GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

The Chicago strike is about the relentless attack on the teaching profession by the greedy morally bankrupt people that brought you the teach and housing bubbles.  Their obsessive goal is to break unions since the unions are the final barrier to privatizing schools and using them as profit generators.  The ironic twist is that these crooks realized that if schools are privatized their revenue source would be the same taxpayer dollars ( to them a bottomless bucket) they currently use as the “weapon” against fair compensation for teachers.
It is not relevant who pays for teachers’ salaries.  They are qualified professionals who deserve to be paid for their qualifications.  Just as athletes, actors, musicians are allowed to earn what the market will bear, so then should teachers be paid on a scale similar to their equally educated peers.  How ridiculous is it for students to hear the argument that teachers don’t deserve to be paid for their level of education as we struggle to motivate our students to do better in school!!!
This is the kind of ludicrous situation that has been created as a result of allowing totally unqualified people get involved in a discussion about education.  What other profession allows untrained people to teel them what their professional standards should be/
The real issue here is why teachers allow themselves to be bullied and do not unite with even more solidity as a professional group and take charge of their profession.  Their should be one national union for ALL teachers in every state with a platform created as a group of highly qualified professionals.  If the public doesn’t want to pay for schools and teachers then let them educate their own children at their own cost.  That should play out real well.

Did they give in to the carrot of a 16% raise…adding more charters (60) and paying teachers at those charters a lower salary.  Is that a solution or a collapse?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-both-sides-see-progress-as-teachers-strike-reaches-day-4-20120912,0,482612.story 

“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.

“To pay for those raises, which could cost the cash-starved district $320 million over four years, other expenses would have to be cut. The money-saving tactics could include closing schools and shifting public school students to charters that mostly hire lower-paid, nonunion workers and get additional funding from philanthropic sources.

“Mayor Rahm Emanuel did not specify how the district would pay for the raises, saying only that ‘they’ve worked through those issues’ and ‘teachers are the most important resource.’”