AM News: All Media Outlets & Pundits On Chicago Strike

Teachers’ Strike in Chicago Tests Mayor and Union NYT: This city found itself engulfed on Monday by a sudden public school strike that left 350,000 children without classes, turned a spotlight on rising tensions nationally over teachers’ circumstances, and placed both the powerful teachers’ union and Mayor Rahm Emanuel in a risky, politically fraught standoff with no clear end in sight.

Will Strike Halt Public Education Efforts Overall?  WSJ: The Chicago teachers strike highlights tension between a new crop of Democratic mayors and teachers unions and other labor groups as cities try to overhaul public-education and plug municipal-budget holes. Stephanie Banchero has details on The News Hub.

How Will Chicago Teachers' Strike Impact the 2012 Race? PoliticsK12: Already, Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, put out a statement saying he's "disappointed" by the union's decision to strike, and that Obama has picked his dog in this political fight (the unions).

Thousands Of Chicago Teachers Take To The Streets Huffington Post: CTU President Karen Lewis reportedly stepped into negotiations as late as 11:30 a.m. Monday, a move that angered Emanuel. Lewis is expected to appear later on MSNBC's "The Ed Show," but CTU representatives did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the union's next steps.

In Chicago, 'Perfect Storm' Led To Teachers' Strike NPR:  The issues at stake in the Chicago teachers strike have already been encountered in hundreds of school systems around the country, but few, if any, have led to strikes. In Chicago, it was a combination of personalities, politics and local issues that brought the situation to a boil.

Study Finds U.S. Trailing in Preschool Enrollment EdWeek: The United States lags behind most of the world’s leading economies when it comes to providing early-childhood education opportunities to young children despite improvements in recent years, according to a new study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Californians Face Rival Ballot Initiatives That Would Raise Taxes and Aid Schools NYT: But the most prominent by far is a budget-easing measure being pushed by Mr. Brown, who wants voters to approve tax increases to head off even more cuts to the state’s already decimated education system — a loss would automatically set off about $5.5 billion in cuts from public schools and $500 million from the state’s public colleges.

School of Wine: Training Students for Jobs in Washington State's Wine Industry PBS NewsHour:  Leaders in business and politics are increasingly looking to community colleges to help train students and, in some cases, even connect them directly with potential employers.

 

Comments

[Bruce]

Tim Daly of T(he)N(ew)T(eacher)P(roject) makes an important mistake at the end of the Huffington Post article above: "It's very risky because they're asking the public to support them in a strike that is about whether they should be evaluated on how much students are learning." No; the issue is whether they should be evaluated on the basis of student test scores, which is not the same as learning. Students in Finland (and many other countries) don't get publicly tested until the end of secondary school, yet the available evidence indicates that they learn quite a lot more than our students do, and they are able to attract and retain excellent teachers. The most important reason I oppose directly factoring student test scores into teacher appraisals is the backwash effect such a practice will have on classroom practice: these lousy tests already get too much emphasis, and this proposed reform will make the situation worse, not better.

[Sarah]

More solid evidence that our testing system is an unneeded patch to the real problem. The American education system has not changed with research, it’s changed independent of it. It’s cheap fixes that ultimately cost us more than anyone would care to admit, let alone calculate, and for good reason.

[Sarah]

Also, I am not even remotely surprised about preschool enrollment. Ours is a country that offers little or no aid to parents struggling early in their children’s lives, lets the media play up the “certainty” of school violence, and denies advanced children the right to attend class basing the denial on "you're not old enough..."