6 ms·

Look at what is going on in Chicago right now with the teachers union. They don't give a shit about our kids. Here are some of the demands of the Chicago teach

by ktizo 14y ago

Look at what is going on in Chicago right now with the teachers union. They don't give a shit about our kids. Here are some of the demands of the Chicago teachers union: Smaller class sizes. More playgrounds, recess time and physical education classes. More art, dance, theater, music and foreign language instruction. More funding for libraries. Healthier school lunches. An end to the “apartheid-like” Chicago Public School system today and to “discipline policies with a disproportionate harm on students of color.” Guarantee pre-K and full-day kindergarten for all students. Higher teacher salaries and more teacher “autonomy.” Better bilingual and special needs programs. Higher-quality school facilities. From here - http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/13/the-chicago-teachers-union-has-a-plan-to-fix-the-citys-schools-but-its-pricey/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/13... I think that you claiming that the Chicago teaching union don't give a shit about the kids is basically a deliberate slur to try and further your own political stance against unionisation in general.

Bud 14y ago
Hear, hear. It's a completely fact-free, anti-union rant. The plural of anecdote is not data. And the singular of anecdote is definitely not data. The GP does not, of course, have any idea whatever about whether Chicago teachers care about kids.
gsibble 14y ago
That's all a total smokescreen for the pay and benefits increases they want which you've conveniently left out.
- ktizo 14y ago
  pay and benefits increases they want which you've conveniently left out. Read all of it, is only ten items. Increased salaries was eighth on that list.
- dalke 14y ago
  Are you referring to the "16 percent raise over the next four years. That figure includes both cost-of-living salary bumps and the so-called step increases for working another year in the district." Or is there some other pay and benefits increase that I don't know about which is bigger than this? (BTW, it seems that COLA alone is about 5% over 4 years.) Also, shouldn't teachers be highly paid? How much do you think they should make? Should they not be making "salaries comparable to others with their education and experience"? That quote comes from the list of 10 points from "The Schools Chicago’s Students Deserve" at http://www.ctunet.com/quest-center/research/the-schools-chicagos-students-deserve http://www.ctunet.com/quest-center/research/the-schools-chic... Do you honestly think that if the teachers don't get a pay raise but do get the other 9 points from that list of 10 then they will continue to strike?
  - don_draper 14y ago
    >>How much do you think they should make? What the market is willing to pay them. I'd rather teach history but I get paid more as a programmer. Let the free market decide their pay.
    - ktizo 14y ago
      You do know that a completely free market in education would mean the government getting out of the business of education altogether, including any support for universal education as even just giving vouchers to poor students would violate the principles of a completely free market. Also, given that teachers are a highly desired resource with strong limits on growth, at least in the short term (i.e. it takes ages to properly train a teacher), I suspect that a completely free market would result in lots of tutors for the very rich and a few schools for the wealthy. Which historically seemed to be the general pattern in countries where education was not socialised to some degree.
      - don_draper 14y ago
        I don't want a banana republic either. What my beef is with are teachers that make 60K plus, get 3 months off, have more stable job security than the private sector, get to spend time talking about interesting things like world wars in history class or Hemingway in english and then complain that they don't make as much as me, a software developer who spends chunks of my day on mundane tasks such as fixing 'Out of Memory' errors or 'Null Pointer' exceptions'. I do it for the money. They do it for different reasons. Comparing the two is like comparing apples and oranges.
        ktizo 14y ago
        Whereas, I think they should get more. Much more. I want state schools to have money. I want state teachers to be rich. They are doing a much more useful job than almost any of us here.
        dalke 14y ago
        What you want is unreasonable, and is counter to the actual research. Quoting from Allegretto, Sylvia A., Sean P. Corcoran, Lawrence Mishel (2008) The Teaching Penalty: Teacher Pay Losing Ground. Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute. "...we found that the average weekly pay of teachers in 2003 was nearly 14% below that of workers with similar education and work experience (p. 13), a gap only minimally offset by higher non-wage benefits in teaching. Though teacher earnings have fallen below that of the average college graduate in recent decades, we showed that teachers lost considerable ground during the late 1990s, as earnings of college graduates grew 11% relative to 0.8% growth in teaching." Okay, so you don't want any teacher making 60K plus. Of course, a teacher is often required to have a bachelor's degree and many have graduate degrees. (I see that 60+% of Chicago teachers have at least a master's degree.) The market says (from a 2011 CNN report) "Students who will graduate this spring are receiving job offers with starting salaries averaging $50,034 per year, up 3.5% from last year, according to a survey from the National Association of Colleges and Employers." On the low end of the listed salaries, "Offers for business administration/management graduates slipped slightly to $44,171." So someone with no work experience but with a college degree can make $44K/year, and you want the upper limit, even after 25 years and for teachers living in an expensive city, to be $60K/year. This is not reasonable. Ahh, but you say that teachers "spend time talking about interesting things", while you don't, and those joys in life should be sufficient compensation for not pulling in the big bucks. The average salary for 'Programmer V', with 8-10 years of experience is $104K. Do you think that being able to talk about Hemingway is worth $40K/year in lost wages? Don't you think that grading papers, and preparing curriculum around standardized tests, and dealing with misbehaving students is the actual comparable to 'Out of Memory' errors? And as for complaining about unstable job security in your field - if you're that jealous of what the teachers have managed, why don't you unionize and advocate for more job security in your own field? Also, you only do programming for the money? Strange. I started programming because it was fun, and only later did I find out that people would pay me a lot of money to do things I found fun. Like tracking down bizarre segmentation errors. I guess I should take a pay cut because I find my work to be interesting.

by ktizo 14y ago

Bud 14y ago

Hear, hear. It's a completely fact-free, anti-union rant. The plural of anecdote is not data. And the singular of anecdote is definitely not data. The GP does not, of course, have any idea whatever about whether Chicago teachers care about kids.

gsibble 14y ago

That's all a total smokescreen for the pay and benefits increases they want which you've conveniently left out.

ktizo 14y ago
pay and benefits increases they want which you've conveniently left out. Read all of it, is only ten items. Increased salaries was eighth on that list.
dalke 14y ago
Are you referring to the "16 percent raise over the next four years. That figure includes both cost-of-living salary bumps and the so-called step increases for working another year in the district." Or is there some other pay and benefits increase that I don't know about which is bigger than this? (BTW, it seems that COLA alone is about 5% over 4 years.) Also, shouldn't teachers be highly paid? How much do you think they should make? Should they not be making "salaries comparable to others with their education and experience"? That quote comes from the list of 10 points from "The Schools Chicago’s Students Deserve" at http://www.ctunet.com/quest-center/research/the-schools-chicagos-students-deserve http://www.ctunet.com/quest-center/research/the-schools-chic... Do you honestly think that if the teachers don't get a pay raise but do get the other 9 points from that list of 10 then they will continue to strike?
- don_draper 14y ago
  >>How much do you think they should make? What the market is willing to pay them. I'd rather teach history but I get paid more as a programmer. Let the free market decide their pay.
  - ktizo 14y ago
    You do know that a completely free market in education would mean the government getting out of the business of education altogether, including any support for universal education as even just giving vouchers to poor students would violate the principles of a completely free market. Also, given that teachers are a highly desired resource with strong limits on growth, at least in the short term (i.e. it takes ages to properly train a teacher), I suspect that a completely free market would result in lots of tutors for the very rich and a few schools for the wealthy. Which historically seemed to be the general pattern in countries where education was not socialised to some degree.
    - don_draper 14y ago
      I don't want a banana republic either. What my beef is with are teachers that make 60K plus, get 3 months off, have more stable job security than the private sector, get to spend time talking about interesting things like world wars in history class or Hemingway in english and then complain that they don't make as much as me, a software developer who spends chunks of my day on mundane tasks such as fixing 'Out of Memory' errors or 'Null Pointer' exceptions'. I do it for the money. They do it for different reasons. Comparing the two is like comparing apples and oranges.
      - ktizo 14y ago
        Whereas, I think they should get more. Much more. I want state schools to have money. I want state teachers to be rich. They are doing a much more useful job than almost any of us here.
      - dalke 14y ago
        What you want is unreasonable, and is counter to the actual research. Quoting from Allegretto, Sylvia A., Sean P. Corcoran, Lawrence Mishel (2008) The Teaching Penalty: Teacher Pay Losing Ground. Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute. "...we found that the average weekly pay of teachers in 2003 was nearly 14% below that of workers with similar education and work experience (p. 13), a gap only minimally offset by higher non-wage benefits in teaching. Though teacher earnings have fallen below that of the average college graduate in recent decades, we showed that teachers lost considerable ground during the late 1990s, as earnings of college graduates grew 11% relative to 0.8% growth in teaching." Okay, so you don't want any teacher making 60K plus. Of course, a teacher is often required to have a bachelor's degree and many have graduate degrees. (I see that 60+% of Chicago teachers have at least a master's degree.) The market says (from a 2011 CNN report) "Students who will graduate this spring are receiving job offers with starting salaries averaging $50,034 per year, up 3.5% from last year, according to a survey from the National Association of Colleges and Employers." On the low end of the listed salaries, "Offers for business administration/management graduates slipped slightly to $44,171." So someone with no work experience but with a college degree can make $44K/year, and you want the upper limit, even after 25 years and for teachers living in an expensive city, to be $60K/year. This is not reasonable. Ahh, but you say that teachers "spend time talking about interesting things", while you don't, and those joys in life should be sufficient compensation for not pulling in the big bucks. The average salary for 'Programmer V', with 8-10 years of experience is $104K. Do you think that being able to talk about Hemingway is worth $40K/year in lost wages? Don't you think that grading papers, and preparing curriculum around standardized tests, and dealing with misbehaving students is the actual comparable to 'Out of Memory' errors? And as for complaining about unstable job security in your field - if you're that jealous of what the teachers have managed, why don't you unionize and advocate for more job security in your own field? Also, you only do programming for the money? Strange. I started programming because it was fun, and only later did I find out that people would pay me a lot of money to do things I found fun. Like tracking down bizarre segmentation errors. I guess I should take a pay cut because I find my work to be interesting.