This from USA Today:
Chicago's 350,000 public school kids will return to classes Wednesday following agreement by striking teachers to end their walkout after seven days.Teacher union delegates voted in a private meeting Tuesday to suspend the strike after considering details of a tentative contract presented over the weekend. The contract still awaits approval from the full 25,000-member union, but teachers will return to work immediately, union President Karen Lewis said.She said the union's more than 700 delegates voted 98% to 2% to return to work.The move heads off a confrontation with Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a former chief of staff to President Obama who on Monday tried to force an end to the strike in the nation's third largest school district. Emanuel called the agreement "an honest compromise."The walkout had halted classes for students just after they had wrapped up summer vacation and started their academic year.The strike focused attention on teacher complaints about evaluations and job security, echoing a larger national debate over public education, as well as pay...
2 comments:
One of the big issues in Chicago was teacher evaluations. Outside of the military all available evidence indicates that government bureaucracies are essentially incapable of implementing a workable merit system. Just one more reason why large metro public school systems are ultimately going to go the way of the dodo bird.
I would argue that parents with the means to send their children to private schools are, in many cases, committing a form of child abuse in not doing so.
September 20, 2012 1:12 PM: You are correct to infer that no merit system has ever produced the benefits alleged by its supporters, and folks have tried various methods since the 20s. One of my jobs one year was to evaluate the Omaha system for possible adoption in a Kentucky district. The problem we discovered was that the hoped for results just weren't there.
Your argument on private schools is simply specious.
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