Hey, there! Log in / Register

Teachers, city reach tentative contract deal

After more than two years, the Globe reports.

Neighborhoods: 
Free tagging: 


Ad:


Like the job UHub is doing? Consider a contribution. Thanks!

Comments

I wonder if the current situation in Chicago inspired them to cooperate.

up
Voting closed 0

More likely they wanted to get a deal done before Chicago gets ugly and makes BTU more vulnerable to concessions in the court of public opinion.

up
Voting closed 0

At least as the Globe story frames it, it was the teachers union who made the final large compromise proposal, inspired (aka scared) by the imminent involvement of the Dept of Labor Relations.

Since a strike is a weapon-of-last-resort for labor, one would expect the situation in Chicago to primarily "inspire" the management side of negotiations to make a big move towards compromise.

I'm not saying that seeing the mess in Chitown wouldn't have worried both sides - I just think that after more than two years of pushing back and forth, they were unlikley to make significant moves based on news-of-the-week out of another city.

up
Voting closed 0

An agreement is good but the terms are important. Teacher compensation is one aspect. Other aspects relate to pedagogy, teacher evaluation, and basic conditions for the students.

Boston public school students will not be getting an expanded day, which is one of the policy changes schools are trying to improve performance on high stakes testing. Rahm wants to expand Chicago school day 20% but so far has not agreed to adjust teacher's compensation in return.

In Chicago, some of the schools are in bad shape with leaky roofs and no air conditioning. Teachers want work conditions fixed for both teachers and students.

Another issue in Chicago is textbooks. Teachers negotiated that textbooks would be available for students at the beginning of the school year and the city had trouble delivering.

Teacher evaluation is a big point of contention in Chicago. The city wants a narrow evaluation based on student test scores only. Teachers think test scores should be a part of evaluation but not the sole factor.

15,580 Chicago public school students are homeless. Teachers know these student need social workers to help them address issues that get on the way of learning.

Class size is point of contention.

Ultimately, though, the Chicago Teachers Union strike is about whether the “reform” movement has to include teachers as partners, or instead can continue to treat them as obstacles to downsizing and privatizing schools.

One observer said: The privatized, corporate education agenda was born in Chicago. It would be fitting for #CTU to bury it there.

Here's an interesting video about political maneuvering behind the school "reform" movement struggle: "Chicago Teachers Union Vs. Astroturf Billionaires http://youtu.be/IxVYFm2g9CM

Chicago Teachers' Union one-pager on strike goals PDF http://t.co/939Vxjds

up
Voting closed 0

The problem with municipal negotiations is that it is usually a zero sum game. Not exactly sure the structure of Chicago's revenue stream, but it's probably a pretty fixed pie (as opposed to Boston's which is almost perfectly fixed - may vary slightly positively or negatively if Chicago has an income tax). Bottom line - in most municipal budgets, if you give more to one department - say teachers, you necessarily have to cut elsewhere. You typically don't have the flexibility to go out and just raise taxes - even if it's appropriate - as it's often regulated by the state.

Keep in mind - Illinois and by connection due to any city's reliance on state aid, Chicago, are already in dire straights as they have borrowed and over-promised their way to the brink of disaster - they need more and better work from their employees but there's no more money to go around - so what's the solution?

up
Voting closed 0

As a good student from a good home who had more than her fair share of teachers who were abjectly stupid, mentally unstable, abusive or bullying, or completely incompetent, I think teachers need to be carefully monitored.

However, I've also worked with low-income kids. Even the best teacher cannot completely turn around a child who has been neglected, abused, ignored, or taught to be angry, violent, hateful, and disrespectful, and taught that school and learning are a waste of time and that nerds should be beat up.

A lot of teacher reform involves either shuffling good kids into a cohort to make a teacher look good (regardless of how good the teacher is) or blaming a good teacher for having a cohort of bad kids.

No one wants to believe that some kids just aren't able to be academically successful to a certain level, and that their futures are sadly thrown away before they even start kindergarten. That's why we get these feuds.

up
Voting closed 0

However, I've also worked with low-income kids. Even the best teacher cannot completely turn around a child who has been neglected, abused, ignored, or taught to be angry, violent, hateful, and disrespectful, and taught that school and learning are a waste of time and that nerds should be beat up.

You're right, of course, but that's what we call an elephant in the room. In today's atmosphere, no one in politics can come out and say that a school system can't deal with kids who are not socialized. That would be blaming the victim. So politicians are left with only one direction to point - teachers. The only way to take responsibility off of teachers, you need to allow that a major fraction of your student body is unteachable, due to their home life. Even teacher's unions can't come out and say that, though - as seen above - they try to pussyfoot around it.

up
Voting closed 0

those students are a part of what drove him and his friends out of teaching (and he worked at an exam school).

I don't think it's controversial to say that the more parental involvement there is, the more likely the student is going to do well in school.

I'm considering leaving my career in the dreaded private sector and going through a fast track program to become a high school Math and/or Computers teacher in Boston (I have a Master's Degree in Math and have worked in software design and development for 20 years) but I'm going to spend the next year volunteering at schools while I'm working my current job to see if I can handle the students.

I also want to get a feel for what it's like to actually be in a union before I take the plunge.

up
Voting closed 0

I don't think it's controversial to say that the more parental involvement there is, the more likely the student is going to do well in school.

The problem is far deeper than an anodyne statement like that. A few years ago, I saw a statistic on either high school drop-outs or MCAS test failures - they averaged about 20-30 days absent per year. Well yeah - if you haven't been socialized into setting the alarm clock and getting out of bed every day, you probably won't do well in school. If you're bouncing off the walls and haven't been socialized into sitting still and respecting a teacher's authority, you probably won't do very well either.

This goes far beyond the middle class parent's involvement in their children's education. If mama is raising children alone, and she dropped out of school, and her mother dropped out of school in her day, one can understand why teacher don't want their professional advancement dependent on standardized tests. But teacher's representatives can't come out and say that kids coming out of particular neighborhoods just can't be taught. That would be.... errrr.... racist.

up
Voting closed 0

I used to volunteer at an enrichment program on Saturdays at a charter school in one of the - ahem - disadvantaged neighborhoods of Boston. These were 6th and 7th grade girls. On the first day we went around and introduced ourselves. We asked the girls what they wanted to be. This is what happened:

"I dunno" *shrug*
"I dunno" *shrug*
"I never thought about it" *shrug*
"I dunno" *shrug*
"A hairdresser, I guess" *shrug*
"I dunno" *shrug*

They didn't even look at us while we were going around the room. We were stupid and naive to even ask that question.

Later on in the year when we all knew each other one of the girls made me cry because she told me I was the first girl she ever met who was good at Math and maybe she could be good at Math too.

HOW? Even though she's at a charter school, the odds are against her unless she somehow gets to Latin or Latin Academy. Obviously, her caregiver (Mom, Dad, Aunt, Uncle, Grandmother) cared enough about her future to get her into a charter school and an enrichment program but that only goes so far. She could be a genius who gets a free ride to MIT but statistically speaking, that's not going to happen. It's more likely that she'll look around her, want to fit in with her friends, choose NOT to be good at Math and ... you know the rest.

up
Voting closed 0

Just the other day I was reading about a school system that used social workers to check on kids with high rates of absenteeism. They turned up a lot of families where the "parent" had fallen back into drugs and the older children felt they had to stay home to keep the younger siblings safe. They also found a third of all the kids they looked into needed asthma medicine.

The discussion came up in the context of evaluations for IEP. They couldn't refer kids to educational services because they weren't in school enough to get "exposure to instruction".

up
Voting closed 0

I used to volunteer with foster kids and the foster care system does the best it can but I could tell you stories that would break your heart.

If Mom is on drugs and the child isn't going to school and needs medication, you've got to remove the child(ren) and send the mother to jail or a rehab program. Unfortunately, this is how a lot of grandmothers get saddled with young kids they can't handle.

How do you even start to fix this? It's so endemic at this point do we just say (Bleep) it and accept that there are some kids who will be civilian casualties? Does that mean we're failing at society?

up
Voting closed 0

It depends on the quality of parental involvement. In some cases, kids would be better off with less parental involvement. I've seen parents berate teachers in front of their kids because the teacher had the audacity to correct the student's disrespectful behavior. In these cases, "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree".

up
Voting closed 0

Linking teacher pay to student test scores will financially punish teachers of poor children. Teachers with options will avoid this punishment. The staff at schools with poor kids will become ghettos for teachers with no options.

up
Voting closed 0