CTU

The war against teachers really is a bipartisan affair.

It really is treasonous as far as I am concerned:

The large turnout reflected widespread opposition to the dictates of Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) authorities and broad support for the teachers among Chicago workers.

CPS is insisting that teachers accept an evaluation procedure that will undermine their job security, combined with a merit pay scheme that will more closely tie pay to test scores. The assault on the teachers is part of a broader attack on public education that is backed by the entire corporate and political establishment.

To underscore his contempt for the teachers and his determination to break their strike, Emanuel for the second day in a row released a statement from one of the city schools being kept open with non-union personnel. “This was a strike of choice, a bad choice for our children and not necessary,” he declared.

Merit pay schemes, as we have seen, do not work because they piss workers off as they are highly subject to the whims of a supervisor, in this case principals who almost never can be fired.

If the teaching profession is destroyed, next will be police and fire. You can take that to the bank.

A few teachers talk about the strike:

“At Roosevelt High School they spent $24 million dollars. You know that they are planning a turnaround when they spend that type of money. Noble Street Charter Network is the one underwriting the renovating and then running the schools. They put connections for air conditioners in every room.

“Penny Pritzker is the chairman of the board for Capital Funds, Noble Street, AUSL, Teach for America, and the Renaissance Project. In the 1990s she owned Superior Bank and packaged bad mortgages. This led to the banking collapse in 2008.

“Education is a safe place to invest. Thanks to Clinton, the wealthy get a 39 percent tax credit for ‘investing’ in education. What’s safer than a taxpayer bailout?
“Something else that you need to know is that at Noble Street charters, students are fined. They have financial penalties for behaviors. They are pricing the students with the lowest test scores out of the schools.

“There is a case going on in the courts involving a student with multiple disabilities who had $400 in fines. She met all of the academic requirements, but she couldn’t graduate. The school made her work at the minimum wage to pay off her debt. I call that indentured servitude.”

More lawsuits need to be filed against charters. Those things need to be outlawed.