Posted on 09/12/2012 6:25:11 AM PDT by PBRCat
When Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis led her members out on strike this week, she said, "Negotiations have been intense but productive. However, we have failed to reach an agreement that will prevent a labor strike. Real school will not be open (Monday)."
Since real school wasn't open, I was compelled to visit an unreal school.
A South Side school where 100 percent of the students graduate are accepted to college. A Roman Catholic all-boys school that draws from poor and working-class neighborhoods, a school where there are no cops or metal detectors, no gang recruitment, no fear.
An unreal school that is mostly black, but with a smattering of whites and Latinos, and where every student who sees a stranger in the halls goes up to the newcomer, introduces himself, shakes his hand, looks him in the eye and calls him Mister.
The strike has drawn an unreal amount of national media attention, in part because President Barack Obama is from Chicago and his former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel is the mayor. And that has triggered a predictable response: that the system is broken.
Unfortunately, the system works just fine. It works for the teachers union that wins the big raises and for the bureaucrats who are creatures of patronage, and for the vendors who feed from the almost $6 billion budget.
It works for Democratic politicians. They increase property taxes to pay for union raises and, in exchange, receive union support and political donations in election years.
"The Chicago Public Schools system is a monopoly provider of education for the children of the city of Chicago, and the Chicago Teachers Union is a monopoly labor provider, and this is a tragedy for the children," said John Tillman, CEO of the Illinois Policy Institute.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
Videotape footage of John Kass visiting Leo High School is included in the link to the original article.
There will always be a big difference between schools that are paid for by parents and schools that are paid for by Government.
Government schools work on the idea that education is a right.That every child is guaranteed the right to attend school. It’s a great contention that does not work with people who abuse he right. Schools paid for by parents can unload those they have problems with, the ones who refuse to learn and have fun preventing others from learning.
If Government schools tossed out those who do not wish to learn, they too could give kids a good education.
In Chicago it seems the teachers are leech’s, sucking off the system for big bucks and frightened that some sort of system might be put in place that would force them to teach or be replaced.
How strange......... are they in school on weekends and summer vacation months? What the hell is the difference now?
I think of what I could do with a voucher program for the real estate taxes I pay in the Chicao area. I pay $16,000 a year, and 70% of that goes to the schools. Everything else, the Police, Firemen and city employes get what’s left over. If the tuition at Leo (an excellent school) is $7,000, I could send two students to Leo with money left over!
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book I, Ch 10
Don't think I'm not serious.
I have a sticker on my car with the smiling silhouette of a stealth bomber. it reads “It will be a great day when all children attend private schools and the money wasted on public education goes to building bombers.”
The unions are so tight with the Democrats that they ought to be outlawed. It is a corrupt monopoly.
If parents were given a choice, public schools would be greatly diminished in terms of numbers. In Germany, every taxpayer checks a box on their tax return as to the school system that they prefer (Catholic, Lutheran, Public, etc.) and their portion of the tax used to fund education is sent to the school system that was selected. It’s easy.
Parents should have the choice. As it is, we cost you less than the public schools, have better teachers and we make sure your kid gets an education. What could possibly go wrong with that? :)
The school described definitely isn’t “keepin’ it real”, and those students are all “actin’ white”, which isn’t “cool”.
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