One of the criticisms levied against the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) strike is that it’s bad for the community because it is keeping kids out of school and burdens parents.
But a new independent poll finds that those parents are actually quite supportive of the strike. A poll for Capital Fax conducted by We Ask America finds that 66 percent of Chicago’s parents who have kids in Chicago Public Schools support the strike.
Asked who was most to blame for the strike, “just over 34 percent pointed their finger at Mayor Rahm Emanuel, while 29 percent blamed the Chicago Teachers Union and 19 percent blamed the school board,” meaning that most respondents to the poll blame management.
The Teachers Union and The School Board are to blame. The teachers need to be considered workers and service providers just like the rest of Americans who are in the working class – they do the job they applied for, they get reviewed and they get paid. If the members/teachers in the CTU don’t like what they are being paid they should resign and I have 5 friends with masters degrees in teaching who are out of work that would be happy to teach “for the kids”. The School Board needs to run the Chicago Schools like a business and not day care. They need to draw a line in the sand that filters out the ineffective teachers which will also teach a great lesson to students in the Chicago schools that individual hard work gets you further in life than the protections of a group based on excuses. Karen Lewis is very wrong and she focuses on the protection of the politically strong old school(no pun intended) regime in the union to save their pay checks. She should be progressive and opening opportunity up to the less political who are the new teachers and let them share their teaching plans that reflect the new age of education. She ruins the name of the union by not helping the kids and building a future for new learning and competitive environments. Karen Lewis…you need to go!
The public is ignorant. Paying teachers more money will not make their kids better students or smarter. Lack of pay for teachers is not the problem. The problem is BAD teachers, BAD parents, and BAD students. Increasing a teachers pay is like burning money.
“Increasing a teachers pay is like burning money.”
Too often, the pay is compensation for handling kids whose parents (and neighborhood) are sending kids to urns or another Institution.