Teachers on Strike: Classic or Dud?

Just curious, if you're comfortable, could you illustrate some benefits via the union you have? Aspects of your particular school, like class side, facilities, programs? Do you have any idea what people pay in taxes in your district? It's wild how divergent school systems are.

And that's it, really. Our schools are funded by property tax, which guarantees they will be stratified, at least economically.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, September 12, 2012 5:05 PM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

except that's not quite how it works within chicago proper. in the mid-late 70s/early 80s, when white flight was really threatening to unravel the city in terms of property tax revenue etc., CPS began to set up "magnet" schools that would attract the best students from the whole city (michelle obama graduated from one) and hopefully keep middle-class families in the city. it worked, actually, to some extent; chicago didn't have the same level of urban flight as places like detroit, buffalo, cleveland, etc. (of course that also has a lot to do with a more diversified economy but i digress). over the years they doubled down on the magnet model, and there are now major magnet high schools that either didn't exist or were just "local schools" when i was in the chicago PS system in the 80s-early 90s. these schools attract top teaching talent (often folks with MAs, even PhDs), the best students (and are incredibly ethnically diverse), more money, consequently many more extra-curricular programs. they aren't charter schools because they are operated by CPS and have the same level of accountability as any other public school. and of course the teachers are in the CTU.

(xp to Josh) my school is in a town with a median (assessed) house value of $500k, and 15% property tax. all of my benefits (health, dental, retirement, wellness incentives, professional development) come through the union – a traditional off-the-top pay-in plan. tenure isn't quite the deal it once was, it's offered /after/ pro status is achieved, and there are plenty of ways in which pro status can be denied. i teach 4x daily classes of 22-25 students, each approximately 60 minutes in length. i've also got a homeroom, study hall duties, tutoring, and a pretty hefty meeting schedule. my union guarantees me at least one prep period/day. our facilities are generous but not excessive, nor lavish. extra funding has gone (thankfully) toward improving the special education program, and hiring more paraprofessionals. i'm lucky to live in an area in which the school committee, the union, and the faculty are pretty simpatico. annual pay increases tend to be between 1 and 2 percent, which ... keeps pace.

I think public education in America is largely strong, actually, though I have no idea how it compares to the rest of the modern/rich world

It's enormously difficult to compare education systems. The PISA rankings have a go, but they're quite limited in what they measure.

The general theory a lot of people seem to accept is that a good school in the US will be at least as good, if not better, than a good school anywhere else in the world but that an average school in the US is likely to rank below a average school in the bulk of Europe and a few Asian countries - although not by any great amount. So much of that is subjective and based on conjecture, though.

agreed. Caveat being that US schools have a much more difficult job than many/most other industrialized nations w/r/t diversity and difference of student body.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/education/6098915-418/no-pay-hike-for-cps-teachers-but-raises-for-execs.html

lol

Oh, and I asked earlier, but do any of you have kids in public school? Just wonderin', 'cause I do.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, September 12, 2012

My son just graduated from a public high school

How'd it go? Good school, bad school? Good experience? Are you in a suburb or city?

BTW, being reported that a deal is likely today. Lewis said it was a "9 out of 10" on the likelihood scale. Which is pretty good progress, because on Tuesday she said the two sides were nowhere near close.

x-post-- suburban school but close to big city, and kinda citified itself. Good experience. Lots of AP and IB classes, made Newsweek's listing of best American High Schools.

I know this is all about Chicago, but in Ontario we're moving into the no-extra-curricular phase of broken contract negotiations. It's an unofficial directive right now. We've met as a staff to make sure we're all on the same page--you don't want tension because different people are interpreting that different ways (i.e, teams and clubs are obvious, but then you get into things like pizza days, extra help at recess, etc.).

i'm still baffled at the idea that public school teachers earn $70k

new / young teachers don't - i made around 50k and that was considered quite a lot for a new teacher - and if it's anything like california it's bimodally distributed between young teachers who make around what i made or less and very experienced lifers w/ graduate degrees and extra responsibilities who make about $100k, w/o a lot of people in the middle

entry salary in england is like £22k, for reference. (i think a couple thousand more in london.)

Corey Robin:

http://coreyrobin.com/2012/09/12/why-people-do-hate-teachers-unions-because-they-hate-teachers/

I heard a union leader going on and on yesterday about how minus experienced teachers you'll have low-paid, inexperienced, fresh out of school and plopped into classes young teachers to teach your kids. Then she quickly pulled a CYA and made sure to complement the many low-paid, inexperienced fresh out of school young teachers on the strike lines, too.

So apparently this is running in USA TODAY, uh, today.

http://imageshack.us/a/img88/3460/a2wweqlcqaazoxe.jpg

Whoever Corey Robin is, he's right.

Would be interesting to know who's funding that campaign.

Some asshole.

Striking teachers sleeping in on Fridays, I guess. Disappointed because I couldn't give my usual honk and raised fist during my morning commute.

xp Probably not an individual one, though. Whether it's part of a wider anti-union campaign or whether it's funded by businesses that have a specific interest in education would be interesting to know. I'd kind of assume the former because it's obviously NAGL for any company that needs to have an ongoing relationship with teachers.

If I had to totally hypothesize, I'd guess that some anti-teacher animosity stems from the fact that teachers are paid from budgets bolstered by property taxes. Any home owner is very aware of how much a year they're paying in property taxes, so my guess is some of the frustration is a feeling of powerlessness when folks paid out of those taxes ask for - or even are perceived as asking for - more. One of the more fascinating stats about where I live is that apparently only 20% of the population of Oak Park comprises households with K-12 aged kids, which means that the vast majority of homes are paying for services they do not use. Fortunately, the sense of community here is such that when a school referendum was put up for a vote last year, the referendum passed and more money went to our (very good but not necessarily exceptional) schools, but I know there was some loud push-back from not just the conservative faction (which is a minority in a place that votes 85% democratic) but from lots of different corners. It seems that anti-union, anti-teacher stuff is both directly and indirectly tied into anti-tax stuff, which becomes magnified, perhaps, when property values are down or stagnant yet property taxes go up every year. And maybe especially in a city like Chicago, where the results of tax revenue may not be as apparent in the schools as they are elsewhere, which is of course a facet of a larger vicious cycle.

I also think a lot of it just boils down to people who are pissed off to be struggling financially, and since they are stuck working in non-union situations, they project their frustration and jealousy on a large, visible group that can use a strike to their benefit.

That's absolutely true, I'm sure. Most people don't have half the benefits or pay that teachers do, but of course, that's partly because they don't belong to a union, let alone a strong union, in turn in part because unions have been systematically beat down for the past several decades.

And so many places, Target and Wal-Mart come to mind, bend over backwards to make their employees feel that unions are THE WORST THING EVER.

My wife showed me an open letter/FAQ that a teacher friend of her's wrote, and in it her friend ... well, here:

Q: Teachers make $76,000 a year. That seems like a reasonable salary. Why fight for more?

A: This amount, which the media has repeated directly from the CPS Board, includes thousands of retired teachers and is inaccurate. The CTU found the median (middle) salary of an active teacher to be $56,000 and the average to be $69,000. While that amount seems decent (after all, it is about $20,000 more than the average Chicago salary), it is well below the average state-wide salary for people holding similar degrees. That includes all the lower-paying regions of Illinois outside the Chicago area. Many teachers have multiple Bachelors and Masters degrees and student loans, yet according to media outlets, our salaries should be closer to those of rural employees without college degrees. According to the Sun Times, a family must make $150,000 per year to live a middle class lifestyle in the city of Chicago, where we are required to reside. It is disturbing that so many people are offended by teachers making less than half of what it takes to be a middle-class Chicagoan.

The amount Chicago teachers get paid is, per Ezra Klein, closer to the $76K number than the lower number, but whether that number is high or low, overpaid or underpaid, is irrelevant, because this strike was not really about pay. When this person goes on to cite a $150,000 income as the number needed to live a middle class lifestyle in Chicago, my sympathy drifts. $56K, let alone $76K, is several factors above what most people make in Chicago. To downgrade that number as less than the $150K needed to live a "middle class" lifestyle in Chicago I thought was unseemly, though I admit the system seems a tad rigged when you require teachers to reside in Chicago, which in some ways is tantamount to a cost of living driven salary cut.

Josh OTM. I kinda feel like people don't really understand what a "middle class lifestyle" means when they start throwing around figures like that $150,000 number.

I think a lot of people have mixed views on teachers unions which seems to be a healthy position in a debate like this where there's not a clear 'right answer'

That's super true, but I'm talking more about the people who jump immediately to, "all unions are bad, eliminate them all", which isn't the answer.

In Wisconsin, if memory serves, a huge number of union members voted against the Scott Walker recall. I don't get it when people vote against their interests, but it does imply something deeper or at least more nuanced at work.

Union members in Wisconsin have a tendency to be socially conservative, Reagan Democrats.

And a lot of people in this state thought the recall was a massive waste of public resources in the service of a small portion of the population.

Public sector unions are not well loved here, even in liberal strongholds like Madison and the city of Milwaukee.

Even my friends who belonged to public unions hated them, and these are 20 something Democratic leaning voters.

Yeah, ime people I know or knew consider it kind of shameful to have to belong to a union b/c of their profession, like it's asking for trouble or a handout they don't want.

Plus I'd guess that there are schools in states without strong teachers’ unions where there are kids doing as lousy on tests as those in union states. Mississippi for example

You would have thought, though, after it got to that point, with all the money spent already, that they could have just swallowed some pride and voted against Walker.

Yeah, ime people I know or knew consider it kind of shameful to have to belong to a union b/c of their profession

This has not been my experience with the teachers I know, can't speak for other professions.

I don't know any union members who are ashamed of being union.

In Wisconsin, if memory serves, a huge number of union members voted against the Scott Walker recall.

I guess it depends what you mean by "huge." Per this coverage

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57447980-503544/how-scott-walker-won-the-wisconsin-recall-election/

union members went for Barrett over Walker 71-29, which is a pretty serious walloping. Wisconsin is about half Democratic and half Republican, and you'd be hard pressed to find a group of voters more solidly Democratic than 71-29. If I remember correctly, that's about the same as the vote breakdown for the city of Madison, and I would not describe Madison as a place with a huge number of Republicans.

So the Republican union members were possibly split?

One of the more fascinating stats about where I live is that apparently only 20% of the population of Oak Park comprises households with K-12 aged kids, which means that the vast majority of homes are paying for services they do not use.

LOL that's how i feel about the fucking FIRE DEPARTMENT

Ha. To be fair, a large role of the fire department is preventative.

so is education, if you think about it

on the civic level they should just rebrand education 'society insurance'

then there'd just be fuckers goin around all, i don't neeeeed insurance, i take care of my mind just fine, and other fuckers that would be all, i'll just go on the internet if i suddenly need to know somethin!

on the civic level they should just rebrand education 'society insurance'

― iatee, Friday, September 14, 2012 1:25 PM (56 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i like this. don't know if school boards in texas would go for it.

in case of nuclear war, we're going to put all the national merit scholars in a bunker

woo-hoo!

wait, where's the bunker

In between the sofa cushions...IN HELL.

Would be interesting to know who's funding that campaign.

― Temporarily Famous In The Czech Republic (ShariVari), Friday, September 14, 2012 8:32 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Some asshole.

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, September 14, 2012 8:37 AM (5 hours ago)

Very much so - it's the Center for Union Facts, one of a number of front groups run by Richard Berman (father of the Silver Jews' David). See http://www.bermanco.com/advertising/print/