As CPS prepares to close a record number of schools, the fate of students and communities is in question.
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Strike, Day 2: Teacher evaluation, job rights
By: Rebecca Harris and Sarah Karp / September 11, 2012
Mayor Rahm Emanuel speaks at a press conference on teacher hiring procedures.
Teacher evaluation took center stage in negotiations between CPS and the Chicago Teachers Union on Tuesday, with Mayor Rahm Emanuel saying he believed teachers could not legally strike over some of the issues at hand but backed away from the idea of an injunction to try and end the strike.
Emanuel also sought to back up the district's position on teacher recall rights, bringing together principals to speak at a press conference about the importance of maintaining hiring authority at their schools.
The two sides offered diverging accounts of the talks, with no clear sign of whether the strike will end anytime soon.
“There has not been as much movement as we would hope,” CTU President Karen Lewis said at a press briefing early Tuesday evening. “There have been centimeters, and we are kilometers apart.”
Regarding evaluations, Lewis said union leaders believe the proposed evaluation system, which follows a state law mandating that teacher ratings be tied to student performance, would “put 28 percent of our members in harm’s way of being dismissed.”
The district disputes this assertion and has offered the CTU concessions like a limited appeals process for teachers whose value-added test score ratings might be erroneous.
CPS’ evaluation plan was first rolled out in March and the district wants to eventually base a slightly higher percentage of the evaluations on student performance than the state law requires.
The two sides also sparred over the question of whether teachers can legally strike over issues other than pay. The law says the district can go ahead with an evaluation system after a 90-day period of negotiations has ended. But the union says that since negotiations are still under way, it is illegal for CPS to forge ahead with the new system.
Evaluations are one of the issues cited in the union’s unfair labor practice charge against the district, another basis for the strike. The Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board has set a Sept. 24 hearing on the issue in Springfield.
Meanwhile, school clinicians also spoke out another press conference about high caseloads and the need for more school resources.
Teacher recall vs. principal hiring
Emanuel, speaking at a press conference at Tarkington Elementary, said that although he believed teachers were not allowed to strike over some of its issues, “my view is to work these issues out at the table” rather than seek an injunction. against the strike.
At Tarkington, which is run by the Academy for Urban School Leadership, Emanuel was flanked by principals who emphasized the importance of having hiring authority at their schools, something the district says would be jeopardized by giving in to union demands on teacher recall and hiring preference.
The CTU wants displaced teachers to be given preference for future jobs, but CPS has held firm on denying the preference. CPS has offered to give those in the displaced teachers pool an interview for any job they apply for and an explanation if they aren't hired.
“I think they should go through the interview process, just like anyone else,” said Maria McManus, the principal at STEM Magnet Academy. “I hired a displaced teacher, and she’s phenomenal. I have no problem with that, but I was able to select her.”
In the expired contract, displaced teachers had 10 months at their current pay rate to find a new position, and according to Appendix H of the teachers’ contract, have the right to interview for any open positions they are qualified for.
Under CPS’ new contract proposal, the district is offering teachers from closing schools jobs in the schools their students would be sent to, if there is a vacancy. Otherwise, they could choose to get severance pay of three months or a 5-month stint in the displaced teacher pool.
Other teachers - possibly including those laid off for economic reasons or because their position was re-defined - would have a year of recall rights for the same school and position.
But McManus said even the preferential reassignment for teachers at closing schools might be too much.
CPS board member Mahalia Hines, a former principal, said it should be easy for good teachers to find another job.
“I have never known good people not to get a job,” Hines said.
Hines added that at one of the schools where she was a principal, in Englewood, it took her two years to get the right staff in place. The school wouldn’t have improved, she said, “if I had not been able to select my teachers in that war zone.”
The press conference came shortly after Joenile Albert-Reese, the principal at Pritzker Elementary, sent a letter signed by about 30 principals to CTU’s Lewis saying that “we think it’s imperative that principals be given the autonomy they need in the hiring process to do what is necessary to support our students and their learning. … Without this autonomy, principals may be forced to hire individuals whose skill set and value systems are not conducive to the school’s culture, mission, and vision.”
Union makes case for classroom impact
Out of 49 contract articles under negotiation, CTU says, the two parties have only come to agreement on six.
At two press conferences, CTU made the case that its fight impacts students in the classroom.
The Mental Health Movement, which was responsible for occupying mental health clinics that Emanuel closed, joined with school clinicians on Tuesday to call for more social workers hired as part of the teacher’s contract.
The teachers’ union has publicly demanded more clinicians but, considering the district’s financial situation, it may be unrealistic.
David Temkin, a social worker at Near North Therapeutic Day School, a public school for significantly disabled students, said he doesn’t expect that the demand will be met. However, he thinks the strike is a good time to draw attention to the lingering issue.
CPS has about 380 school social workers for 350,000 students.
Numerous labor leaders also gathered at a press conference outside the board headquarters to continue painting the issues in terms of school resources.
Dan Montgomery, president of the Illinois Federation of Teachers, said that class sizes are higher in Chicago than in the rest of the state.
And Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said that the strike was “a struggle for the heart and soul of public education for the kids of Chicago.”
“This is a city that has had the so-called reforms that are being championed [nationally] for 15 years,” Weingarten says.
And Tom Balanoff, the president of SEIU Local 1, which represents CPS janitors, said that starting on Friday they would have the option of walking off the job in solidarity with teachers.
“We are tired of students in oversized classrooms. We are tired of 96 percent of schools without full-time social workers,” said Jackson Potter, the union’s staff coordinator.
He suggested the district's evaluation system would lead to teacher turnover, worsening disruptions in the lives of students. “This is about failed policies and experiments on children,” Potter said.
When pressed on whether the contract would change any of the other issues the union had cited, Potter replied: “We are hopeful that it will.”
If a tentative deal is reached, CTU plans to call together its House of Delegates, which would vote on calling off the strike. That is a typical practice for the CTU, said Debbie Lynch, who was president during the union’s 2003 strike authorization. The full contract would typically be ratified by a vote of the union’s entire membership.
Dear Principal-other than the required nutty modules you had to
pass--(video taped people who with some, played the camera and 'played' the principal and Danielson's rubric,) what other professional development have you been given--by CPS? How many hours please?
And how many hours of video examples and training have your teachers had by CPS and then by you? You know you would not want this done to you, in the way it is being done to teachers by CPS.
Mahalia Hines is full of it--is she not a vendor or something?
There are too many distinguished CPS teachers who have had their schools closed and still cannot get a job. You got yours girl, you have forgotten about everyone else-including principals.
let me straight
Lets evaluate your child on how well he walks at the beginning of the year then how well at the end. Hmmm. Does that give you a good measure? Well these evals are not good measures either. Per all the literature, everything quoted below, No. They don't measure that.
to Principal
You sound like a good principal...just don't assume all principals are like yourself!! for this reason teachers need protections against principals and principals need methods to hire and get rid of bad teachers. HOWEVER, we all serve the public and no one should hold the too much power.......
'Principal' accountability
I had to re-read this whole thread to realize how threadbare the anonymous comments have been. For all we know here, "principal", your hurt feeling are more important than the credibility of your profession. For all we know reading your stuff (and you still haven't answered any professional questions about NWEA — more below) you might be a 12-year-old girl with good typing skills, or a suburban cop lurking waiting to catch some pedophile. Democracy doesn't work when you can hide behind a fig leaf, as blogs like this allow.
Now let's get back to "NWEA" in its historical context.
Although I've missed a few AERA conventions the past couple of years, it was always fun to go with my friend Jerry Bracey and listen to the lurchings of people looking (as you seem to be) for the latest way to devalue the human side of teaching and learning by finding the super data set to squeeze into the bottom line on Excel.
Going back to the last strike (and before all this accountability nonsense), CPS has utilized the ITBS, the TAP, the IGAP, the ISAT, and a bunch of other equally invalid and unreliable secret so-called "standardized" tests to evaluate and close schools (and fire teachers; and one or two principals...).
So now you're saying, from behind that fig leaf, the NWEA is just the thing — after 20 years of this nonsense. Or maybe EPAS will do the trick (even though ACT wouldn't dare go under oath to tray and defend that one in a court of law against expert testimony).
This whole thing has been a quarter century of trying to reduce the complexity of social and educational reality to the bottom line of Excel (or some equivalent).
Why do you try to defend it, unless you're just a troll spamming here? Next April why not join up with some of those who agree with you at AERA and take this stuff you're prattling public?
Oh, I forgot.
You have to hide and sulk because I might call you out and hurt your feelings.
cps employees
cps employees would be crazy to give their names! let's face it teachers and principals with all their experience in education are treated like they are just in the way of education!!
you are not a smart principal--even NWEA says one needs 3 yrs
of data, that the test is not used to judge or evaluate teachers. As soon as teachers are mesure by NWEA and their rating is low because of it--there will be lawsuits galore--as there should be.
to Rod
SOMETIMES THIS culture of fear is locally grown by principals and teachers. I could tell you stories. That's why teachers need to have access to principals superiors. Assuming cps can create reliable principal superiors. Until then we just hide in fear. Don't even bother filing a grievance. That's a one way road to no hire list, either official or word of mouth blacklist
REACH — another CPS disaster heading for a crash
Three years ago, while Ron Huberman was still hanging up his police uniform and performing as "Chief Executive Officer" of Chicago's Public Schools (remember the rule since mayoral control: Anyone but a Chicago teacher or experienced Chicago principal is better running Chicago's schools than us...), the Tyranny and Statistical Absurdity Flavor of the Year was "Performance Management." Huberman placed it under the control of a couple of recycled cronies from the Chicago Transit Authority, and for a time Sarah Kremsner was the tyrant in charge of all that silly stuff.
But it was not a joke. Principals and higher level administrators (back then, we had "areas", which had once been "sub districts" and which are now "networks" — new goofiness requires an abstruse Kafkaesque jargon) had to (a) master the language of Performance Management and (b) regularly attend PM sessions so they could (c) tyrannize classroom teachers with all that "data driven management" stuff.
But that was sooo.... 2010?! WTF?!
Yes, that was in 2010, when Janie Ortega was the Wicked Witch of the Southwest (as a CAO, or Chief Area Officer) and Huberman was the Donald Trump of CPS. Huberman's final "Off With Their Heads" act out-Trumped Trump both in viciousness and lies — he fired 1,300 veteran teachers, like to the media claiming they were all "bad teachers," and then dug in his heel behind both lies until...
Richard M. Daley announced he wasn't going to be mayor anymore, Rahm announced he was,
And Huberman decided his affections, jargons, and PMS talents should all be deployed elsewhere.
And now we've got NWEA (ridiculous) and EPAS (more ridiculous, see below) to substitute for Sarah Kremsner's nonsense until the next nonsense comes along — except this time we're finally calling out two decades of all this nonsense.
The nonsense is secret tests and gurus called CEOs who know what those tests really tell us. Remember when Paul Vallas became the CEO of CPS? I bet you can't tell me what the secret tests Vallas used to prove teachers and schools were BAD. BAD IT TELL YOU. IT WE DON'T DO SOMETHING NOW ALL IS LOST. LOST I TELL YOU!!!
Question: What were the tests Paul Vallas used to prove more than 175 schools should be on "Probation" for "failure"? And who was the Sarah Kremsner of 1998? (Hint: It was a guy who was once a special ed teacher, sort of...).
And then after Vallas exasperated Rich Daley one too many times we got millionaire heiress (yes, it's that "Duncan" family) Arne Duncan. Predecessor of Milllonaire Mayor Rahm ("Relationship Banker") Emanuel and J.C. (now in hiding).
But I digress, except for the same question:
What secret test did FNG outside rich kid Arne Duncan utilize when he began his teacher bashing attacks (first called "renaissance", later "Renaissance") on the city's segregated, all-black, all-poor, but we-won't-let-poverty-be-an-excuse schools and teachers? Viz., what criteria ("performance" and "data driven" and all that jargon) were used when Duncan slandered Dodge, Terrell and Williams elementary schools in April 2002 and begin the closings and "turnarounds" based on the predecessors of "value-added"?
I think even a CEO could notice a pattern here:
It's like an ancient priesthood mumbling the words of the Lord in Latin (or some other language the masses can't read or understand).
Trust me
I know what these secret thingies mean
(I won't talk about what thingies do at night under certain priesthoods when so much power is in so few sticky hands, at least for now).
So now we've got NWEA and a bunch of the latest stuff.
But tell me, dear and gentle reader:
If the ACT corporation were to be dragged into court to prove that the Explore ("E"), PLAN ("P") and ACT ("A") are really valid, reliable and fair in measuring the performance of teachers, principals, and schools — in a scientific and statistical sense, not in the latest version of "ENRON" or some other corporate marketing nonsense — what would a jury rule once the evidence had finally come out?
GUILTY of fraudulent marketing.
If this were thalidomide, we'd find it easier to see the tragic results. But because our owners and rulers (the "one percent..." and the "one tenth of one percent...") are still pushing these poisons, they are getting away with it.
Back in 2002, I sat in front of a federal judge, two years after I had been sued for a million dollars for copyright infringement and was on the road to being blacklisted forever from a job I had done very well and loved very much. Already by that time I had been fired an another federal judge had ruled that intellectual property rights (viz., the Board's ability to protect its "copyright" on the CASE tests) trumped my First Amendment right as an editor to publish those silly pieces of merde — after they were administered — in Substance. The judge that obliterated the First Amendment was that crazy Richard Posner (you can read his renditions of reality, since he publishes his stuff as rapidly as a mid-teen masturbates to the dirty parts of "Atlas Shrugged").
But I was still holding out.
CPS has sued me for a million dollars, later enhanced to $1.4 million, for the "loss" they had allegedly suffered when I published those CASE tests. In the course of two years of litigation (and lots of discovery), CPS had kept coming down in its damages claims, first to $700,000, then to $7,000, then to $700 dollars.
All I had to do to save the time and dollars of the litigation was genuflect before the altar of data driven management and admit that I had sinned by publishing (and making fun of) the CASE tests. But like others who had long served as my role models, I just couldn't do it.
So there we sat, in the chambers of U.S. Magistrate Judge Bobrick. The judge wanted to know why I wouldn't just pay the CPS the $700 and have the case over with. He also said that he didn't want to take up his court room for a week so I could prove that CASE had been a waste of a million dollars (and of course my job and career).
We have a seventh amendment, I replied, as part of the Bill of Rights, and we were just going to have to use it. My right to a jury trial in a civil case where I might lose in excess of $50. And, by the way, I was going to prove the CASE was a waste of taxpayer money.
And we had the proof, including Paul Vallas lying in a deposition under oath.
What did the judge do?
He strongly suggested that the Board of Education drop their damages claim to zero, so I would not have the Seventh Amendment right to that jury trial on the CASE case.
The Board then did it, then lied and told the Tribune we had paid $700. Which the Tribune dutifully put into the public record (where it sits like a lump of slime in the gut of the public record to this day).
ACT should be on trial for the same fraud with EPAS. And NWEA with their nonsense. The idea that these untested products, for which they are being paid millions of our dollars, should be used to measure the value of Chicago's teachers is ridiculous.
Except this is Chicago.
This is 2012.
And we're still in the throes of "reform."
And if you don't believe me about we're stuck in "reform," just read The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, David Brooks, Joe Nocera, and a hundred other right wing pundits and ruling class mouthpieces.
Secret tests and mumbo jumbo priesthoods — Vallas, Huberman, Duncan, Obama, Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein... it doesn't matter, they are interchangable parts — are "reform." Even if they are all based on expensive and vicious lies.
Standardized Testing is Not the Solution
Experienced teachers can tell the parent, the principal, and the know-nothing BOE members, with pinpoint accuracy, each area of deficiency that a child exhibits.
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