Imagine if the teachers' strike...
 

Imagine if the narrative of the Chicago Public School teachers' strike had been "Give us the 17% raise we asked for, and we'll double the number of kids graduating high school reading at their grade level" or "we'll cut the dropout rate by 50%."

Imagine a real negotiation, instead of a bunch of people demanding more just because "they deserve it."

But teachers:

1. Work harder than you do.
2. Buy all the supplies for the school.
3. Teach criminals.
4. Teach kids whose parents are criminals.
5. Teach in a war zone.
6. Teach kids who don't want to learn.
7. Teach kids who have parents who don't care.
8. Work all through the summer.
9. Grade papers at night.

It's not completely a teacher problem, a large part of the problem is PARENTS.

Would be refreshing, if nothing else.

It's a social problem. Parents, teachers, schools of education, unions, politicians just about every group is at fault.

Our society is so messed up that we expect people to do things, make it impossible and then blame them for failing.

Parents who aren't even a family, just two selfish people who hooked up with no protection and have dumped the results onto the public education system.

Kids who have never been taught how to behave.

Teachers unions who get paid by how many teachers they represent.

Schools of education who believe that grading performance is unfair, that discipline is fascist and that it is better that a society perish than one child have his or her self esteem damaged by being told to try harder.

A judicial system that gets paid by how much legal activity there is in society.

Those teachers in chicago were making on average over 70k a year. In my town ib downstate IL the teachers make half that, on average. There is a 10 to 1 student to teacher ratio in chicago. In my town in downstate IL its about 25 to 1. Yeah, those poor chicago teachers need more money.

RonS, well said.

Enough crap for everyone involved to get a bite of the sammich! :supergrin:

Thank you sir. It is by far, not solely a "teacher" problem. They are in there for sure, but their hands are as tied as ours are.

To say that would imply that they can do it now but choose not to because they are not paid enough. You would be happy with that?

AMEN Brother Ron!

When every single person is this country understands that they are a part of the problem, the sun will rise again.


We need to act more like a team to pull ourselves out of this mess. The finger pointing has got to stop.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the catalyst for the strike was the new evaluation teachers will be under that is dependent on student performance.

Interesting...let's see if we can apply that to other professions:
Doctor...paid only if the patient doesn't die
Dentist...paid if the patient never got a cavity
Mechanic...paid if the car never broke down again
Lawyer...paid if they won every case
Salesman...paid if 100% of his/her items were sold that day
Police Officer...paid if every criminal was arrested
Judge...paid if a case was never appealed and won

hmmmm.......................

Somehow I doubt that the new teacher evaluation scheme was anything like "a teacher only gets paid if all his students become rocket surgeons".

You missed the point...40% of the new evaluation is based on student performance. So...they don't perform and you get released then that would in turn result in not getting paid since you would be unemployed.

Are you telling me that public school isn't like Room 22, Mr. Novak or Lucas Tanner? :shocked:

Not even like Fame, where the chil'runs dance on the cars at the drop of a hat? :shocked:

Pretty good summantion. No part of the machine is working properly.

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Most correctional facilities have a high staff to inmate ratio.

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Legally, the teachers are not allowed to strike unless they are striking over pay and benefits. So if they went on strike over the evaluation system, they were breaking the law.

And if it was about the new evaluation system, why did they demand a 17% raise?

The evaluation system is a federal mandate, by the way, it's not something that Illinois just decided to do out of the blue.

Lots of other professions are paid on results.
Mechanics don't get paid if the cars they fix keep breaking down.

Lots of lawyers out there only get paid if they win a case. And fundamentally, law firms that don't win cases go out of business.

Almost all salesmen ONLY get sold when they sell stuff. That's how selling works.

No, not necessarily.

It could mean "If we had the extra funds to attract more qualified teachers, we could do more."

Shouldn't that be the message? Shouldn't they be asking for more pay to get better people, not to simply keep paying people more to do what they've been doing?

Recruiting and retention. Different sides of the same coin.

Thank you. I'm sick of all this "thier Obama supporters, so they automatically suck" attitude. Shut up. MOST of them deserve a raise, just for working in Chicago.

I think your sarcasm meter is broken.

Wrong. I just don't listen to bull****.

Of course it is a federal mandate...nobody said it wasn't.

I need to pull some receipts from past mechanics..they owe me some money for some reoccurring issues that I got charged for!

And now I feel guilty for not buying the bracelet for my wife from that purdy sales woman last year...I didn't know her salary was pivotal on my sole decision.

Well, you quoted an entire tongue-in-cheek post and agreed with it... you not only "listened" to bull****, you swallowed it whole.