Teachers Fight Back

The Illinois Speaker of the House, Mike Madigan was recently quoted as saying, “We’re concerned with the fiscal stability of the pension systems, and we’ve determined that the biggest cost driver that leads to fiscal instability in the pension systems is the automatic compounded (cost of living) adjustment. So our view is that should be adjusted and we ought to convert it.”

NO MR. SPEAKER, THE BIGGEST COST DRIVER THAT LEAD TO FISCAL INSTABILITY WAS THE FACT THAT YOU AS SPEAKER WERE IN CHARGE FOR MANY YEARS AND YOU ALLOWED THE PENSION SYSTEM TO BE ROBBED, EXPLOITED, DEPLETED, AND DIMINISHED DESPITE IT BEING UNCONSTITUTIONAL TO DO SO.

The question now is, how are you going to replace all the stolen funds, (you and your cronies called it “borrowing”) ?  Oh, of course you aren’t considering that.  Instead the current pensioners will pay the price for your incompetence.

The  Illinois Legislature is poised to enact its version of “pension reform”.  They are about to say to the teachers of Illinois, “we stole your money from the pension fund for years, and now we would like YOU to replace what we stole”.  They can phrase it any way they want, but basically that is what they are saying to the teachers of Illinois. How humiliating to teachers. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s like a burglar robbing your house, and then suing you for more money because he wasn’t satisfied with his take the first time.

The Illinois Policy Institute, the Chicago Tribune, the powerful anti union groups, the anti public employee people, they are all about to win big. After years of public relation campaigns, the anti-teacher and anti public employee groups have had their way. They have gotten public opinion on their side, as teachers and public employees naively sat back and thought that they were protected by Constitutional law, and sympathetic legislators.

The past decade has seen teachers face broken contracts, contract givebacks, longer work hours, added pressures, and endless amounts of humiliation and scapegoating that have made teachers the cause of all that ails society.  Did you teachers really think once you were retired you would be free of attacks ? Think again, this pension reform is about to wreak havoc with your golden years. Would all current teachers and retirees please bend over, grab your ankles, and say one more time, “thank you sir, may I have another”?

Maybe this latest humiliation will be the last of the attacks on teachers and public employees. What’s left to attack ? Oh wait, how about a tax on the graves of retired teachers? Yes, that’s possible, the State could pursue you all the way to the grave. If you were a retired teacher, your remaining relatives would have to pay a certain “grave tax”, a yearly fee to reimburse the State for some of what you received as a pension. The longer you lived in retirement, the longer the “grave tax” would have to be paid by your estate and or relatives. Think this is a little far-fetched? So is stealing from someones pension and then blaming them and making them responsible for paying it back. Anything’s possible in the Land of Lincoln.

Mitt Romney’s recent quotes on education :

“Reducing class size does not improve student performance”.

“The ‘outsized influence’ of teachers unions in campaigns and elections are frustrating efforts to improve school quality”.

Keep to the economy, Mitt.

The Quote of the Year Award goes to Harper High School teacher John Thuet who said, “I feel like we’re getting walked on.” He was interviewed by a reporter while attending the Chicago Teacher’s Union rally in Chicago. The teachers are threatening to strike after having a previous raise rescinded and facing a much longer work day for almost no salary increase.

Yes, John, you are so right. All teachers should feel “walked on” after what has transpired over the last several years. We’ve all been walked on in one way or another. It sounds like the Chicago teachers have tired of all the oppression and are ready to take drastic action. The mayor of Chicago and the school administrators need to understand who they’re dealing with in this Chicago teacher’s group. This is not your typical conservative suburban teacher’s union. These people don’t take kindly to being “walked on”. This up coming fight is going to be interesting.

A Mother of the Year Award goes to the lady who insisted the school discipline her son who violated the decorum of his high school graduation ceremonies by “Tebowing” as he received his diploma on stage. The mother proposed that her son be forced to clean up the gymnasium where the ceremony was held in order to receive his diploma later.

Oh, wait a minute, I rescind the award .  The mother was a math teacher at her son’s school.  I thought it was a normal mother, no it was a teacher, now I understand why it happened.  I was naive enough to think that a parent actually insisted on a harsher punishment for their kid than the school was willing to hand out. The fact that the boy’s mother was a teacher changes everything. You’d expect that from a parent who is also a teacher.

My search for a parent who insists on actual discipline for their child will have to continue. I hope to find one before I die.  Teachers don’t count.

Seeking to spur a bold rethinking of the classroom, the Obama administration on Tuesday proposed divvying up $400 million among local school districts that devise ways of reaching children, especially from poor and rural families.

The competition will reward districts that move away from the model of a teacher standing at the front of a classroom and come up with a way to personalize education so children advance at their own pace, the rules state.

I will give them a tried and true method for free, (just willing to do my best to reduce the massive government deficit), I don’t need any money incentive.  I will propose an idea that was sweeping educational circles when I began teaching 40 years ago. It was called, “Individualized Instruction”. It was all the rage! Hundreds of studies were done to show its benefits and every school district was going to switch to this revolutionary idea in education. There was only one problem, study after study showed that in order to effectively implement individualized instruction, every classroom teacher would need a minimum of three teacher aides. Oops, the idea was dropped like a hot potato, and disappeared among the trash heap of educational reform.

I propose reviving the plan of having three teacher aides in every classroom and devising an individual plan for every student. I’m sure we have the money for the additional aides today, because we’re not distracted with budget busting items like we were back then, (see Vietnam War, the War on Poverty, War on Drugs, and you name it). Let’s just fork over the dough, hire the aides, and let every kid in the classroom enjoy the fruits of an individualized plan.

There’s a simple reason why we still have the “model on an individual teacher standing in the front of a classroom”; individualized instruction requires money, and a lot of it, whether you want to use aides or new technology, or whatever change you want to make. 400 million dollars ? A drop in the bucket. Let’s get serious, you want individualized instruction ? Try forking over 400 BILLION dollars, now we’re getting close to what it would require.

Actually, you will find individualized instruction to be part of most school philosophies, mission statements, or whatever you want to call them. Most teachers also state that individualized instruction is one of their main goals. You will hear teachers say that they devise plans that teach to the various learning styles of their students. You will hear them say that one of their goals is to have every child progress at their own pace. Many teachers work an incredible amount of hours and at a frantic pace to try and ensure that individualized instruction occurs. Unfortunately, even these dedicated teachers can’t possibly achieve their goal of seeing kids develop at their own pace unless the teacher is given tremendous amounts of resources and an awful lot of help.

Shame on Arnie Duncan and the Obama administration for thinking that there’s some sort of new idea or magic bullet that is going to bring individualized instruction to all. We found that idea many years ago – it’s called money. Sorry, but yes, in the end, it’s about money. The ideas have always been there.

Wow !  Check out this website – Teachersunionexposed.com.

Are you convinced now that there is a lot of money and people out there who will do and say anything to destroy teacher unions ?  How many more sites like this exist?  Incredible.  Do you understand now what you public school teachers are up against? How are you going to fight this? Does it make you angry ?  I hope so.

Every public school teacher needs to ask themselves the following question:  Have I done enough to help fight the pension injustice and the teacher bashing and scapegoating that has been going on over the last several years?  What have you done? When the topic comes up among you and your neighbors do you speak out and defend teachers? Have you made your anger known to your legislators? Have you made others aware of the injustices? Have you written in to the newspapers and expressed your views to the press? Have you joined in rallies and protests and discussed ways to fight the ever-increasing attacks on public educators? Have you asked parents for their support? Have you worked along with your union leaders and helped them to address all the problems in your district and throughout the state?  Are you prepared to work harder and take some serious actions to stem the tide of oppression that teachers are facing today?

We all need to become resisters. We cannot sit back and passively accept all the injustices being heaped upon teachers. I recently read a wonderful quote from Vaclav Havel, the great Czech playwright and statesman who died earlier this year. He wrote,” Some people have the souls of collaborators and others the souls of resisters. Collaborators, he argued, aren’t simply the active supporters of a system’s oppression, they are everyone who tacitly accepts injustice without a murmur. They confirm the system, fulfill the system, and validate the system; they are the system.

Are you a resister or a collaborator ? Have you tacitly accept the injustices directed toward teachers, or have you resisted? I hope you will become a resister when you see what the state legislators of Illinois are about to do as regards current and future teacher pensions. If every public school teacher in Illinois became a resister we wouldn’t have to put up with what is about to befall us. It’s not too late. Make yourself heard. Don’t be part of the system.

A poll of 700 registered voters found that if Chicago teachers are going to teach longer hours, they should be paid for it.  Sizable majorities of Chicago residents as a whole (86 percent) and public school parents (92 percent) agreed with that concept.

When it came to deciding who they supported, the teacher’s union or mayor Emanuel, the union scored a better than 2-1 ratio over the mayor. Among all respondents, 40 percent sided with the union, compared to 17 percent who backed Emanuel.  Thirty-six percent said they supported neither.

What’s interesting is the way the result of this poll was presented by the Chicago Tribune.  These were the Tribune’s words at the beginning of a paragraph describing the results. “Perhaps somewhat surprising was the support the teachers union garnered over Emanuel.”

No, Chicago Tribune, it’s not surprising that people believe when an employee is asked to work longer hours they should expect an increase in pay. No, it’s not surprising that people in a town like Chicago would support the union over a mayor who has been determined to ring incredible concessions from the teacher’s union. Get over your disappointment, Chicago Tribune. Most people in Chicago don’t appreciate your union busting, public employee bashing, teacher scapegoating, school meddling campaign that’s been going on for far too long.

The people of Chicago have spoken, it’s time for the Tribune to find another group of people to persecute. How about taking on some slum landlords or corrupt businesses for a change instead of hard-working public employees? Perhaps you would also find it surprising that most Chicagoans dislike businesses that take advantage of people. It’s time for the Chicago Tribune to get on the side of the people as opposed to your current mission of supporting those powerful interests that are out to crush all unions and return workers to their turn of the century status.

The following is taken from an article in Newsweek magazine:

ALARM BELLS IN BANGALORE

“A bag is full of 20 bananas and no other fruit.  Rajeev draws a fruit from the bag. What is the probability that he will draw a banana?”  In a study that has sent shudders through newspaper-reading India, researchers found that 30 percent of the country’s engineers were unable to answer that – and other- elementary mathematical problems.  A total of 55,000 students in 250 engineering colleges took part in the survey.

Wow, and you thought we had some problems?  It’s so refreshing to see some criticism directed towards an example from another country’s education system and not the U.S. for once. I hope none of my readers are living in a high-rise constructed by engineers from India. I’m afraid you might have a 30 percent chance of having the building collapse on this day.

I think this would be a good question on a test for some of our state legislators. I would rephrase it to suit the following. “A bag is full of 5 billion dollars that belongs to the teacher’s pension fund. None of the money belongs to you. If you as a state legislator pull 2 billion dollars out of the bag, how much of that money will belong to you?  I think you will find a larger number than 30 percent will answer that question incorrectly.