Chicago

Chicago Teachers – Canaries In The American Coalmine

Jeff Bryant — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 23:18:15 -0400

When a leading conservative pundit compliments a labor union leader for getting something right, it's usually worth noticing.

That's exactly what happened recently when The Washington Post's conservative op-ed columnist George Will praised Karen Lewis, the head of the Chicago Teachers Union, and its members for being "not all wrong" to pick a fight with Chicago mayor Rham Emanuel.

Will pointed out that Emanuel is forcing tough new "accountability" policies, including "merit pay," on teachers and schools at time when the city is "experiencing an epidemic of youth violence," "social regression," and "family disintegration."

His perfectly reasonable conclusion is that the mayor is ratcheting up the demands on teaching at a time when teaching is being "subordinated to the arduous task of maintaining minimal order." And because the purpose of unions is to "enhance members’ well-being," then Lewis and her followers -- who voted overwhelmingly (90 percent) in favor to authorize a strike -- are rational actors in this conflict and have just cause to dispute the mayor's strong-arm contract.

But regardless of Will's brief spate of rationality, he offsets it out with an irrational treatise that the standoff between the mayor and the teachers union is a conflict between Emanuel's "admirable ideas" and the teachers' desires for "a pay raise."

In fact, just this week, when a "fact-finder" hired to help arbitrate the dispute recommended a double-digit raise for teachers, the union voted it down because of "classroom quality issues."

Although the school board rejected the recommendation too -- for "financial" reasons -- Lewis, speaking for the teachers, said "smaller class sizes" and "a rich curriculum that includes art music foreign language and physical education" were what mattered most.

For Will to be confused about the positions held by teachers and their unions is, unfortunately, not at all unusual. People on the opposite end of the spectrum also think that the positions that teachers and their unions take are primarily a "labor issue."

But this sells the value of teachers far too short. And it diminishes the significance of the message that teachers in Chicago are sending us about the dire circumstances in the communities they serve.

How dire?

Chicago Youth In Trauma

Chicago is currently experiencing a 35 percent increase in homicide rate. "More young people are killed in Chicago than any other American city," investigative journalists at The Chicago Reporter recently observed.

Last year, a journalist at that news site, Megan Cottrell, found that among the 10 largest cities in America, Chicago has the third highest poverty rate, -- with 21.6 percent of residents living under the poverty level -- and leads the nation in poverty rate among African Americans, with 32.2 percent of all black families living in poverty.

Also last year, the Huffington Post reported about a study that found "1 In 5 Chicagoans aren't sure where they'll find their next meal." And in January of this year, the Chicago Sun Times reported that more than 10,660 students were homeless at the beginning of the school year -- 1,466 more than the previous school year, which ended with a record number of students with nowhere to call home.

Emanuel's response to the worsening situation in Chicago has been to demand sacrifices from public service workers, including teachers, and use an argument about "wages" to distract from far more critical concerns that have more potential to rescue the city's children and youth -- including issues that Chicago teachers want to bring to the table, namely, class size and school turn-arounds.

This Is Not About Wages

What's being forced on the Chicago teachers -- and by connection, the city in its entirety -- is described by another Chicago local reporter at ChicagoNow.com. as a power play by powerful establishment politicians to limit the debate.

Yana Kunichoff reports that teachers are being prevented from making negotiations include issues parents care about -- such as class size and well-rounded curriculum -- because of bills muscled through the state legislature that "narrowed the range of issues that can be discussed during collective bargaining."

Kunichoff quotes an expert on education labor from the University of Chicago to explain how teachers are forced to confine negotiations to "salaries" rather than issues that the teachers and their "allies have argued are essential to the development of students."

One of those issues, class size, became especially important to teachers when they conducted an analysis and found that classrooms for younger students in Chicago "were larger than 95 percent of those in districts in the rest of Illinois" and that class sizes in kindergarten averaged more than 24 students. An analysis of class size in K-3 grades conducted by The Center for Public Education concluded that "a class size of no more than 18 students per teacher is required to produce the greatest benefits."

Another important issue for the Chicago teachers are "school turn-arounds," where struggling schools are ordered to replace the principal and half of the teaching staff or are closed down altogether -- often to return as a privately controlled charter school with a completely different teaching staff.

Turn-arounds have become particularly prevalent in Chicago, despite strong opposition from teachers, parents, and public school advocates.

Those opposed to these disruptive turn-around models have good reasons to protest. A recent study conducted by the Center for Longitudinal Data in Education Research looked at the impact of high teacher turnover -- an inevitable outcome of the turn-around models -- and concluded that treating teachers like replaceable widgets lowers the morale in schools to the point of harming academic achievement.

A review of the study by Education Week's indispensable Stephen Sawchuck highlights the key findings of the research, including

So with one side -- teachers -- being prevented from bringing important issues to the table that quite probably have the most impact on the wellbeing of students, how can this even be called a fair negotiation?

Where Parents Stand

Parents, of course, should be an important constituency in the dialogue.

According to a recent survey of Chicago-area parents conducted by the teachers union, a hefty majority of Chicagoans support the city's public school teachers and are highly skeptical of the mayor's handpicked Board of Education.

Many parent groups in Chicago have voiced strong support for the teachers.

A coalition of Chicago Public School parents representing 16 parent and community organizations" has declared its opposition to mayor Emanuel's positions.

And at least one parent group has declared that "Chicago is on the forefront of corporate education-busting because of the true grass roots collaboration between the Chicago Teachers’ Union and Chicago’s old and new parent and community groups." (emphasis, original)

The Bigger Picture

What's important to make note of is that the situation occurring in Chicago is not unlike what communities across the country are experiencing.

Nationwide, the U.S. poverty rate is now on track to rise to its highest rate since 1960s. The percentage of adults unsure of their financial standing because they are engaged in temporary employment is also reaching new heights. And census data show children are increasingly likely to live in high-poverty, low-opportunity communities.

The way our leaders are responding to these emergencies is to increasingly put the pressure on public employees, particularly teachers, to take on more sacrifice and adhere to austere budgets rather than demand taxpayers, especially the wealthy, to pay more.

If you're a parent, you know what it's like to have to dig deep, financially, when you're confronted with a health emergency for your kid or you're having to provide a foundational experience -- like education -- for your child because you know, in the long run, it's going to be beneficial to his or her long term wellbeing.

Why doesn't political leadership in Chicago get that? Why don't they dig deeper to finance quality improvements like smaller class size and well-rounded curriculum and end destructive policies like school turn-arounds?

Truth be told, Chicago teachers are playing the role of canaries in the coalmine of one of America's most traumatized communities. When canaries were brought down into coalmines to detect dangerous gas build-ups, miners knew that as long as the birds kept singing, they knew they were safe.

Right now, Chicago teachers are singing loud and clear. Is America listening?

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Showdown in Chicago

Richard Trumka — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:06:41 -0400

I'm going to Chicago next week for the American Bankers Association meeting. Oddly, I haven't been invited to the Roaring '20's dance party I hear they're having.

Why wouldn't they celebrate the era of wild money and hot times (which slid into the Great Depression)? After all, the bankers are doing well these days.

They're doing well because after financial institutions caused the global economic crisis, we bailed them out, to the tune of some $700 billion.

Now they're in good enough shape to pay the suits $7 billion in bonuses for driving working families and our economy to our knees--to the verge of a second full-fledged depression.

Things might be turning around for the bankers, but for the rest of us, unemployment heads toward 10 percent and home foreclosures continue to devastate families and communities. Working families have lost health care, pensions and savings--and in exchange we've gotten predatory lending, outrageous overdraft fees and sky-high credit card interest rates.

Meanwhile, the bankers are doing the Charleston, taking taxpayer money, handing out bonuses for disastrous failure, becoming profitable without lending money that could put people back to work--and spending billions lobbying Congress to kill financial reform.

Shameless. Absolutely shameless.

On Tuesday, about 5,000 of us will be in Chicago to tell them what we think.

It's called the Showdown in Chicago. We're gathering outside the American Bankers Association meeting to demand financial reform and re-regulation that will allow us to rebuild our communities, our lives and the real economy.

We've got a lot to rebuild.

For decades, these bankers have been dealing to each other in what amounts to their own private casino, inventing more and more exotic financial vehicles together and basically regulating themselves. Their Wild West capitalism allowed them to take outsized risk with no oversight and then come hat in hand to the American taxpayers when their house of cards collapsed.

They've become a menace. No one is safe while their private casino bankrupts the real economy and ignores necessary investments in jobs, health care and retirement without oversight or regulation.

This is a complicated topic, but we can break down a plan for reform into four basic needs.

The Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) that President Obama has proposed. This agency would protect the public against credit card and mortgage rip-offs. The agencies that were supposed to protect us from financial meltdown failed. The CFPA would place consumer protection authority in the hands of a single agency that would monitor banks and other institutions and their credit products like mortgages and credit cards--but not your butcher, as a ridiculous over-the-top ad by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce claimed.
A council of regulators to identify and fix systemic risks that could threaten the entire financial system--risks such as institutions becoming "too big to fail," too complex or too interconnected. When the government intervenes, the purpose has to be to protect the public, not just rescue executives and rich investors. The past year has proven that the Federal Reserve Board is just too close to the banks. We need either to reform and democratize the Fed or to give this job to a true public agency. Let's do it right.
Bring the "shadow markets" into the daylight. Most people probably don't really know what hedge funds, private equity funds and derivatives are or do. You're not supposed to--it makes them easy to manipulate. They've been unregulated and totally lacking in transparency. These vehicles need serious regulation and oversight before they suck more money into the black hole of convoluted transactions.
Reform corporate governance and CEO compensation to protect the interests of long-term investors--people saving for retirement, not speculating.

It's time we hold banks and other financial institutions accountable for making this mess that required trillions of our dollars to clean up.

It's time to hold them accountable for the pain they've inflicted on working families.

It's time to put them back to work for working people, supporting families and jobs.

I've been spending a lot of time on Capitol Hill, calling for reform in meetings with committee chairs and other members of Congress. And everywhere I go, financial industry lobbyists are there, pushing back all out to block reform.

Congress is deciding right now how it will shape financial reform--we need congressional support and intense presidential leadership.

Call your members of Congress. They're sure hearing from front groups for the banks. They need to hear from you, too. Tell them to produce a financial system that isn't set up to reward big banks at the expense of everyone else. The money has to start flowing to regular people and businesses that can create jobs.

And if you're in Chicago on Tuesday, join me. We'll meet up at 10:30 a.m. at Wacker Drive and Michigan Avenue to march to the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers where the bankers are meeting.

See you at the Showdown.