When I began teaching at the tender age of 22, something incredible happened overnight: I became an adult. There is no responsibility, as I am sure any parent can tell you, quite like that of caring for a child. This responsibility humbled me. This responsibility carried me through difficult days. Most of all, this responsibility made me realize how precious our children's lives are. As the Chicago Teachers Union begins their strike today, I can empathize with some of their demands. However, I do not believe the solution is to abandon our responsbility to our children.
Of all the demands, the discontent with the teacher evaluation system is the most puzzling. The new evaluation system, opposed by the Chicago Teachers Union, allows standardized test scores to account for a fourth of teacher evaluations -- a change now mandated by Illinois law. CTU President Karen Lewis explained her opposition to the evaluation system by recounting the outside factors that affect student performance such as "poverty, exposure to violence, homelessness, hunger..." As a teacher in a low-income school, I certainly understand the difficulties associated with such issues, but it has been proven that great schools and great teachers can overcome them. It is damaging to the teaching profession to suggest that "there is no way to measure the effectiveness of an educator" -- not to mention false. Great educators produce great results. Using challenging social factors as an excuse, as a crutch, as a reason to say our children cannot perform on standardized tests is shameful. Karen Lewis is using these challenges as a scapegoat for the failures of the public education system.
Among the other issues preventing Chicago students from learning today are teacher pay and benefits -- two concessions that Chicago Public schools has already made. They offered a 16 percent increase in teacher pay over the next four years, as well as other benefits. At a time when the budget of CPS is stretched to its breaking point, this appears to be an act of good faith. The average teacher salary in CPS is already greater than $70,000 annually. Based on teacher salary statistics from the National Education Association, Illinois teachers live quite comfortably on their salaries -- relatively, they are the third most comfortable in the United States. At some point, CTU must accept that money and resources are limited, and that the strike will only further harm the budget of CPS. Discontent with an average salary topping $80,000 in the next four years is no reason to leave Chicago's children on the streets today.
While the CTU may be pressuring CPS, they have broken their commitments to students and families. The union labeled the last-minute plan to place children in community centers and local nonprofits during school hours a "train wreck," seemingly forgetting it was a train wreck that they themselves caused. Parents across the city worried about the outcomes of the strike for their children, and called for both parties to return to the negotiating table. Pride must be swallowed; concessions must be made. CPS and CTU can be champions for education reform if they band together to advocate for what is best for students, and they must. Our children deserve a quality education -- not a train wreck.
Follow Alyssa Granacki on Twitter: www.twitter.com/aly_gran
Not only should we not be arguing with our teachers, the developers of our youth, the potters of pliable minds, the most significant elements in any educated persons life (inlcuding you Granacki) but we should be giving them everything they want and more.
I can name at least 13 important people in ANY high school graduates life...every teacher from Kindergarten to 12th grade.
Only a fool does not support education.
Round two of layoffs brought me to a western state that is ranked one of the lowest funded education systems. With many years of experience and multiple degrees, I still only make $41,000. Again, I am grateful for the job and I adjusted my lifestyle to budget a savings plan.
No matter how stressful the day, no matter how many times I wonder why we don't bring back alternative tech and trade schools, no matter how much I want to convince the parents to do their job, I still walk away proud of the work the students produce and happy I "volunteer" extra time to ensure their needs are met. When they hover after class or ask to join me at lunch time, that's the "bonus" pay. That's the message that these young people are hooked on education.
No job compares to being a teacher. None of us would have a job if it were not for educators. Let's bring back respect...for each other, for young people, for this profession.
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/alyssa-granacki/26/541/701
1. Fair Teacher Evaluations
2. Limits on classroom size
3. Air conditioning in classrooms
4. To maintain health benefits
5. More social workers
I find it amusing that Ms. Granacki says that she, "empathizes with some of their demands". In no other profession are the professionals silenced like education. I know that TFA leaders drill in their recruits that if a child fails that it is the teacher's fault, but what these teachers are asking for is not unreasonable and necessary for Chicago's landscape if you want things to improve. Teacher evaluations are supposed to be used to improve a teacher's performance and the Chicago teachers see through this farce. Here in New Orleans, Jindal's agenda has given us a merit-pay evaluation and a disregard for credentials. Teachers were being fired even when they are scoring proficient under the old system; it aims to get worse under this new system. It is a means to fire veteran teachers to replace them with lower-paying employees.
Teachers should be judged on the quality of instruction and their skills at managing the classroom, not by test results which depend more on parental involvement, socio-economic factors, rote exam preparation and the students' will than on the teacher's performance.
Regarding #2, market-based, test-driven, factory-style schooling is not "real reform," it is the central obstacle to quality education and equal opportunity for children. The moral thing to do is for teachers to vigorously oppose it. Most of America thinks NCLB did more harm than good, and had all the teachers in America who opposed test-driven education stood up against it all at once, it would have ended overnight. It is educational malpractice. If Chicago teachers are standing up against test-driven schooling, they're doing something right. Next, the biggest change in America in my almost 52 years on the planet is that the once strong middle class is now treading water and some are drowning. As well-documented in "Winner-Take-All Politics," businesses and the wealthy have sought and gained policy changes since the late 70s that directly caused the rich to get much richer, and the rest of us to lose ground. Central in these changes has been weakening unions. Debates between unions and management are often ugly, but they are as American as apple pie: unions not only gave us the weekend and worker protections and benefits, they were central in building the middle class.
The big picture perspective is that people need to stand up against the misguided and destructive policies being sold by CEOs and politicians.
After 30 years in education, in various roles, I see two problems here:
One, some of the things you think you "know" simply aren't true.
Two, you're focused on one tree and missing the whole forest.
Regarding #1, you say "It is damaging to the teaching profession to suggest that "there is no way to measure the effectiveness of an educator" -- not to mention false." Well, actually there is no true measurement AT ALL in education, let alone real measurements of teaching effectiveness. To measure teaching effectiveness, you'd need agreed-upon goals of education and you'd need stable units of measurement--we have neither in education. Regarding the things we call "measurements" (due to education's physics envy), the fastest gains in reading test scores in the early grades actually come from teaching methods that are broadly counterproductive in the long run. Thus, the teachers widely touted as the most effective reading teachers may actually be causing the most problems in the long run. You can measure coffee, but you can't measure kids learning, and the most "measurement-driven" policies often cause the most harm (see years 2002-present; or try Nichols and Berliner, Collateral Damage, for you folks who didn't learn to hate reading). And no, no one anywhere has any scalable idea on how to close the learning gap between rich and poor. You’re fooled by results-not-typical education “success” stories just as people get fooled by late night infomercials for getting rich selling real estate.
Cps wants to use junk VAM in order to justify closing 100 public schools so they can legally transfer millions to Mike and Juan (2 charter CEOs in Chicago)
Chicago schools serve the teachers not the students - I really don't want to move to the suburbs - but I will for my children.
You've been lied to. The union is entirely in the right here.