As CPS prepares to close a record number of schools, the fate of students and communities is in question.
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In the News: Technology could push out more teachers
By: Cassandra West / August 09, 2012
As districts and states look for more efficient ways to operate, they are turning to technological approaches that some see as a threat to teacher jobs, according to Education Week.
Teacher salaries are not the only bait needed to attract and retain good teachers, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Wednesday, defending Chicago’s decision to pay competitive starting salaries that fall far short for veteran teachers. (Sun-Times)
More students and families are choosing colleges related to how much they cost, a new national report from Sallie Mae, one of the nation's top student loan providers, shows. (WBEZ)
IN THE STATE
Facing an $8.4 million budget deficit, the Springfield School District is researching alternatives to its high schools’ current seven-period daily schedule because of the added cost involved and after not seeing the desired results in student test scores in the three years since its inception. (State Journal Register)
IN THE NATION
At least one teacher at a D.C. school coached students toward correct answers on standardized tests in 2010, according to a inspector general’s report released Wednesday that found a number of testing-
integrity problems at the school. (The Washington Post)
Silly Rahm!
Silly Rahm! He say that Chicago should be compared to other big cities (where we compare favorably) rather than to other Illinois school districts (where we compare unfavorably). Chicago retains good teachers, according to Rahm, because no one is picking up and moving their families across the country to Boston or Philadelphia or Dallas or Los Angeles to take a job in an urban school that pays the same or less as Chicago.
But Silly Rahm ignores the fact that good teachers *are* crossing the city's borders on all sides but the lake to take jobs in the suburbs. As a former colleague--committed to urban education--told me, when you have a family of your own to raise, that $15,000 more in the suburbs is just too big an enticement.
In the S-T article linked above, Silly Rahm also claims that there is more than pay involved in retaining good teachers, and as an example, he cites a quality curriculum aligned with the Common Core.
Does Silly Rahm not know that every district in the state is moving to Common Core? And btw, Chicago doesn't have that curriculum yet. It's still working on it, and given the way CPS implements even the best of ideas, it's a reach to think that the CPS curriculum is going to be richer than that in the rest of Illinois?
Maybe Silly Rahm thinks having larger class sizes than most of the districts in the state is a way to attract and retain good teachers? Or a school administration that constantly berates and belittles its teachers? Nah. That'd be just plain Silly!
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