AM News: Shaping Perceptions Of Chicago Strike

Idaho Education Overhaul Is Subject of Referendum NYT: Chicago’s fight may be over, but in Idaho, the debate over schools has morphed into a harsh discussion about whom the voters should trust.

After Chicago success, teachers unions spread their message Washington Post: Union leaders who won gains after striking in Chicago are hitting the road, spreading the message that effective changes in public education can't be imposed by mayors or governors. [See Weingarten/ Lewis opinion piece in the WSJ here.]

Teachers wary of new evaluations in aftermath of Chicago strike Hechinger Report:  In a poll taken during a teacher town hall hosted by Education Nation on Sunday, 72 percent of teachers in attendance said they believe less than a third of their rating should depend on student test scores. 

Teachers Strike First Of Many Challenges Ahead For Rahm AP:  The grueling teachers strike is over. Now comes the hard part for Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. As he welcomed children back to school, Emanuel nodded at the difficulties ahead: "We have other tough things to do."

Improving education in Chicago (Emanuel in the Tribune): We are on our way to having 12 turnarounds and 14 academies so CPS has the capacity to transform 10 failing schools a year. The teachers union should join us in turning these failing schools around.

Duncan On Chicago: 'When Adults Fight, Kids Lose' NPR: The Chicago teachers' strike came to an end this week. Host Scott Simon speaks with Education Secretary Arne Duncan about the resolution.

Video: Gyllenhall: Adults fighting each other msnbc: Academy award nominee Maggie Gyllenhaal talks about her role in “Won’t Back Down,” and what she learned while researching the role of a determined mother trying to make a difference in the education of her children. (msnbc)

Schools in crisis NBC News: Teachers and students sound off about the state of America’s schools. NBC’s Rehema Ellis reports. 

State Chiefs' Vacancies Crack Window on Policy EdWeek: Several job openings for state schools chiefs could provide momentum for advocates seeking to push new policies or build on current ones in areas ranging from expanded charter school options to early-literacy requirements.

Public Television Takes Role in Curbing Dropout Rates NYT: A parade of media stars, including NBC’s Brian Williams, CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo, CBS’s Rebecca Jarvis and public media’s Maria Hinojosa and Ray Suarez, exhorted viewers to “call the number on your screen,” but they were not seeking membership pledges. Instead, they asked viewers to sign up to be “American Graduate Day Champions,” and connect with community organizations working on the nation’s high school dropout crisis.

At School, Overweight Children Carry A Heavy Burden NPR: One in three children in the United States is overweight or obese. Significant numbers of those young people are grappling with health problems like heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes. Those conditions can be difficult for children to manage in any setting, but they can pose particular challenges for children during the school day.

 

Comments

[Bruce]

If we are to follow that North Star and attain the highest college graduation rates in the world, as Arne Duncan suggests, we will want to do better in getting average teens to learn mathematics more effectively, since their failure to learn maths well is hurting the career prospects of so many of them. The most important resource we can offer them is a corps of strong teachers, and to build and sustain that corps we need to make teaching a more attractive and sustainable job than it is. So here is the irony in the administration's friends' negotiating strategy with the unions: because they insist on ham-handedly negotiating single formulas for all teachers' appraisals at the highest relevant levels of government (typically districts or, worse, states), instead of allowing jobs to be defined, appraised, and compensated at levels closer to the teacher, they antagonize and alienate the entire teacher corps, which then has to be bought off with salary increases the taxpayers cannot afford (but because some of our current political leaders are so addicted to deficit spending, which cannot be objected to by the future taxpayers who will have to pay those bills and are represented by no one at these negotiating tables, they don't see this as an urgent problem); so that some teaching jobs, like for high school mathematics, where student test scores are very relevant to the future opportunities of the students, are conflated with other teaching jobs, like for primary school music, where multiple choice testing is irrelevant, but which may have considerable relevance for students wanting to stay in school long enough to reach Secretary Duncan's North Star; and so the negotiating tactic undermines the attainment of the overall objective.