Just a couple of things to keep in mind regarding the Chicago teachers strike:
- It’s worth remembering that Arne Duncan, President Obama’s choice as United States Secretary of Education, ran Chicago’s schools for almost 8 years. If the Chicago Public School system really is the mess that Emanuel claims (hence his push for reforms), then our nation’s education secretary must not have done a very good job during his time as CEO of the Chicago Public School system.
- Here’s what Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan has to say about Rahm Emanuel:
“[On] this day we stand with Mayor Rahm Emanuel.”
Perhaps Rahm Emanuel took a play right out of his former boss Barack Obama’s playbook, because both seem to be more interested in serving their own political ambitions than they are in standing up for working men and women who happen to belong to labor unions.
What galls me to no end here is the juxtaposition of betrayal underscored in this struggle. First, your point, Zach, that Obama and Emanuel operate from the same playbook – one which will ultimately crush unions just as surely as any Conservative initiative. The second, that the issue at the crux of this strike (teacher accountability) is politically hostile and detrimental to our once superior educational system. Teacher accountability is not the problem with our nation’s schools. Teachers are not the problem with our nation’s schools. Teachers’ unions are not the problem with our nation’s schools. Teacher accountability is hostile obfuscation. It is not education reform.
The problem with our nation’s schools is disproportionate funding, applying a corporate model to education, and denial that children are human beings, not future cogs in the wheel of commerce and industry. But the latter assumption is the mantra of the Obama administration with Race to the Top, as it was for Bush and NCLB. It is the false rhetoric of competition within the “knowledge economy.” We need innovative thinkers to outpace the world in the future… But for children to become creative, critical, and innovative thinkers they need an environment that will foster these goals – and those goals are not testable nor measurable. How far we have strayed from education that nurtures and inspires the individual to be an outstanding person rather than an effective cog.
During his acceptance speech last week, Obama reiterated the worn-thin rhetoric of emphasizing math and science in our education system. What was missing from that vision was a balancing emphasis on the humanities and the arts. Together, these are the elements that produce the innovative thinkers Obama claims he wants to inspire. His means are antithetical to his goals.
I can’t help but think on John F. Kennedy’s call for enhancing math and science in the classroom and to similar purpose – strengthening the nation. Unlike Bush and Obama and the traitorous cadre of corporate reformers, Kennedy did not call for math and science alone. He understood that our nation was more than the sum of its worker bees toadying mindlessly at incorporated heels.
The following link is Kennedy’s speech at Amherst College; for me it encapsulates everything that is wrong with the Democratic Party of Obama and Emanuel. Kennedy’s speech is short, only about 5 minutes long, but it draws the contrast that is missing between the GOP and the DNC. The contrast this speech draws is between an astute Democratic Party cognizant of the future and the imperceptive Democratic Party in that future.
http://www.arts.gov/about/Kennedy.html
The stark fear that resulted in the 9/11/01 attacks and the subsequent anthrax attacks on D.C. is recalled in the power provoked attack on the American Embassy in Libya. We have given oil magnets in the middle east and elsewhere a taste of absolute power and we will suffer the awful consequences until governments, including ours, regain control. Union striking action is lumped into that fear and will only hurt any legitimate cause they have. Romney’s politicallly motivated comments on that atrocity proves that he is aligned with oil magnates and will use fear once again to gain political advantage.
I guess that since IL is and has been FOREVER a Democrat controlled state that the strike is good? Fight da man!? The strike is not about the children, it is about the selfish teachers not wanting to be compared to their peers. Merit pay works.
I’ve read studies that show that merit pay doesn’t have a positive effect on student achievment. Can you provide a link?
Pomoi,
Your position is unsound. You propose a pay scale derived from a business model, and not even an innovative business model at that. What you advocate does not apply to the field of education and doesn’t even apply to a visionary business system. An innovative business views its organizational structure as an organic whole with intangible goals beyond those of measurable profit. Merit pay is piece-work, performance according to how many units are churned out. It is you who do not advocate for children when you advocate for merit pay. Merit pay objectifies children and nullifies their individuality. Children are not widgets; they are human beings.
Schools are interdependent systems where within that system no single teacher can possibly take absolute credit or unqualified blame for any single student’s standardized test scores. Student performance cannot be distilled into the effectiveness of a single teacher. You do not advocate for children when you deny the realities of all the external factors outside of the school environment that more profoundly impact a child’s academic performance. If you are concerned about academic performance in children, you should should concern yourself with the factors external to the school itself which contribute to student performance as much as you concern yourself with teachers’ unions. Until you do, your criticism is empty and meaningless.
Good luck finding an unmitigated PISA study on performance pay. You can’t find one because there aren’t any. Merit pay proponents consistently distort data in their attempts to make a linear, straight-shot correlation between student achievement and teacher compensation. If you go that route, then give up your nasty criticism of teachers’ unions, because the straight-shot data also indicates that education systems with strong, active unions and effective collective bargaining procedures produce systemically higher student achievement scores.
The greatest indicators of teacher quality are time and training. Experience in the classroom, the level of education and the amount of professional development a teacher receives are the best evaluation criteria for educators. Where merit enters in would be the additional responsibilities that a teacher takes on outside of the classroom – mentoring new teachers or working in schools where student populations have a higher ratio of at-risk youth. None of which can be directly attributable to student performance.
A good school does not produce more high scoring widgets compared to another school. A good school and all the educators within it (not just teachers) provide an environment for human development where children learn how to be critically thinking, responsible PEOPLE. Students are not a sum of their skills. Education is a process not a product. Linking student performance to teacher salary assumes the merit of a child is a measure for the merit of a teacher. That is a disgusting objectification that has no place in education.
Objective test scores are telling. Precisely what they tell is another story, or more accurately: What they tell is a plethora of stories, not a single arbitrary factor like teacher compensation.
But for argument’s sake, let’s just say “objective” test scores do have direct correlation to merit pay systems. Chicago, in fact, did pilot a merit pay system that failed spectacularly. It did not impact student achievement and it was unsuccessful in retaining the best teachers. The longer the merit pay systems were in place the lower students scored over time. New York has had the same results when implementing merit pay “incentives.”
Merit pay is not education reform. It has never worked and it never will work because it is not education reform. It didn’t work in the 18th Century, it didn’t work in the 20th Century, it is not working in the 21st Century.
Hands down, THE best article on the Chicago Teachers Strike. BAM.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_chicago_teachers_strike_challenging_democracys_demise_20120915//