*** UPDATE 1 *** There’s a huge union rally planned for Saturday, so maybe that played into it a bit?…
Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis said Thursday that it would be “highly unlikely” that students will return to school Friday but was more hopeful for Monday.
“I’m praying, praying, praying. I’m on my knees for that,” Lewis said about students’ return to school Monday.
Casting doubt on a return to school for students by Friday, Lewis questioned if there was enough time to go through all the details that both sides still need to address Thursday and then get it to the union’s House of Delegates for the necessary vote to end the strike.
*** UPDATE 2 *** Tribune…
As negotiations began this morning between the Chicago Teachers Union and Chicago Public Schools, the two sides said they were still confident of reaching an agreement today but were divided on how soon classes can resume.
On a scale of 1-10, Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis said “I’m a 9″ on a deal being reached today. But she said classes may not resume until Monday because the union’s House of Delegates would have to approve ending the strike.
“We’re hoping we can tighten up some of the things we talked about yesterday. . .and get this thing done,” Lewis told reporters.
[ *** End Of Updates *** ]
* Sun-Times…
Two sides in the battle to end a Chicago teachers strike emerged from Wednesday night talks hopeful that students might be back in school Friday.
CTU President Karen Lewis said her message to parents was “for sure, plan for something for your children for [Thursday]. Let’s hope for Friday.’’
School Board President David Vitale agreed. He called the talks “very productive” and said “we’ll hope for Friday.”
After a long day of talks that ended around 11:30 p.m., Lewis said the system’s offer on teacher evaluations, a key stumbling block, had improved to the point that “I’m smiling. I’m very happy.’’
Although she was not ready to check it off her list, “it’s a lot better,’’ Lewis said.
* Tribune…
The progress was reported after Chicago Public Schools officials presented a revised contract proposal to the union on Tuesday and it was reviewed and discussed during talks Wednesday.
Under the proposal, teacher raises would be structured differently, as requested by the union; evaluations of tenured teachers during the first year could not result in dismissal; later evaluations could be appealed; and health insurance rates would hold steady if the union agreed to take part in a wellness program.
The new proposal also removes the district’s ability to rescind raises because of an economic crisis. The board stripped teachers of a 4 percent raise last year, sparking union distrust of the mayor.
The issues of recall and how to evaluate teachers have been cited as crucial in recent days, while there has been little if any debate over a proposed salary boost that would average 16 percent over four years.
Interesting.
* On to the live coverage. BlackBerry users click here. Everybody else can just watch..
- geronimo - Thursday, Sep 13, 12 @ 9:41 am:
Heartwarming to learn that there is some movement on the issues. Truly amazing though, that the Tribune would actually print that the board stripped teachers of a 4% raise last year. Sounds way too kindly toward teachers for them to admit that they got screwed. Thought the Trib wouldn’t ever put that in print. SO……the top increase any one teacher can get (meaning lots of them are NOT getting this) is 16% over 4 years, but if you count that they got 0% last year, the raise factor is now spread over 5 years, not 4.
- western illinois - Thursday, Sep 13, 12 @ 9:43 am:
Never miss an opportunity to cave during another crisis the media is watching…..bad day for Rahm and his civic club friends …good day for everyone else
- MrJM - Thursday, Sep 13, 12 @ 9:48 am:
“Cave” is such an ugly word…
– MrJM
- Hank - Thursday, Sep 13, 12 @ 9:53 am:
If true, can’t wait to see the spin
- Will Caskey - Thursday, Sep 13, 12 @ 9:58 am:
Based on the live coverage indicating evaluations are being kept with slight modifications, that sounds like less of a cave and more of a fig leaf Lewis can sell to her membership.
Pace the subscriber edition today, CTU owns initial strike support and Rahm owns the underlying issues. Since Rahm has the benefit of paid communication on said issues, it behooves CTU to make a lot of noise for a week and declare victory over whatever they get at week’s end.
- wordslinger - Thursday, Sep 13, 12 @ 10:04 am:
Once the dust settles, you wonder if Emanuel will head down to Springfield again after the election to try and get there what he couldn’t at the negotiating table.
If he does, he might want to leave Jonah Edelman at home. Or at least unmiked.
- amalia - Thursday, Sep 13, 12 @ 10:05 am:
don’t know the extent of the picketing, but happened to run into one event that was staged on a busy street, not by the school nearby, but in a place where the picketing was seen by tons of cars passing to get onto a nearby highway. red shirts standing out. encountered a shirt wearer later and she said they never expected to have such solidarity in the ranks, but it is there. they have turned into a powerful force.
- Fed up - Thursday, Sep 13, 12 @ 10:08 am:
Rahm still screwed the teachers. He stole 4% from them last year breaking contract. Heard to trust someone after that. He is a sort term person not a long term team builder. Think the city is in trouble teachers cops firemen, streets and San guys all could care less anymore city Is suffering under Rahms lack of leadership. Being a bully got him to the top and now the act is wearing thin and city is failing.
- OldSmoky2 - Thursday, Sep 13, 12 @ 10:11 am:
== No surprise “the Rahminator” is caving. We’re talking big campaign contributions for the democratic party and lots of angry union folks. So much for “Rahminator”/intimidator standing tough. He has met his match. ==
I really doubt that’s what’s driving a settlement by the mayor. Fact is he gets more support from charter school operators and proponents than unions. I think it’s more that he’s hearing “settle this” from parents and aldermen and (really important) looking at the poll numbers in Chicago that show him losing the PR battle bigtime. He knows when to hold ‘em and he knows how to fold ‘em.
- Niles Township - Thursday, Sep 13, 12 @ 10:18 am:
Tide of public support turning? Sign seen while walking downtown near CPS headquarters” “CTU - Shame on You, from CPS parent”
- Jim - Thursday, Sep 13, 12 @ 10:19 am:
Union is just killing Rahmbo, school district, taxpayers. Quite interesting to watch a really tough public union flex its muscles — it’s no contest.
- amalia - Thursday, Sep 13, 12 @ 10:20 am:
@wordslinger…agree on Edleman. although with his lengthy apology last year, and all his connections, I’m sure that somehow, someday, “his brashness” will become some candidate of some PR company for something and his behavior will be discussed as brilliant triangulation.
- Shemp - Thursday, Sep 13, 12 @ 10:21 am:
Wow. If they were going to cave that much, why let the teachers walk? Once they walked, the board/mayor should have dug in if the problems are as deep as they say and I suspect they are.
- MrJM - Thursday, Sep 13, 12 @ 10:25 am:
ZOMG!
This changes everything!!!1!
– MrJM
- OneMan - Thursday, Sep 13, 12 @ 10:26 am:
WBEZ has some details on the CPS proposal…
http://www.wbez.org/news/education/cps-releases-its-latest-contract-proposal-strike-end-sight-102396
The two that pop out at me are…
Depending on how this process works it could gut the whole evaluation system IMHO
Is this a 3rd grade report card? “developing” come on, if the teacher needs improvement, they need improvement. Does anyone else have a review system that tags someone as “developing”?
- Yellow Dog Democrat - Thursday, Sep 13, 12 @ 10:29 am:
Unfortunately for Rahm, it was the Tribune editorial board that defined any compromise as “caving in.”
- lake county democrat - Thursday, Sep 13, 12 @ 10:35 am:
To me the key with evaluations is that they identify and fire the truly abysmal teachers out there. It’s the bottom 25% they should be drawing the line on - they could even cede a way for people there to redeem themselves so long as it’s with bright lines and a quick exit for failure to do so - i.e., get rid of the worst 10% and you’ve helped the schools immensely, and it’s no great loss if you accidentally get rid of someone who accidentally slipped from “bottom 70% to bottom 90%.” This would not be failure, this would be reasonable compromise.
- ZC - Thursday, Sep 13, 12 @ 11:02 am:
It strikes me that evaluations look like -the- place where both sides have to come together and craft a compromise. Because if it comes down to whether principals have their hands tied whom they can hire, it could be a long strike… I don’t see Rahm and Vitale “caving” on that one…
- Will Caskey - Thursday, Sep 13, 12 @ 12:21 pm:
YDD, since the Trib ed page has a grand total of one in its audience (Rahm), I think he will survive the nonzero drop in their esteem.
I mean, if that’s a devastating victory to CTU to give Rahm what he wants in mostly the terms he wants then great for Lewis’ continued leadership prospects I guess? Otherwise at least the school year can continue again.
- Edison Parker - Thursday, Sep 13, 12 @ 12:26 pm:
It is possible for CTU to win the battle and lose the war. CPS might “cave” now but turn around and close more schools than initially planned. 60 schools closings could become 120 or 200 charter schools rather quickly. With supposedly 19,000 on turned away, they’d fill up fast and CTU could be left to wither.
- ArchPundit - Thursday, Sep 13, 12 @ 12:58 pm:
People don’t seem to understand how difficult this evaluation system is going to be to implement.
The biggest part of it is the observation using the Danielson Framework–this will entail directly observing teachers in the classroom and for the evaluations to have any use–meaning actually identifying teachers who are good and who are bad– there will need to be inter rater reliability and that’s very difficult to achieve in a decentralized bureaucracy like a school district.
Evaluator A rate a teacher as good and Evaluator B rate them as average isn’t a big deal. However, Evaluator A rates a teacher as satisfactory and Evaluator B as unsatisfactory is a big problem.
If you can’t appeal, this becomes a big problem for the reliability of the system. So if you want to actually identify teachers who are good at teaching and teachers who are bad at teachers you should welcome the change. If you want to just fire people randomly because it makes you feel better, I can’t help you much there.
- ArchPundit - Thursday, Sep 13, 12 @ 1:02 pm:
Now, beyond the Danielson Framework which is 50% of the teacher evaluation, the District has some broad outlines about using standardized tests, but looking through the documents I can’t find the specific algorithms that will be used–just references to the outside consultant who will figure it all out.
This is a huge organization that doesn’t turn on a dime, implementing these issues is going to take time to do it right. And, again, doing it right matters if you care whether we are separating the good from the bad. Slowing the implementation in certain spots may seem like slowing progress, but not if it improves implementation.
- ArchPundit - Thursday, Sep 13, 12 @ 1:07 pm:
===It’s the bottom 25% they should be drawing the line on -
Isn’t this an empirical question? Seriously, why the arbitrary number? We know there are some bad teachers, but without quality evaluations of their teaching how do you know how many should be retrained/fired/etc?
In many districts, the bottom 25% may be the top 10% in another district. Do you fire them just because they are in the bottom of a particular distribution.
I don’t know how many bad teachers there are and I can guarantee no one else knows because they have never done quality evaluations of teacher performance up to now (and that’s a management problem, not a teacher problem). I suspect that the number of not so good teachers in the CPS is higher than in many other districts, but the actual number is an empirical question that should be answered with empirical evidence.
- amalia - Thursday, Sep 13, 12 @ 1:33 pm:
too bad we can’t make the kids and their parents sign a contract to study, behave and be involved!
- Crime Fighter - Thursday, Sep 13, 12 @ 2:10 pm:
I can tell you from experience that the state is notorious for misusing its employee evaluation system and it is quite harmful to good employees. No matter how specious or false an evaluation may be, the state, including the AG will unequivocally support actions to target a good, ethical employee. Given the wrongs I’ve seen Quinn and previous administrations perpetrate, I see the concerns of the CTU.
- Shore - Thursday, Sep 13, 12 @ 4:06 pm:
at what chapter of this book does Rahm start mailing dead fish to karen lewis and or jc brizard?
- Yellow Dog Democrat - Thursday, Sep 13, 12 @ 4:15 pm:
@ArchPundit -
Thoughtful analysis. I’m familiar with the Test of English as a Foreign Language administered at the university level, so I understand that there’s a great deal of complexity to grading oral presentation skills that escape 99 percent of the public. And 99.9 percent of politicians, pundits, and editorial boards.
Sadly, I’m not convinced that any of the politicians, pundits or editorial boards insisting on teacher evaluations or merit pay actually care whether the evaluations are valid.
They just want to be able to say that they fixed the problem, whether or not the fix actually works.
Many just want to be able to fire more teachers more easily — bad teachers, average teachers, or good teachers doesn’t really matter to them.
And some honestly don’t actually care whether public education improves one whiff. Actually, they’d like to see public education end, especially teachers’ unions, which they see as a necessary step to diminishing Democrats’ electoral hopes and advancing the Republican Party agenda.
- amalia - Thursday, Sep 13, 12 @ 5:36 pm:
just ran into a teacher shopping in the near burbs. those t shirts from today are awesome! red with graphic of a Chicago flag, but with apples for the stars. (they should sell them for a funder. ) this teacher was just as articulate and nice as the one I met yesterday, not a canned message, really wants good things in all schools, quality evals, AC, better things for kids. really impressed with the teachers I’ve met!
- cermak_rd - Thursday, Sep 13, 12 @ 6:33 pm:
I’m really hoping AC in all the schools becomes a reality. I know it seems like a petty thing, but so many students have asthma and other health concerns that are just hideously aggravated by too hot of weather. We can get hot Mays and Junes and Septembers as well and don’t forget about summer school.
- ArchPundit - Thursday, Sep 13, 12 @ 8:34 pm:
===I’m really hoping AC in all the schools becomes a reality. I know it seems like a petty thing, but so many students have asthma and other health concerns that are just hideously aggravated by too hot of weather.
From experience on this issue, the District first needs to make decisions about what schools are going to stay open. In Saint Louis they passed a multimillion dollar AC bond initiative Everyone pretty much thought good idea so why not.
I lost horribly, but I pointed out that the District was going to have to shut a number of schools because the school population had shrunk from over 110,000 students in 110 buildings to about 40,000 at the time in 100 plus buildings. SO the SLPS then air conditioned a bunch of buildings that were shut down within a few years.
CPS is going to have to go through a deliberate process to figure out its future building needs and then air condition those staying open or a whole lot of money will be for nothing.