Midnight Deadline Looms: Chicago Teachers Strike Imminent

[midnight]

We cannot afford to make our teachers work more hours for less pay, or worse work for no pay as some teachers are....


http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/09/09-1

[midnight]

1. Schools that have unions graduate students at high levels, but are being called failures....

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/09/09/teachers-unions/

How did Vermont graduate 83% of its students in four years, and Wisconsin 81%, and North Dakota 80%, and why did Mississippi come in at 61% in 2008? If Louisiana was at 60% and South Carolina and Georgia were at 59%, maybe it wasn’t unions. Maybe it was some strange phenomenon related to flying the Confederate flag.

If that theory sounds ridiculous, what about lack of trees? Because there’s a huge gap in graduation rates between suburban and urban districts within states. A study done in 2005 noted that 38% of Cleveland, Ohio high school students graduated in four years. Yet, in surrounding suburbs, the rate was 80%. It was the same all over the country. The gap for the Baltimore region was 40 percentage points, for Milwaukee 35, in New York City environs 29.

For Chicago, where Duncan was then wrapping up his fourth year at the helm of city schools, the difference was 28 points.

Here, in the Cincinnati area, you can easily uncover evidence of the same. Loveland City Schools, the suburban district where I once taught, has held an “excellent” rating from the State of Ohio for eleven years straight. In 2012 Loveland graduated 96.7% of seniors and 84% of the class planned to go on to college.