What a FARCE.... Once again the leaders do not have the GUTS to do what needed to be done..... That is FIRE THEM ALL and Start Over..... UNIONS are nothing more then Legal MAFIA.....

The statistics are mind boggling as far as poverty, violence, etc. goes in Chicago. Epic failure. It's not fixable. It's culture. The culture is sick. It will probably die. It's probably dead now.

I recently started teaching, I am making under 26,000 a year. I chose this career because I am passionate about education. I do not regret my choice, but it is difficult to survive financially

Chicago has been shielded from criticism by the press for a long time, some what like obama, but the city is a lot more corrupt than the average person who doesn't leave there realizes. The unions and the politicians who run the city are thugs in every sense of the word. The youngsters who live in an around the inner city grow up with that kind of influence all around them. It's a real shame. The records show that the teachers who teach at the public schools, just about 50 % send their kids to private schools. And Chicago had one of the shortest school days in the country, after the negotiations they conceded to the national average, big deal. The mayor is tied to the union so he can't really do anything, but like obama, he will give the premise that he is in control. It's a dam mess there. I would recommend that anybody who can, get the hell out of Dodge. And let the politicians and the unions have at it. I was at one time for several years, a contractor based in Chicago with contracts all around the city and I spent more time arguing with the city politicians & the union about who, what, where, when, and how to do my job, that after the last contract that I finished I said to my self, self it ain't worth it. The only thing I miss a little is their HOT DOGS.

Teachers are paid to teach not be corrections officers, have you seen today's Students?

On the other hand upon leaving college and entering the private sector, those who can't cut it teach. After all it is a good part time job. I think we all would like Christmas Vacations, Easter, Thanksgiving, as well as 7 or 8 other holidays and summers off.

You think public education is broken wait until government healthcare takes hold. You will be bleeding to death while the nurse and doctor union is on strike. Obama's utopian world of government is great!

Hey where was Ed Schultz? he should have been crusading for the Unions oh!! no I mean the teachers/kids

like he did in Wisconsin

It's rough to teach in a system where population in poverty is overwhelming. I taught in a similar school where 99% of the students received federal lunch and breakfast. Kids came to school tired, angry, distracted, pregnant, high on drugs, selling drugs. They came from families whose main goal was to survive.

Classes are bigger, and teachers in most states don't make much money. As for standardized tests and teacher evaluations here's the deal: Teachers (even excellent ones) design dog and pony shows ready to go when an evaluator shows up, and they negotiate for higher scores. Administrators (terrified of bad test scores) hold workshops for teachers to learn how to teach to the test. Weeks, sometimes months get wasted while teachers hand out mandated worksheets and booklets designed to help a student analyze questions and practice answering typical questions. Both teachers and students die of boredom.

And while I'm at it, administrators often make double the teacher salaries - and very few in my experience, proved useful to educational goals. That being said, out of eight principalsin my teaching career (now retired) , only two were truly effective. Counselors in one school worked double time to get students college scholarships, grants and loans.

It's a miracle teachers stay on the job - most love their jobs once the classroom door is closed and class begins. Too often school boards and administrators take advantage of that.

I just don't know how can someone graduate from high school on the south side of Chicago who can hardly speak English or put two words together. Who is passing these children through the system? The problem is much bigger then the unions or even the teachers. The whole system is broken and i don't think it can be fixed. It has to be scrapped entirely and started from the ground. I think the teachers and the unions have learned quite well how to roll with the punches and do the absolute minimum in order to survive. This problem is pervasive in the entire economy from top to bottom. You have CEO'S of major corporations making way to much money for very little work and everyone wants immediate gratification. Teacher are making way too much money for basically part time work. We have lost our ways as NATION of CAN DO people and have become a nation of WHINERS. I own a business here in Chicago and i am having problems in finding skilled workers with such a high unemployment level. Everyone has been conditioned that if you shuffle two pieces of paper at work in eight hours that somehow you should be making over 50,000.00 per year. I once had a kid out of high school come in for a fork lift operator job who wanted minimum of 40000.00 to start. His exact words were "Man i can't afford to work for anything less then that". Mind you this was a person with zero skills. I have steel rollers making over 75000.00 per year, but they are worth every penny i pay them because they do it the old fashioned way, THEY EARN IT !!!!!

Yes, it revealed a broken system- but which one? There are several involved:

• A government which unfailingly represents the rich, not the majority.
• A culture which fails to grasp that we cannot succeed as a nation if we insist on reprising feudalism by idolizing wealth as an end- and not as the means by which one can do great things.
• An educational system which blindly protects those who can no longer teach well- but which at the same time pays so poorly as to never attract the best and most capable to start with.
• A union which fails to represent the children being taught as well as it represents teachers- when it depends on both to survive.

There are a lot of broken systems in this nation- and some were broken with malice aforethought with no better motivation than greed.

Frankly, it was shameful to drive the teachers into striking to begin with- but royalty is, I suppose, unused to compromise.

That meme is increasingly infesting politics- most prevalently on the Right- which is increasingly an army seeking to empower only the rich by ruining the rest.

It's gone from FYIGM to FYIGMAIWYT (the last being "And I Want Yours Too").

Unions will never agree to firing bad teachers since bad teachers pay the same dues as good teachers.

Less teachers means less dues.

The headline implies that the "broken system" has heretofore been a secret?? How about drop-out rates, how about kids who arrive for their freshman year in college unable to write a coherent sentence or find Alaska on a map?

As I see it, our state prisons have about 90% of the convicts that are from chicago. Now that the teachers are going to get their raises, we shall see how good of a job they do to teach their students so they don't wind up in our state and federal prisons... It is true that the teacher is not the parent but the child learns most of his or her education from the teacher.. that is why they are called teachers, teachers are suppose to teach. They think the teacher is their gods,, So now that the teacher got their raises they should be able to keep the convict rate down...so teacher, start teaching these children how to be good honest citizens... If you slack on your job, the children suffer and so does the citizen..IF you can't do the job, then maybe you are better suited for cleaning the alleys of chicago..or maybe not....

All standardized tests do is prove that some students do well on test and some do not. One thing is for sure if states dropped these tests and let the teachers teach what they are suppose to things would get better. HOWEVER parents have to take responsibility for parenting, including discipline. It is not the teachers job to spend half a class with unruly students and cheat the students who want to be there. To much government interference = less learning.

Oh by the way my wife is a retired school teacher with 40 years in the class room. 3 years in government schools and the last years in private and Christian Schools. The parents blame the teachers for things the parents are supposed to do at home and don't. If you have a spineless administration you don't stand a chance as a teacher.

Schools can't get rid of teachers, there is that little thing called tenure.. oh wait is is a big thing TENURE!!!

Finnish teachers are required to have a master’s degree and teachers come from the top 10 percent of college graduates. Compare that to the U.S., where 47 percent of America’s teachers come from the bottom third of their class, according to a 2010 McKinsey report.

This is the very heart of the problem with American public schools. Overall, compared to countries that have the best school/student achievement and performance, the "best and the brightest" of our (American) society mostly go into professions other than teaching. Our American corporate offices, computer facilities, entrepreneurial new businesses, and other professions now soak up many if not most of "the best and the brightest" that might have gone into the teaching profession in decades past. That is no longer true, even with there currently being some really wonderful teachers in our public schools.

Look not only at Finland but also at other very high performance countries like South Korea, where the vast, vast majority of teachers come from the top 20% of their college classes and the teaching profession is highly prized above others. America use to be like that when "gender roles" dictated (actually limited) choice of profession and our classrooms were largely filled with the top 15% of women college graduates. Certainly, there were back then (and still are) many fine teachers that came out of the other 85% but the current 47% coming from the bottom third of their college classes speaks for itself. To pretend that this is not a problem, or reality, for reasons of political correctness or protection of group self-interest is delusional and a national weakness. Make the profession be highly competitive, weed out weak performers (currently there are a lot of them), & financially reward the good ones and the "problem" with America's schools and our continuing slide in scholastic standing/rank in the world will be solved. It won't be easy and will take a long time, but it can be done.

The problem in Chicago is 70 years of corrupt Democrats, including Obama!

A majority of you shouldn't be allowed to vote you have no idea how much of a better President Bush was then Obama... All you do is watch the liberal news well if you really want to learn read this.

Some people aren't aware of all of this. Please don't just skim over this message. Please read it slowly and let it sink in. If in doubt, check it out. Dates HAVE been verified. All is public record, be informed or be stupid, is your choice.

The day the Democrats took over was not January 22, 2009. It was actually January 3, 2007, the day the Democrats took over the House of Representatives and the Senate -- at the very start of the 110th Congress.

The Democratic Party controlled a majority in both chambers for the first time since the end of the 103rd Congress in 1995.
For those who are listening to the liberals propagating the fallacy that everything is "Bush's fault", think about this: January 3, 2007, was the day the Democrats took over the Senate and the Congre

ss.
At the time:

The DOW Jones closed at 12,621.77
The GDP for the previous quarter was 3.5%
The unemployment rate was 4.6%

George Bush's economic policies SET A RECORD OF 52 STRAIGHT MONTHS OF JOB GROWTH

Remember the day...

January 3, 2007, was the day that Barney Frank took over the House Financial Services Committee, and Chris Dodd took over the Senate Banking Committee.

The economic meltdown that happened 15 months later was in what part of the economy?
BANKING AND FINANCIAL SERVICES!

Unemployment... to this CRISIS by (among MANY other things) dumping $5-6 trillion of toxic loans on the economy from YOUR Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac FIASCOES!

Bush asked Congress17 times to stop Fannie & Freddie - starting in 2001 because it was financially risky for the US economy.

And who took the THIRD highest pay-off from Fannie Mae AND Freddie Mac?
OBAMA
And who fought against reform of Fannie and Freddie?
OBAMA and the Democratic Congress!

So when someone tries to blame Bush.
REMEMBER JANUARY 3, 2007.... THE DAY THE DEMOCRATS TOOK OVER!"

Budgets do not come from the White House -- they come from Congress. And the party that controlled Congress since January 2007 is the Democratic Party.

Furthermore, the Democrats controlled the budget process for 2008 & 2009 as well as 2010 &2011. In that first year, they had to contend with George Bush, which caused them to compromise on spending, when Bush somewhat belatedly got tough on spending increases.

For 2009 though, Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid bypassed George Bush entirely, passing continuing resolutions to keep government running until Barack Obama could take office. At that time, they passed a massive omnibus spending bill to complete the 2009 budgets.

And where was Barack Obama during this time? He was a member of that very Congress that passed all of these massive spending bills, and he signed the omnibus bill as President to complete 2009.

If the Democrats inherited any deficit, it was the 2007 deficit, the last of the Republican budgets. That deficit was the lowest in five years, and the fourth straight decline in deficit spending. After that, Democrats in Congress took control of spending, and that includes Barack Obama, who voted for the budgets.

If Obama inherited anything, he inherited it from himself. In a nutshell, what Obama is saying is "I inherited a deficit that I voted for and then I voted to expand that deficit four-fold since January 20th. "

Who has had a stranglehold on this city and state for a long time,,liberal democrats. Who are more knpwn to be the teachers, professors, education boards,,,,liberal democrats! Well liberal democrats, as a renowned pastor of your prophet hussain obama once said,,,"your chickens have come home to roost". To bad it has to affect the good patriot Americans also!

Finland!? How many languages do their students speak at home? How many children in Finland live in meth labs? How many are illigitimate with no idea who fathered them? The number one indicator of school success is a lack of poverty. Please do not expect an educator with a class of 30 needy, hungry, drug affected, angry kids to produce the same results as a Finnish teacher! Quit blaming teachers for the poor performance of children whose parents do not make the well being of their children their first priority. There are many reasons why children on welfare perform less well than wealthy children - and those causes are in place long before the child steps into a classroom.

I suspect that Chicago has some bad teachers, but I also suspect the problem with student poor performance has more to do with the attitude at home. If the parents don't see to it that the students do as they should, the schools and teachers don't have a chance, and I don't see how government programs can fix it.

All this just doesn't matter. Well schooled kids , that the entire world needs as well-educated future citizens, are going to come from two countries primarily, China and India. Together, these two countries are 1/3rd of the world population and are well poised to supply the world's demand for doctors, engineers, accountants, pharmacists, lawyers. The rest are just going to be busy fighting and claiming empty supremacy. Hence all this joke in schools elsewhere is just going to be political football and a fodder for joke.

There are 2 primary losers. 1. The children in the CPS system that are failing in massive numbers. 2. The taxpayers of Chicago, who are not getting what they are paying for, which is a good education for children residing in the city.

Winners? For the teachers it may be a pyrrhic victory, as in the long term the parents of the failing children and the taxpayers will remember their coercive strike.

Compare that to the U.S., where 47 percent of America’s teachers come from the bottom third of their class

This is easily believable, since many of the teachers interviewed by the media during the strike could not put together an understandable sentence in English.

Yes, it's called Democrats.

Romney/Ryan-2012 and beyond!

So, Finnish schools attract, as teachers, the top 10% of MS grads. Do they make more than twice what we pay beginning teachers here, or less? What are the families' values, as far as schooling, in Finnland? Are Finnish schools required to teach any student who walks through the door, or can they get rid of some easily? (You don't have to get rid of many. Most teachers could teach MUCH better, if they could get rid of the worst 1, 2, or 3 students in a class. Most schools of, say, 1000 students would improve in every way, if they could get rid of their 50 [5%] most disruptive students! Just getting rid of the worst 10 students, would make a noticable improvements in many schools. [Just ask 100 teachers, from anywhere!] The few worst students, like the few worst criminals, and the few worst employees, etc cause many times their proportion of problems.) Are the best students in Finnland honored as much as the best athletes? Is Finnish society as diverse, with as many opposing ideas of what, exactly, "good schooling" means?

Its not hard to take surveys. In most schools, if you ask every teacher which 10 students would improve the school, by leaving-- Every list would contain the same 5-6 names, and no more than 20-25 students would be anywhere on a list. And if you ask the students (seriously) which teachers are the best 5, (THEY KNOW) in the school you won't get more than 15 different names-- and count on it-- they will be the best!