UK GUARDIAN: The Chicago strike is typical of American politicians' war on teachers

[yurbud]

The Chicago teachers' strike is barely a day old, and the teacher-bashing is already well underway with great gusto.

As you may have heard, these teachers are greedy, lazy bullies who are holding kids hostage in their mad lust for power. Their choice of profession is not at all motivated by an interest in child betterment, but entirely by the obscenely lavish salaries they receive – some even approaching those of skilled jobs that actually contribute to the public good, like sales managers and insurance underwriters. All this at – never forget – taxpayers' expense. Even liberal bloggers warn that this strike will leave children forever scarred and ruin their future earnings, or at least their test scores.

Teachers might respond that they're not striking over money: both the teachers' union and the school board acknowledge the two sides are close to agreement on wages. They might point out that their demands that are the real sticking points – smaller class sizes and air-conditioned classrooms – are entirely reasonable things most parents also want for their kids. Or they might point out that Mayor Rahm Emanuel's key demand to tie teacher evaluations to student test performance reflects a bureaucratic zeal to replace more and more of the curriculum with standardized tests (one Chicago teacher says 18 to 25 days of the school year are already lost to testing) – an ethos and aim that many parents, and certainly most students, do not share.

***
Then, at a certain point, teachers' unions woke up to find their favorability rating hovering somewhere between al-Qaida's and herpes. This didn't happen overnight, but a confluence of state budget crises, urban blight and suburban flight, a well-funded school reform movement and private charter school industry created the need for a scapegoat for bad public schools. Could it be their financing structure, dependent locally on grossly unequal property tax revenues? Or their unaccountable school boards, such as the one appointed by Rahm Emanuel? Might poverty and unemployment not be to blame? The drug economy? Poor parenting?
No, none of the above. It's teachers and their pesky insistence that they know how best to educate kids simply because they spend most of the day with them.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/11/chicago-strike-union-teachers

[kenny blankenship]

1. Teachers have numbers and organization

if their response to the hacks who demonize and attack them is to continue to vote for those hacks (and donate and volunteer) instead of boycott them, just because the hacks are Democrats, and Democrats used to support teachers and their union, then, well... they'll have shown an inability to apply critical thinking skills and they may be incorrigible. The least that can be expected is that they will be required to repeat this year, again and again, until the object lesson finally sinks in.

[lunasun]

5. i dont think ctu supported rahm

please read the link below showing the CTU mayor picks during election
and
to all blind eyed DLC and/or antiminority mayor teachers who may have voted Rahm- are you awake yet??
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Rahm Emanuel : The former congressman and president's chief of staff is now angling to become Mayor, and his nearly $12 million in campaign cash makes him the front-runner. A good chunk of those reserves came from the exact same people who donated over $3 million dollars to Stand 4 Children, the out-of-state organization responsible for the latest legislative attacks on the Chicago Teachers Union. On education issues of importance to our members - from elected school board to an educator superintendent, etc. - he is out of touch and directly opposes the CTU's official positions. He did come out in vague support of TIF reform and has rightfully challenged us to be more detailed in our proposals and ideas for education. However, at the end of the day Emanuel makes no secret of his intent to reduce our pensions, strip our bargaining rights, and greatly expand the presence of charter and turnaround schools throughout the city. Emanuel has also supported efforts to impose merit pay and link teacher evaluation to test scores.

http://www.ctunet.com/municipal/mayoral-candidate-profiles

most chi unions didnt back rahm if memory serves me

[kenny blankenship]

6. The Rottenness goes WAAYYY beyond Rahm - right to the top.

It is systemic at this point; and as the article points out bashing public ed and teachers typifies the Democratic Party now as well as the Repukes. Keep voting for that and I GUARANTEE they'll keep doing it to you - and demanding donations from you all the while for the privilege of being abused by Democrats instead of by Republicants. Teachers are nearly unique among D constituencies in that they have the numbers and the organization to strike back against their abusers and to be felt when they do. If teachers go on "strike" at the polling place, rotten corrupt Dems will be sorry. But do teachers know their power, and do they grasp the absolute necessity of using it when they are attacked by their "allies"? So far it appears that they do not.

[tama]

7. The 2-party prison

Of course you are right and the neoliberal education policy is not a partisan issue, it's shared both both corporate parties. Dems want donations and votes from unions, but that does not stop them bashing teachers and their unions in the party Convention when unions are seen - correctly - as threat to their privatization agenda.

Voting matters, yes, but very little. Progressive people can vote Dems tactically against the bigger evil, not vote, or vote Greens or some other third party, no biggie, what is more important is not to waste too much energy and attention to partisan politics, not fall into to the us-against-them traps of divide and conquer strategy from the top.

[midnight]

2. The University of Chicago Laboratory Schools provide an experience-centered, rigorous and well-round

education for a diverse community. Recognizing that students have a variety of needs at each developmental stage and learn in different ways, the Schools are committed to help each student:

Learn to think critically and creatively
Cultivate a passion for excellence in academics, the arts, and athletics
Master important subject matter
Achieve a sense of emotional and physical well-being
Celebrate both our cultural differences and our common humanity
Gain a sense of personal and community responsibility
Develop a life-long love of learning
In pursuit of this mission and in keeping with John Dewey's legacy, the Schools strive to exemplify educational practice at its best.

http://www.ucls.uchicago.edu/about-lab/mission-statement/index.aspx

I wonder how the mission statement of public schools reflect the testing over curriculum message...

[midnight]

3. P.S. it sure would be great to hear what Madfloridian thinks about this....

[yurbud]

4. I googled her on DU a couple of months ago, and she still posts on the old version of DU

for some reason.

It's kind of like a parallel universe.