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Heritage
Foundation…
School
Choice Would Limit CTU Power
and Free Children to Learn
By Lindsey Burke
Some
350,000 Chicago schoolchildren
have spent the past few days either on the streets, sitting around
empty school
buildings, or at home. Their teachers, on strike at the behest of the
Chicago
Teachers Union, have been absent from classrooms that should have been
filled
with the noises of a bustling back-to-school season.
Notably,
tens of thousands of their
public charter school peers were in class this week, spared being in
the
crossfire of an education fight that has to do with everything but
education.
Their non-unionized teachers have been on the job, hard at work.
Yet
self-interested union bosses
have demanded an accountability-free pay raise over the next two years,
further
increasing their already inflated salaries. Meanwhile, children
enrolled in the
public schools have had to put their studies on hold. Once again,
government
collective bargaining has put the interest of adults before the needs
of
children.
The
striking teachers in Chicago
are already among the highest, if not the highest, paid in the nation.
The
average CPS teacher brings home $76,000 per year. But the real benefit
is in
the generous pension packages afforded education employees in Chicago.
Teachers
that retired last year,
after 30 years in the system, get an annual payment of $77,400, for
life,
courtesy of the Illinois taxpayer.
Yet
the union says that all of this
compensation isn't enough. The average family in Chicago, earning
around
$47,000 per year, might disagree.
Moreover,
the Chicago Teachers
Union is blocking a more rigorous teacher evaluation system from being
implemented, and, according to the Chicago Sun Times, the district has
conceded.
The
worst-performing 30 percent of
teachers in the district will retain their jobs indefinitely, only to
be
dismissed if their job performance declines further. Not only is that
incredibly unfair to children, but it's unfair to the hard-working,
effective
teachers in the district who are paid no better than those co-workers
who
aren't effective.
Personnel
decisions made blind to
job performance outcomes are partly to blame for the low levels of
performance
in the Chicago Public School System. Reading proficiency, the building
block
for academic success, remains at tragically low levels. Only 15 percent
of
Chicago 4th graders and just 19 percent of 8th graders can read
proficiently. A
mere 56 percent of students graduate from Chicago Public Schools…
Read
the rest of the article at
Heritage Foundation
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