THIS STRIKE NEEDS TO BE A WAKE-UP CALL TO ALL PARENTS IN EVERY STATE THAT WE NEED TO REVERSE THIS POLICY.  PUNDITS ARE WARNING....THIS IS A BAD MESSAGE JUST BEFORE OBAMA'S ELECTION.  WELL, OBAMA MADE THE BAD CHOICE OF SUPPORTING THIS HORRIBLE REFORM.  WE KNOW ROMNEY WILL DO WORSE, BUT WE WILL NOT STOP SHOUTING FOR AN ELECTION.

WE ARE TELLING OUR GOVERNORS AND OBAMA THAT THIS REFORM MUST GO NOW!!!  CHECK OUT THIS WEB SITE AND FOLLOW THE EVENTS.....PARTICIPATE IN THE DISCUSSION!



Chicago Teacher's Union

Chicago Teachers Union | www.ctunet.comThe Chicago Teachers Union is an organization of educators dedicated to advancing and promoting quality public education, improving teaching and learning conditions ...www.ctunet.com -


Salon: Standing up to Rahm by Sally Kohn - Salon   |  09/10/2012



Bullied by their city's Democratic mayor, teachers in Chicago are making a bold stand against misguided "reform"

When I was a kid, teachers were like gods. In eighth grade, my school had a day where students got to take over and make lesson plans, teach a class or two, try and get our fellow students to pay attention. After being selected to teach English, I still remember the thrill of going in the teacher’s lounge for lunch — a place that usually only the most special people got to go.

Those special people called teachers didn’t get paid very well, particularly when you factored in the long hours grading papers and prepping, but they got our gratitude. And that, plus a decent pension, was enough.

When I was a kid, having a good teacher was the key ingredient to getting a good education, just as it is now. And when I was a kid my teachers were unionized, just as they are now. But now the same teachers who want the same decent wages and working conditions and the same promise of a reasonably secure retirement are accused of being the problem in our schools today. Special interests who want to push standardized testing and privatize our nation’s public schools are demonizing the teachers who oppose these measures.

In Chicago, where teachers are already one of the city’s lowest paid professions, the city public school system wants to lengthen the school day by 20 percent. In exchange, the district at one point agreed to a mere 4 percent raise for teachers, but Mayor Rahm Emanuel canceled that agreement and is now only offering a 2 percent raise.

The Chicago teachers also object to their performance and jobs being tied to standardized tests. In March, education researchers from 16 universities sent a letter to Emanuel and the head of the Chicago Public Schools warning against such measures, pointing out among other things that such test-based teacher evaluations have been shown to be highly unreliable measures of teacher quality. Moreover, standardized test results are often influenced by poverty, homelessness, crime and other social issues beyond the influence of teachers. And we know this type of teacher evaluation risks creating teachers who “teach to the test” instead of the creative, dynamic teachers we need.

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