Posted on 09/12/2012 12:59:07 PM PDT by neverdem
If Wisconsin governor Scott Walker has spent the last 18 months painting a portrait of public-employee unions as intransigent and selfish, the Chicago Teachers Union this week provided him with confirmation. On Monday, 25,000 Chicago teachers (average salary: $76,000 before benefits) walked out of their classrooms, leaving nearly 350,000 schoolchildren and their parents in the lurch. The teachers are fighting to protect their lavish pay and benefit packages and also trying to stave off a new accountability plan that would evaluate their effectiveness using students’ test scores.
The Chicago strike serves as a counterpoint to events in Wisconsin after Walker’s election in 2010. In a protracted, contentious battle, Walker virtually eliminated collective bargaining for public employees, weakening the unions’ power significantly. Illinois is now demonstrating what Wisconsin might have looked like without Walker’s reforms. Those reforms didn’t come easy: for a year and a half, Wisconsin was paralyzed by demonstrations and union disruptions. But the union tantrums in Wisconsin clearly backfired, and in a recall election this past June, Walker won by a greater margin than he had in 2010, against the same opponent. Walker is now a national star on the Republican scene, while public-union membership is plummeting.
There’s no reason to believe that the Chicago teachers’ strike won’t similarly backfire on union loyalists. For one, the teachers’ demands are well beyond what normal citizens consider just. In recent negotiations, the CTU rejected a 16 percent pay increase over the next four years, which in today’s economic climate would seem like a generous deal to virtually anyone who doesn’t work for a public-employee union. Instead, the union demanded a 30 percent pay increase, in part to compensate for an extended school day. And the negotiations addressed only salaries. With new accounting rules in place, the Chicago Public Schools’ annual contribution for teacher pensions will jump from $231 million to $684 million between 2013 and 2014, according to the Illinois Policy Institute. Next year, pension costs will eat up nearly half of the education funding that Chicago schools receive from the state.
Perhaps most egregious are teachers’ attempts to duck accountability to save union jobs. Under Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan, a public school teaching position would no longer be a sinecure; teachers would have to justify their employment with their students’ test scores. While this makes sense to the public—Barack Obama’s own secretary of education, Arne Duncan, has fought for similar accountability plans nationwide—unions see it as a threat to job security, which, to them, clearly takes precedence over student learning.
Even to those inclined to support unions, these issues are losers. People out of work and parents scrambling to find care for their kids are likely to lose sympathy with teachers quickly as the strike drags on. The fact that Emanuel, a Democrat, is the one getting tough with the CTU is a sign that the union’s demands are out of line even by mainstream liberal standards. (On Monday, Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan issued a statement saying that he “stands with Rahm Emanuel,” which made me check to see if my office was properly ventilated.)
The strike could also damage support for the teachers by drawing a clear contrast between heavily unionized public schools and union-free charter schools. Currently, Chicago has nearly 100 charter schools, and 52,000 of the students in those schools will be attending classes on schedule and outperforming public school students academically. A study by the Illinois Policy Institute examined the Chicago district’s open-enrollment, non-selective high schools and found that nine of the ten top performers were charters—all while the average Chicago-area charter-school teacher earns about $49,000 per year. Charter schools, of course, are also anathema to the CTU—but by walking out on the city’s schoolchildren, the unionized teachers are only reminding parents that another option exists, one that works better at lower cost.
It’s possible, of course, that the CTU could prevail in this dispute and win valuable concessions from Emanuel. But it’s also possible—if the mayor remains strong—that Chicago’s teachers have given Illinois the shove it needs to start moving toward the Wisconsin model.
Wisconsin ping. Chicago turning into Wisconsin?
FReep Mail me if you want on, or off, this Wisconsin interest ping list.
My sister and BIL went to my nephew's teacher/parent night at a private high school in Fort Lauderdale. There were two new teachers from the public school system. One was Chinese teacher. She was in bliss. She could not believe how wonderful it was to be a teacher at the school. The students are respectful, they want to learn, they work hard and the parents are interested in the school, their children and the teachers. The other teacher is teaching calculus. He said the same thing.
LOL good one! I hope this state wakes up, but I wouldn’t count on it, as soon as we re-elected Pat Quinn here in Illinois I have no hope left for this state, I may actually move to Wisconsin in a decade.
Teachers in Illinois get 75% of average of last 4 years of salary after 30 years. Still think that's not generous?
Why doesn’t the school board fire all who belong to the teacher’s union and start hiring replacement teachers a la RR with the air traffice controllers?
The teacher’s union idiots would start puckering.
While you have your calculator out, run these numbers: 350,000 students divided by 25,000 teachers on strike, and that’s the average class size.
350/25 = 14
$684 million in teachers pensions divided by 25,000 teachers = $27,360 retirement funding per teacher for one year..... something smells real bad
What you said! If they think that's bad, let them live on 401Ks like the rest of us poor slobs. No wonder our property taxes are so high.
When are they going to arrest Obama and the crooks.
“I feel sorry for the CTU.”
Only if you don’t know them.
I doubt Illinois will wake up and pull a Wisconsin.
Agreed! But they should demand better working conditions - not more pay!
LOL!!!
Chicago teachers have their own pension system which is not state funded.
Class warfare over supposedly outrageous salaries are the Democrat stock in trade. Those who make over 200K are supposed to be our enemies. They aren’t, neither are teacher salaries.
Why would you believe a pension of about $50 K is so much? That is probably the average pension of a teacher in Illinois.
It was heartbreaking to hear the tales my wife would tell me about her students’ lives. She had one kindergarten child who was HUNG because his mother did not pay the dope dealer.
He was found in the stairwell of one of the hell hole projects.
Her students could not do math or understand English but they could turn out, under her direction, great art projects. They saw that they could do something and that may have been the first time some understood that. Needless to say they adored her. Being beautiful with long hair didn’t hurt. Her little girls would just come up to her to touch her hair.
I never understood how the Lord could take her away from those kids so early.
Bears and Packers fans living together....mass hysteria.
These jobs need a high salary to retain personnel and even so they have a high burnout rate and escape (to the suburbs) rate.
School systems are probably the political entities closest to the People and easiest to get under their control.
So it is obvious that Education is something people like to bitch and moan about but rarely do anything.
This class warfare is not worthy of FR. And at any rate the real question is not what the average income in Chicago but what the average income FOR COLLEGE GRADUATES in Chicago is. Would you not suspect that it would be close to the avg for teachers? And a large percentage of teachers have Masters degree.
Do people have no analytic abilities at all?
Class sizes are 30 or over.
Discounting the 2008 election since it had an Illinois senator running they had trended better in the previous 4 elections:
1992 34.34%
1996 36.81%
2000 42.58%
2004 44.48%
2008 36.78%
Where do you get the idea that pupils in Chicago are like normal kids? Or come from a culture that respects learning and/or teachers in ANY way?
You do realize, I would hope that without discipline there will be no real learning, and that the civil rights lawyers have made sure there is no disciplining these students.
It is correct that most college graduates can teach a child or children but the problem is that under these conditions few people can put up with all the BS year after year. Lunatic parents, wild kids and insane federal, state and local bureaucratic crap. Half the funding is absorbed by the bureaucracy.
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