Thursday, September 13, 2012

The Supposed Real Reason Behind Chicago Teacher's Strike

From the Nation: Picket lines can be sordid affairs. When a union is on strike or locked out—like the recent Caterpillar strike in Joliet, Illinois or the Cooper Tire & Rubber lockout in Ohio—the smell of receding worker power can permeate the air. The air in Chicago has none of that. At schools across the city, 29,000 Chicago teachers and education professionals are on strike—demanding both a fair union contract and a radically different vision of school reform than that propagated by nearly the entire nation’s political class. At the largest teachers’ strike in two decades, educators are fired up to fight for wraparound services for students, with more school social workers, counselors and psychologists; a holistic educational environment where all students have access to school libraries, world languages, art, music, physical education; and the preservation of the tenure system—because good teachers are made through experience in the classroom. http://www.thenation.com/article/169859/chicago-teachers-push-back-against-neoliberal-education-reform#
So, the teachers are throwing kids out of school and making parent's lives miserable and for what?  So they can make policy?  Raise taxes by make school much more expensive. Demanding the world?
If this is why these union goons are on strike for, they are going be out for a very long time, thereby putting kids at risk and parents hurting badly.
More embarrassment for the teaching profession.

2 comments:

  1. The real reason for the strike?

    So the teachers won't be beholden to pesky things like test scores and tangible results of how thier students are progressing scholastically.

    They know their students are dumb, and they don't want to risk termination or a cut in pay when the exam results bear rotten fruit. Witness the cheating scandals in Atlanta. All of that was due to low scores and the teachers were giving out answers during exams to make themselves look good.

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  2. Well, you know what they say about teachers: Those who can, work. Those who can't, teach. Those who can't teach, teach teachers.
    (my area of special ed. not withstanding)

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