Thankfully, after 7 days of lost class time, the 350,000 students of
the Chicago Public Schools are back in class today. When all is said and
done, it is quite difficult to understand what happened in Chicago, and
it will most likely take weeks or even months to fully tease out the
settlement’s implications. Below are my few quick responses.
At the outset, it appeared that the main sticking points were evaluation and recall rights. Let’s break down how those turned out:
Evaluation—The district wanted an evaluation program that initially increased the reliance on student test scores in teacher evaluations from 30% to 45%. The union didn’t want test scores included. Well, an Illinois state law passed in response to the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program says that student performance must be at least 30% of a teacher’s evaluation, so there is little negotiating to do. Not surprisingly, the final deal has student test scores as 30% of a teacher’s evaluation.
Recall rights—When the time came to hire new teachers, the district wanted principals to be able to pick their own, and Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) wanted recently laid-off teachers to be the first to be hired back. In the end, they decided to split it 50/50; half of new teachers will be hired from outside of the pool of laid-off teachers and half from the pool. From an initial look at the settlement, it appears that principals will have some say in which teachers they will hire from that pool, and that the teachers will need to have been rated “proficient” or “excellent” (though it is not clear what tool will be used to make that distinction).
If this is true, this is a big win for the district and for school leaders across Chicago.
Read more: http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/09/why-did-the-chicago-teachers-union-go-on-strike/
At the outset, it appeared that the main sticking points were evaluation and recall rights. Let’s break down how those turned out:
Evaluation—The district wanted an evaluation program that initially increased the reliance on student test scores in teacher evaluations from 30% to 45%. The union didn’t want test scores included. Well, an Illinois state law passed in response to the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program says that student performance must be at least 30% of a teacher’s evaluation, so there is little negotiating to do. Not surprisingly, the final deal has student test scores as 30% of a teacher’s evaluation.
Recall rights—When the time came to hire new teachers, the district wanted principals to be able to pick their own, and Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) wanted recently laid-off teachers to be the first to be hired back. In the end, they decided to split it 50/50; half of new teachers will be hired from outside of the pool of laid-off teachers and half from the pool. From an initial look at the settlement, it appears that principals will have some say in which teachers they will hire from that pool, and that the teachers will need to have been rated “proficient” or “excellent” (though it is not clear what tool will be used to make that distinction).
If this is true, this is a big win for the district and for school leaders across Chicago.
Read more: http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/09/why-did-the-chicago-teachers-union-go-on-strike/
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