknowledging that most factors in student education are out of their control somehow relegates them to “babysitter” status—almost as ridiculous as suggesting that my doctor is worthless because I got heart disease, despite the fact that I never worked out, smoked a pack a day, and subsided largely on a diet of bacon double cheeseburgers—I’m going to go ahead and grant your premise for the sake of argument.
An annual salary of over $70k is an overpaid babysitter?
Let’s assume that each teacher has 30 kids in their class… I know that given CPS’s desire to put up to 50 kids in a class, 30 is a bit of a pipe-dream, but we can fantasize about what would happen if public school children were given even half the resources that people like Rahm Emanuel think their own kids deserve.
So, 30 kids in class x 6 hours of instruction time = 180 kid-hours/day.
Multiply that by 180 days in a school year, and you get 32,400 total kid-hours/year.
Divide the $70,000 annual salary by that, and it comes out to $2.16 per kid per hour.
Please do let me know when you’ve found a babysitter who is willing to work for you for $2.16 per hour.
In the unlikely event that you do find such a babysitter, please do spend years verbally abusing your babysitter, and fund a multimillion dollar propaganda campaign portraying your babysitter as lazy, shiftless, and completely worthless, and let me know if $2.16 per hour is STILL enough to keep that babysitter around.
Hell, even if they ARE overpaid babysitters—which they’re not, the protestations of ill-prepared “Teach” for America interns and right-wing hacks like you aside—I think they deserve at least double their salary just for having to put up with endless verbal violence from the likes of you.
When you are teaching the bottom of society there is not much you can do when defective product is delivered to your doors every morning.
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