Current Issue

School closings

As CPS prepares to close a record number of schools, the fate of students and communities is in question.

teachers

April 10, 2013

Great learning and great teaching happen in my classroom and school every day.  Life is good for 2nd graders at Hamilton Elementary School: They get to publish animal research books, find ways to balance pencils on Popsicle sticks, and design their own math problems.   Life is good for teachers at Hamilton, too: We have the autonomy to design instruction that fits the individual needs of our students.

March 04, 2013

 Chicago is a scrappy place for education these days.

Teacher strikes, school closings, new standards, new standardized tests, new teacher evaluations, too much testing, unequal resources between neighborhoods, charters vs. traditional school advocates, increasing childhood poverty, lack of recognition for schools that are doing well, reduced resources overall--so where are teacher voices in all of this?

February 19, 2013

Chicago principals say they are struggling with a severe lack of substitute teachers, spending hours a day finding substitutes or teaching themselves – even having to leave aides in charge of classes.

Several principals contacted by Catalyst Chicago say the district’s substitute center rarely, if ever, provides them with substitutes, even when requests are sent in several days in advance. The problems started in spring 2012, principals say, but got worse during this winter’s massive flu outbreak.

February 13, 2013

The Chicago Teachers Pension Fund is seeking a change in state law that would expand the number of charter school teachers who are required to participate, and also allow the fund to levy steep fines on charter schools that are late in handing over teachers’ payments toward pension savings.

January 04, 2013

Ray Salazar, a CPS English teacher who writes "The White Rhino" blog, describes in rather heart-warming detail how teachers and students at his school got through a day in an unheated building on the Southwest Side.

November 13, 2012

Of the two Grow Your Own Teachers candidates Catalyst Chicago profiled earlier this year, just one is headed to the classroom, and a research report released this summer has shed light on how a slow teacher hiring climate may be affecting the program’s graduates.

Michael Vargas, one of the teachers featured by Catalyst, landed a job teaching 8th-grade bilingual education at Calmeca Academy. 

October 29, 2012

With students back in Chicago’s schools, many people are looking for lessons from the teachers’ strike. Some, including the Chicago Tribune editorial page and wealthy venture capitalist Bruce Rauner, have already recommended that the city double-down on its attempts to weaken the Chicago Teachers Union with more school closings and charters.

October 29, 2012
October 19, 2012

One of the biggest wins for the union in negotiating the new teachers’ contract was getting CPS to agree that half of its new hires would be qualified, displaced teachers.

Still, it’s questionable how much the new provision will change what is happening on the ground in schools, given a host of factors.

For one, the provision had a stipulation that if CPS could not meet that quota by hiring back teachers, they could do so by taking the most-senior in the pool and making them substitutes.

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