Preview

Chicago Public School Strike

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
681 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Chicago Public School Strike
HRM701 Introduction to Human Resource Management: Chicago Public school strike
Group: HR Planning Summary Report

In September 2012, Chicago Public School teachers went on a nine-day strike, walking off the job for the first time in 25 years. Striking teachers voiced complaints about pay, teacher evaluations, and benefits, as well as general concerns about the neglect of the city's public school system.
On what was clearly the most contentious issue, was the proposal from Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, following the lead of the Obama administration to make test scores represent as much as 40% of evaluations. According to the proposed system Teachers who don't improve their students' test scores would be fired.
The new system proposed, teachers would be ranked into four categories. Those in the lowest tier, "unsatisfactory," could be fired in 90 working days if they don't improve—although they can appeal their evaluations. Teachers in the second-to-lowest category, "developing," would be moved to the "unsatisfactory" ranking after two years unless they gain at least one point annually on the evaluations, which have a 100-to-400-point scale.

As a mark of Protest against this proposal, the Chicago Teachers Union representing 26,000 teachers called on a strike on 10th September, 2012. The union said that a student’s grade depends upon many other factors, including a student's health, family situation and the stresses of poverty and hence putting the onus of the grades on a teacher is completely irrelevant.
The teacher’s strike brought to the fore the issue of effectiveness of the evaluation Process: The effectiveness of CPS’s evaluation process will depend on a number of factors like achievement of strategic goals through individual performance expectation. The approach of the Performance Management system is to link the strategic organizational goals with individual performance, So basically, the government in order to improve the overall performance of the

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Better Essays

    Greenhill Community Center

    • 2209 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Robert D. M. & John H. J. (2005). Human Resource Management (11nd ed.). Willard, Ohio: R.R Donnelly…

    • 2209 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Winnipeg General Strike is one of the most significant events and largest strike in Canadian history. It involves 30,000 workers from private and public sectors joined forces to shut down and reduce services. The workers were orderly and peaceful but the employers, city council and federal government were aggressive…

    • 50 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Railroad Strike Dbq

    • 383 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The great railroad strike of 1877 started on July 14 in Martinsburg, West Virginia, in response to the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad cutting wages of workers for the third time in a year.…

    • 383 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    There are five criteria for effectiveness of a performance management system. The first is fit with strategy which states that a performance management system should aim at achieving employee behavior and attitudes that support the organization’s strategy, goals, and culture. The second is validity which refers to whether the appraisal measures all the relevant aspects of performance and omits irrelevant aspects of performance. The third is reliability which describes the consistency of the results that the performance measure will deliver. Acceptability, the fourth criteria, indicates that whether or not a measure is valid and reliable, it must meet the practical standard of being acceptable to the people who use it. The fifth is specific feedback which states that a performance measure should specifically tell employees what is expected of them and how they can meet those expectations. Being…

    • 954 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    history as well. There have been many events that have had an impact on Canadian history and…

    • 366 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Every student across America has at least one memorable teacher. For Diane Ravitch, it was Mrs. Ratliff—literature loving, demanding, challenging, encouraging, and respectful. She was a teacher who did not produce the hard data that is demanded today. The data-driven education leaders are looking for assessment driven and union-disliking teachers who aren’t so worried about tenure. But why would teachers give unions and tenure up? Ravitch declares that teachers need their basic rights protected and states in her book, “That’s one important reason teachers joined unions: to protect their right to think, speak, and teach without fear” (174). Critics believe that unions are directly related to poor academic achievement, avoiding topics such as economy or communities that students come from. Along with this, they believe tenure should be given up. It is rewarded to teachers after a few years, and it is only given to those who respectively deserve it. The principal is the key factor in deciding this, so he or she should have prior experience in the teaching field to know what to look for. Of course, it is important that district officials and school boards should set up processes for both unions and tenure that are fair and thoughtful, allowing them to evaluate teachers in a more deliberative fashion too.…

    • 352 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    During this essay the authors tone was very direct and persuasive toward anyone whom was reading the article. All in all, you could conclude that the author, Carl Singleton thinks very poorly teachers and the schooling system in general. Within in the composition the author claims that “Illiteracy among high-school graduates is growing because those students have been passed rather than flunked; we have low- quality teachers who never should have been certified in the first place…” in other words he [the author] believes low quality teaching leads to unfair grading. I believe that teachers probably realize that when kids always get F’s after putting in a lot of effort it lowers their self-esteem and will make them want to give up. Instead of keep trying. I know for a fact that if I kept getting F’s on papers that I worked my heart out on all the time I would eventually quit because I would feel stupid and feel…

    • 481 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Standardized testing has been a heavily debated topic for many years because it is not evident if testing is more beneficial or detrimental for children or schools. There are many pros and cons associated with the use of standardized testing. Most educators agree that there needs to be a method of accountability for schools and school districts. However, the question remains, are students tested too much? Additionally, to what extent can a standardize test assess students achievement? Some states use alternative methods of assessment. President Obama pledged to reduce the amount of standardized testing in our schools mainly because it is clear that standardized testing has not improved student achievement in the United States. Standardized…

    • 272 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    These test only show the students’ performance the day of the test and not the overall growth of the student over the year. The standardized test does a disservice to both the teacher who worked hard to help their students grow and the student who worked extremely hard over the course of the year and improved tremendously, but failed to pass the test. Many people would argue that teacher and student performance should be evaluated on growth over the year instead of one single test. Many of these students are smart and understand the content, but it does not show on the test. Also many students develop test anxiety which causes stress on the students which leads to negativity directed at school and learning in general. In a picture the teacher says “For a fair selection everybody has to take the same exam: Please climb that tree”. The students he is talking to are a money penguin, elephant, fish, seal, and a dog. Based on these animals only the money will be able to pass the test. This is how the government see all the students, they believe all students are the same when they are actually…

    • 1488 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Q1. Legal strikes and illegal strikes are dramatically different in terms of how they are viewed in Labour Law. Discuss. (5 marks)…

    • 2756 Words
    • 79 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Teacher and Tenure

    • 1225 Words
    • 5 Pages

    First, tenure will protect teachers from being fired because of personal, political, or other non-work related reasons. Before having the tenure, teachers were badly paid, lack of benefits and job security. Furthermore, they could be dismissed without any hearing or warning when the school administrators had opposed political or religious point of view. Worse than that, according to “A Brief History of Tenure” by Times Magazine, during the suffrage movement of the 1920s, female teacher from elementary to high school could be fired for getting married or just simply wearing pants (Stephey). Along with labor struggles during the late 19th century, just as steel, auto, and meat industry workers who fought for their rights such as the fundamental safety at work places and reasonable wages, many teachers had foreseen the necessity of being protected from being terminated nonsensically by the…

    • 1225 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Standardized exams are made to measures a student’s achievement level. Educators what to see if their kids are ready for college. Now, some have argued that teachers’ grades are sufficient. But the reality is that teacher grading practices can be wildly uneven across schools and…

    • 488 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The chief problem with U.S. schools apparently isn’t high dropout rates or underqualified teachers but standardized testing. This is the only conclusion that can be drawn from the push by parents and teachers in Buffalo, Philadelphia, Seattle and elsewhere to help students opt out of taking standardized tests.…

    • 380 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Teacher Tenure

    • 638 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Tenure was first adopted for professors in universities to prevent their dismissal based on political, personal, or other non-work related reasons. It was a protection against any form of dismissal which was unjustified and unfair. Currently tenure is available for K-12 grade level teachers and is granted after a couple of years of evaluation. Although this protection is granted to teachers of all grade levels tenure can potentially and does present problems with the dismissal of unqualified teachers. Tenure prevents teachers who are under performing from being fired as it is costly to the district to remove these teachers. Because of this negative effect schools nation wide are falling behind other elite schools in the world. Tenure is certainly not the only problem with public education, but it should be considered one of the greatest factors which contributes to the failure of public education. Once a teacher becomes tenured it is easy for that teacher to stop teaching at an adequate level and cause students to fall behind. Teachers union maintain that tenure provides protection for teachers yet it arguably causes teachers to simply stop caring as the process of firing them is nearly impossible and very costly. As a result many solutions have emerged in order to get rid of or better improve the process of teacher tenure. Three solutions which have been presented are reforming the tenure process by changing the amount of time it takes to fire a inadequate tenured teacher, renewable tenure contracts, and publicly recognizing and rewarding extraordinary teachers.…

    • 638 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Since the early 60’s varying attempts have been made to improve the education system of America. After the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law was passed in 2002, all students in public schools started to get tested and the results were used to measure the success of the school and district. “High-stakes testing, by its very definition, is the most extreme form of testing, for it results in the most direct, far-reaching set of consequences for the test taker. Thus, high-stakes testing bears great significance for human achievements, individual lives and educational practices alike ” (Ydesen, p, 98, 2014). A state-wide or national standardized test is usually used for this form of testing. Today the main purpose for high-stakes testing is to evaluate the schools, teachers, and students and to hold them accountable for the education being provided and learned. Over 25 states use the results of these tests to make decisions regarding the education system. If the results are found to be positive and/or showing improvements the schools are rewarded financially, but if the results are negative, showing a lack of improvement, the schools could be closed down. (Ydeses, 2014)…

    • 710 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays