Teachers on Strike: Classic or Dud?

I remember the last one. My school got off quite lightly. Relatively few members of NUT which iirc was on strike, as far more of our teachers were members of the NASUWT.

Naturally as we were 15 at the time we envied our peers down the road at another school with a much higher NUT contingent.

NUT? Really?

I think perhaps we need a 'most amusing acronyms' thread.

Good/Unfortunate Acronyms

my mother always used to have a good laff about that.

I remember my father pointing to an NUT sticker in the back of a car which read "If you can read this, thank a teacher" and muttering "If your child can't read this, thank a striking teacher".

Strange week. This is when we file back slowly and set up our classrooms for next week. But our contract expires Sept. 1, and the government is in emergency session to a) freeze wages for two years, and b) make it illegal to strike during that period. Everything feels very much up in the air right now.

God, that sucks. Where do you live?

Toronto--it's a province-wide thing.

I am sitting in the superintendsnt's opening address texting, and it is uh-maz-ing how much rhetoric is being used to avoid mentioning the strike.

Rick Perlstein on Rahm Emanuel, abuser of teachers:

http://www.salon.com/2012/09/11/stand_against_rahm/

Ontario government passes legislation today: wage freeze, no strikes, takebacks on accumulated sick days. We're taking them to court.

xp'd from chi thread

https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/527223_492590120751714_1425385267_n.jpg

it doesn't fucking matter if your kid learns algebra today, next month, next year or in college

Rahm Emanuel, Arne Duncan and Barack Obama are a coven of idiots on the subject of anything education. I'd love for the NFT to pull their support from O, frankly.

^^ sadly otm
i think obama believes what the other two say, and they are idiots

how long is the school day in chicago currently?

Five hours and 45 minutes, one of the shortest school days in the country.

20% increase in pay for 20% increase in workweek seems kind of like an unrealistic demand (that's not generally how these things work unless you're an hourly wage employee) but I can see it as a negotiation starting point I guess.

God only knows what the starting point was, then, because I think they've been negotiating for 10 months!

Apparently wages are a very minor point of contention. They've more or less agreed to a 16% average raise spread over the next few years: 2% one year, 3% the next, etc.

Good Reuters analysis:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/10/us-usa-chicago-schools-analysis-idUSBRE8890VS20120910

And Ezra Klein crunches the numbers on salaries:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/11/how-much-do-chicago-teachers-make/

The school I went to in England ran 08.30-14.15, so sounds the same as Chicago. 20 min lunch and for 3 of the 5 years I was there no after school activities ie sport, drama etc. I think the schedule arose from a teacher's strike.

Klein analysis interesting, but again, this is apparently not really about money. I'm really curious about what kind of middle ground the two sides can find, because there really doesn't seem to be any. Teachers want the right to rehire laid off teachers, presumably a power they want before a rumored 100 further schools are closed. But those schools are apparently at 50% enrollment, due to socio-economic factors beyond the control of both the city and teachers. Should empty schools be kept open? Dunno. Arguably the best option is that you roll those leftover students into other schools, including some charter schools. What other option is there besides opening more schools, which seems counter-intuitive? Or I guess significantly expanding existing, full schools and hiring more teachers, which is probably close in terms of the dollars spent to the same thing. Obviously education is vital, and investment in education essential. Yet all along the high school graduation rate here is hovering around 60% (a significant improvement!) and graduates subsequently completing college in five years or less something pitiful, like 6%. That's not the fault of teachers, or the city. It's the fallout from broader problems that have been left unattended for decades, problems that no strike can solve. It's a mess.

Obviously education is vital, and investment in education essential.

IMO not as obvious as all that

arne is the fucking biggest tool ever

Should say, basic high school readin', writin', 'rithmatic is vital. Or at least should be. But if kids can't be arsed to learn that stuff, then they should just forego high school and do what they were planning to do when they didn't graduate, anyway.

Join ILX?

walked through the protests yesterday, they were using occupy strategies for crowd communication

also saw a few signs that said The Revolution Will Not Be Standardized, which i thought was rather cleverl

not nearly as many people as that photo upthread but still had a few blocks cut off. good to see.

from what i've gathered, as josh says, the salaries are almost moot at this point.

i think the two big things are giving ex-CPS teachers first priority on new teaching jobs and reducing the weight of standardized test scores for evaluating teachers as outlined in the city's proposal. my sense in being there for a minute yesterday was that the latter point is a pretty serious issue.

there's also some minor stuff, like making sure every school has air conditioning (2012!) and making sure that the city doesn't gut support staff at the schools (guidance counselors, therapists etc)

My kids - do any of you have school-aged kids? - go to school in Oak Park, a nice innter-burb with good schools, and virtually none of the elementary school classrooms, at least, have A/C. Kids and teachers deal. Though for all I know everyone will change their mind and go on strike next week.

"support staff" is often code for cushy patronage positions. I will defend teachers to the death, but guidance counsellors are largely scum. And every one of these superfluous counsellors, assistants, "out of classroom" teachers, etc. = one less teacher = larger class sizes.

My understanding is that they want the support staff and more teachers and smaller class size. With a lot of that determined by the power to make hiring/firing decisions, which is asking for a lot, as an entire package. Plus other comfort stuff, like A/C and more money. Which maybe they deserve and maybe they can get, but I don't see it.

Heard a reporter suggest this is a chickens coming home to roost scenario, since by and large Daley gave the teachers whatever they wanted to forestall exactly what's going on now.

Sounds like they might be asking for too much, but tbf so are "reformers" who think we can improve the system and slash funding at the same time.

I think they see slashing funding (ie closing schools) as an improvement.

http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/13824/director_of_private_school_where_rahm_sends_his_kids_disagrees_on_standardi/

Unlike occasional teacher union opponent Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel does not send his kids to public schools. Instead, Emanuel's children attend one of the most elite prep schools in Chicago, the University of Chicago Lab School, where the annual tuition is more than $20,000. (Emanuel has repeatedly refused to answer questions about why he eschews public schools for his children, telling reporters that it is a private family decision.)

The conditions at the University of Chicago Lab Schools are dramatically different than those at Chicago Public Schools, which are currently closed with teachers engaged in a high-profile strike. The Lab School has seven full-time art teachers to serve a student population of 1,700. By contrast, only 25% of Chicago’s “neighborhood elementary schools” have both a full-time art and music instructor. The Lab School has three different libraries, while 160 Chicago public elementary schools do not have a library.

“Physical education, world languages, libraries and the arts are not frills. They are an essential piece of a well-rounded education,” wrote University of Chicago Lab School Director David Magill on the school's website in February 2009.

i love how everyone gets to have an opinion about what teachers do and don't need, and feels the right to be super vocal about it.

"support staff" is often code for cushy patronage positions. I will defend teachers to the death, but guidance counsellors are largely scum. And every one of these superfluous counsellors, assistants, "out of classroom" teachers, etc. = one less teacher = larger class sizes.

― look at this quarterstaff (Hurting 2), Wednesday, September 12, 2012 12:21 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah, idk. you're also talking about social workers, psychologists

I am married to a public school teacher, so yeah, I have an opinion about it.

I know. I'm not talking about anyone itt -- I'm just generally talking about the national attention this is getting. Ezra Klein looking at salaries, etc. Just an observation. Not being a dick.

Is there any question that private schools are better than public schools, at least in terms of amenities and staff and extracurriculars and whatnot? Like, duh, $20,000 a year per student buys you a lot more than piddling property taxes pay for. I bet Rahm drives a better car than most, too. Besides, politicians - like celebrities and other public figures - rarely (if ever?) send their kids to public schools for obvious reasons.

If the reasons are so obvious, why do people continue to give them a hard time about it, I wonder? Honestly I feel bad for any mayor's kids in any city because they are forced to answer questions that most kids don't really even think about answering, yet people continue to ask the same questions.

The only reason I posted that is because the director of the school is disagreeing philosophically (partic in terms of evaluation) with one of the school's most prominent supporters, which should give at least some weight to the striking teachers' concerns beyond salaries and stuff that people seem to stick on.

Amy Carter went to public schools.

Good memory!

Is there any question that private schools are better than public schools, at least in terms of amenities and staff and extracurriculars and whatnot?

I think this is entirely dependent upon where you live; for example, my old public high school has a fully-functioning machine shop, a cable-access television studio, a 400-seat amphitheater, an Olympic-sized pool, a gymnasium that holds 4 full-sized basketball courts, an agriculture building and an Olympic-sized track. This facility is now the middle school and we have a new high school sitting on 100 acres of land that has multiple pools, an Olympic-sized indoor track that surrounds (iirc) 6 basketball courts, touchscreen electronic dry erase boards in every classroom, multiple computer labs, etc etc etc, I mean there is actually a BRIDGE inside the school connecting the front entrance to the classroom area that crosses over the cafeteria area. The whole thing is just nuts.

It's a nicer facility than some 4-year colleges I've seen.

what the hell

one thing i was struck by when i started living in the midwest is how fucking massive high school campuses are

my HS school in del mar was like that too

hurting 2 otm

some support staff, particularly the special ed ones, are crucial to the school

but a lot of support staff jobs - like counselors and data analysts - are kinda parasitical to the school

and district staff are the worst

i mean i'm sure they're not actually "scum" or bad people, but they suck up $$$ out of proportion to what they give back

100% parity between private schools (and wealthier public schools) and public schools in poor areas may not be achievable, but the debate is really about what the baseline should be. We have a lot of doubletalk about certain areas of education being "inessential" (for your kids) and "essential" (for my kids) going on, is the point of that excerpt, I think.

xpost: No, most of the guidance counsellors I ever had were LITERALLY bad people.

It's a nicer facility than some 4-year colleges I've seen.

Shit is fucking huge. I knew a guy who literally took the bus from one class to the next (classes were at opposite ends of the complex, guy went outside to the city bus and said, "Hey, can you just drive me to the end of the block?" -- did this for a whole year)

In seriousness, yeah of course they're not bad people, but there is a culture in public schools (at least in NYC, which is all I can speak to) of creating half-jobs for people and letting them kind of lounge in them for decades. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect everyone on the payroll to actually be contributing something of significance to the school. I'm not talking about the art teacher or the gym teacher, I'm talking about veteran teachers being given "enrichment" positions that involve little more than going to classrooms a few periods a day and reading stories to kids. I'm talking about having an administrative person whose sole job is basically to hold onto the key to the copier, so that other people need to go through her to make copies. I'm not making these up.

xpost Dan, what kind of property taxes did your parents pay? Because where I live, which is not some all mods con utopia, there are many who easily pay upwards of $20,000 a year in property taxes. I know we pay something close to $8000 a year, and we're hardly living large in some palace.

But anyway, xposting further: "Physical education, world languages, libraries and the arts are not frills. They are an essential piece of a well-rounded education" can both be a fundamentally true statement, if idealistic, yet also underscore why the public schools are falling short. All those things are expensive, and across the country they're getting cut left and right. Doesn't make them less essential, simply explains why public schools (in cities, at least) are getting worse, not better: they're missing something essential, which those with means can afford to replace elsewhere. The same holds true for countless things across America. Those with money can afford the things those without cannot. No news there. The debate then shifts to what a public school education should be required to provide beside the bare minimum, because while the absence of PE, world languages, arts and even libraries are bad things, they're pretty far down the list on why Chicago public schools are considered failures. If those things are "essential" for a well-rounded education, what does that make reading and math, which Chicago public schools (for, again, numerous socio-economic reasons) are having enough trouble teaching? That is, the lack of those programs does not seem to be the crux of the problem here.

Except when you cut services and & offerings you're telling kids that they're not worth those things, which kind of IS the crux of the problem?

otm

support staff problem even worse for higher ed

And I'm all for spending smarter -- no question that public schools need to do this. I just don't think we're going to spend smarter AND less AND get better results all at the same time, which seems to be either (1) the prevailing neoliberal belief or (2) cover for a hidden neoliberal belief that these kids aren't really worth it.

spend smarter AND less AND get better results all at the same time

this is liberal?

neoliberal =/= liberal

what (or who) do you mean by neoliberal

I am mostly tired of the "we can't just throw money at failing schools" canard

YES YOU CAN, DUDE

― ilx user 'silby' (silby), Monday, September 26, 2011 5:27 PM (11 months ago)

it's not like we ever threw money at poor schools. it would be nice to try it once before turning against it as a measure.

― horseshoe, Monday, September 26, 2011 5:28 PM (11 months ago)

Ha yes. That's my stock response to "we can't throw money at a problem." Let's try once and see!

― pullapartsquirrel (Jenny), Monday, September 26, 2011 6:00 PM (11 months ago)

Dan, what kind of property taxes did your parents pay?

I have no idea what my parents paid in property taxes while I was growing up. Looking online, I see that off of 12 acres of land, they have a 2012 tax bill of about $2.4K. I also know that in FY 2012, education spending is the single largest line item on the overall MN state/local budget at $16.1 billion:

https://chart.googleapis.com/chart?cht=p3&chs=600x200&chf=bg,s,e8e8ff&chd=t:7,20,29,0,10,7,8,3,12,3&chl=Pensions%207%|Health%20Care%2020%|Education%2029%|Defense%200%|Welfare%2010%|Protection%207%|Transportation%208%|General%20Government%203%|Other%20Spending%2012%|Interest%203%&chtt=State%20and%20Local%20Spending%20for%20Minnesota%20-%20FY%202012

The ridiculous, massively impressive super high school was built in 2001.

Alex Pareene has had enough of people's shit on the issue of teachers:

Alex Pareene ‏@pareene
Fun fact: pundits supporting test-based teacher evals work in a field with no professional consequences for making readers stupider

(I didn't even get into the auditorium, which I think seats 1K? and has built-in partitions all over the place to reconfigure the stage, including bits that can be raised or lowered, or the new soundproof practice rooms in the choir area with the awesome reverb technology that let you set the acoustic of a space the size of a large cubicle to have the reverberation of a large concert hall, etc etc.)

I see that off of 12 acres of land, they have a 2012 tax bill of about $2.4K.

Good lord. My 2012 property taxes are $4,253 and I have a roughly 1,600 sq ft house on a 125'x50' lot.

alex parene brings the 100 megaton truth bomb

HeadStart seems to have worked out well, that was "throwing money" at poor or disadvantaged areas (I was in one when they created it).

I have several friends who are walking picket lines with the CTU. A colleague of one of them wrote this:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-rusin/whats-happening-in-chicag_b_1876734.html

in a nutshell

We are on strike because we refuse to accept a system where the mayor and his appointed school board can systematically lower scores on teacher evaluations in order to justify the privatization of education.

Wait, are they accusing the city of rigging teacher evaluation scores to make teachers look bad so that can be fired?

i think the implication is that by putting more weight on standardized test scores, the city is setting up the teachers to look worse on evaluations

i think the idea is linking eval scores to test results is going to allow the city to fire a bunch of teachers in "worst performing schools" and replace them w/ underpaid, undertrained "teach for america" (yeah fucking right) charter types

"worst performing" being code for "historically most underserved" and "population most difficult to make college prep education seem relevant / realistic to"

At this point I am totally unclear what the sticking points are, since the emphasis seems to shift every day. Dear teachers: unify your message.

Or at least focus it.

- hiring pool for CPS teachers who have lost their jobs
- weight placed on test scores in evals

xp by sticking points you mean non-negotiables?

Yeah, I guess. I'm not sure what the teachers are considering non-negotiable. Is it more self-deteremined evaluations and hiring pools? Or is there more than that? Would teachers accept those things minus all the other things they are asking for?

that sort of seems like the type of thing you don't want to make public as you negotiate?

i think self-determined evaluations would not really be evaluation at all!

I get the impression from the way things normally work that there doesn't even HAVE to be a villainous plan to "rig" the evals. The system makes it IMPOSSIBLE to consistently score well, especially if "teaching the greatest number of kids the greatest percentage of the actual course-work" is your top priority and not, say, scoring well on evals. Then once you're not protected by high scores, your job is fair game. This way more schools/jobs will TEND to go charter/non-union instead of public, which is exactly why ALEC and the Acton Institute and conservative policy groups like them support NCLB and teacher evals based on student performance, and union busting, and getting "tough" on the finances of education...as long as it only affects those other kids, not their own.

xp it's the weight of the test scores as part of the evaluations that i think is the issue

insisting on high scores creates a "race to the bottom" where doing shit like this becomes incentivized

four types of lines? yeah, A, B, C, D make sure you bubble in the right one, morans

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6WJdsb0dfM

^^ this is what teaching ONLY to the test looks like, i.e. coaching kids to pass something that in no way resembles "real math"

iirc the city wants test scores to make up 60% of evals, teachers want substantially lower (i think 40%?)

There has to be some criteria to fire teachers, though, right? I think standardized tests are stupid, but even if you took them out of the equation, the numbers are terrible. If a school is only 50% full, and only 60% of the kids graduate, doesn't that illustrate failure, on every level?

The best school in our district, btw, in the most well off and white part of town, just fired its principal for faking test scores.

If a school is only 50% full, and only 60% of the kids graduate, doesn't that illustrate failure, on every level?

no

why?

actually, i'm not saying it *doesn't*, i'm curious though why you say it does illustrate failure

failure of society more than anything

If a school is only 50% full, and only 60% of the kids graduate, doesn't that illustrate failure, on every level?

I don't even know where to start with this, tbh. The inequalities that lead some schools to do THIS BADLY while the director of a top private school needs 20K per child to provide "basic resources" are a sign that everyone is failing at education EXCEPT possibly the teachers and the students. They get handed a situation where they basically can't succeed and then fired/closed for not succeeding?

i'm with jordan on this one

In Florida a few months ago our beloved governor proposed redoing our own teacher evaluation system in a way that mirrors Chicago's.

in orbit OTM

a school that is only 50% full is definitely a failure of something, though probably not the teachers, seems like a district-level misallocation of resources more than anything else

speaking as a college instructor for the last 14 years, let me say unequivocally: fuck you to Jeb Bush and fuck you to No Child Left Behind.

You should have to factor socio-economics and poverty into the equation when evaluating teachers

why would you? It's easier to fire them.

maybe, maybe not. i'm divided on that one because we don't want to stigmatize poor people as being disinterested in education because some are very, very interested. but i do think an affective survey of students ("do you think college is important?") should be factored in.

also: if they can raise or maintain that #, from when students come in school to when they leave, of seeing ongoing learning and lifelong education (even if it's apprenticing as a plumber or whatever) as an important goal, regardless of "achievement" i think that's an important societal gain

because lord knows as a lot of kids go from elementary school -> jr high -> high school they become less and less interested in what becomes a more and more factory-like, standards-based education

tbf, has anyone actually proposed evaluating teachers on the basis of absolute (compared with other schools) as opposed to relative (i.e. self-compared improvement) test scores? The former is obviously ridiculous, but if it's not actually on the table then let's not go tilting at windmills.

Government used to either be less invested in education purely as the manufacture of sausage-meat citizens / wage slaves, or did a better job of hiding their goals.

The best school in our district, btw, in the most well off and white part of town, just fired its principal for faking test scores.

Still we haven't learned anything from Annie Ross in Pump Up the Volume. (derived from a true story, I recall)

tbf, has anyone actually proposed evaluating teachers on the basis of absolute (compared with other schools) as opposed to relative (i.e. self-compared improvement) test scores?

this is already part of accreditation, not sure if its part of NCLB though

speaking as a GIGANTIC HIPPIE of a teacher ...

i strongly believe that if we want to create a better, gentler, more equitable, more democratic and more sustainable society we as teachers need to busy ourselves with

http://images.betterworldbooks.com/080/Designing-Groupwork-9780807733318.jpg

and the focus on standardized test scores seriously undercuts / dis-incentivises this work

and i am not saying that there's this zero sum game happening, ideally doing good groupwork is going to raise standardized test scores, not hurt them

i am just talking about what the incentives are for teachers and what you are going to be pushing them toward doing as you make these standardized test scores more important, the quicker, easier, more seductive way to raise test scores is to just cut groupwork out of the equation and track each kid onto specific worksheets

we don't want to stigmatize poor people as being disinterested in education because some are very, very interested.

Someone can be interested in education but so busy working that they can't spend lots of time reading with and to their child; buying reading material; getting the kid to the library;

this is already part of accreditation, not sure if its part of NCLB though

yes, yes it is. class sorting mechanisms ahoy!

people whose education was crappy/didn't serve them very well aren't 'disinterested' as much as 'unconvinced' and it's up to the teachers and administration to change their mind. all well and good, but the emphasis on test-centered education takes the teacher out of the facilitator role and mechanizes their function, further diminishing the contact/interaction with the unconvinced parents, and deep-sixing various potential avenues for improvement.

Someone can be interested in education but so busy working that they can't spend lots of time reading with and to their child; buying reading material; getting the kid to the library

likewise someone can be so busy getting botoxed, shopping at gucci store, buying hovercraft vacation in greece that the same happens

also, common core/nclb/funding isn't the problem. common core (at least for the ELA classes I teach) are actually an improvement on state standards. the problem, as i see it, lies with the onus of responsibility for quality education shifting out of the good-practice classroom and onto a bunch of well-intentioned bureaucratic mid-level administrative MBAs who measure various metrics to determine pseudo-scientifically, what quantifiable gains have been made in their schools.

Distant xposting, but I've stressed repeatedly it's a massive socio-economic failure on every level. Meaning the system is so broken that even the best schools and best teachers will have a tough time fixing it, let alone any time soon. 60% graduation rates and 50% enrollment levels are manifestations of many of those problems, but also clear failures themselves. Like I said, they could take testing, evaluations, all that stuff out of the equation, and things would still be messed up or broken.

xxxp i totally know what you're saying and i know it's the best of intentions behind it but its considered a somewhat controversial stance, cf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Negro_Family:_The_Case_For_National_Action

most of the guidance counsellors I ever had were LITERALLY bad people.

― look at this quarterstaff (Hurting 2)

my high school counselor was basically the joe paterno of the district, longtime head football coach who clearly didn't give a shit about anything not football-related. i only met with him once in four years! he was also party to covering something up. nothing paterno-level, merely the drunken driving arrest of the future star QB, who ended up being more ron powlus than joe montana tbqf.

common core math standards are a GIGANTIC improvement over old CA math standards

problem is they're going to have a devil of a time figuring out how to test those standards, looking forward to seeing that

Well the Jonathan Kozol line on all that is that we shouldn't use things we can't change as an excuse not to fix what we can. I think it would be deluded to argue that if only we spent what Lab School spends in public schools, we'd duplicate the results. I also think it's probably impossible for public school systems to spend what Lab School spends per student (btw, tuition alone is almost certainly more than $20K by now, and most of these schools fundraise in addition to tuition). But we still ought to try our damnedest to provide smaller class sizes, better teachers, enriching activities like art, music, p.e., whatever we can reasonably do to improve schools. And we probably should also focus on savings where we can get rid of waste and inefficiency (duplicative administrative and support positions, "technologies" that don't actually improve classroom learning, and, sometimes, consolidation of schools where facilities are vastly underused).

"line on all that" = xp Josh in Chi

buying hovercraft vacation in greece

Don't these folks usually hire someone to tutor their kid

u would think!

i think it's easier to hire a private school to just give them all A+ and get them into college based on name

I don't think there's a real debate over what could be done to improve schools, is there? I think the debate is, per Kozol, what we can do with what we have. Which is not much.

i disagree! why do you say "not much"?!?

My guidance counselor was also the longtime head football coach! But he didn't even win games.

Karen Lewis, the head of the teacher's union, is saying:

Socio-economic status is the largest predictor—up to 75 percent— of student success.

http://ctulocal1.tumblr.com/post/30468476985/president-karen-lewis-puts-the-chicago-tribune-on

Not just the late Daniel Moynihan.

xpost Not much money/resources.

i think the issue is not whether it's a predictor (i know it is) or not but how we interpret that - is it the family's fault for working 2+ min-wage jobs and not being able to support the kids? or is it down to kids seeing that 2+ min wage jobs is their likely future and checking out of school? or is it just that students with low socioeconomic status tend to be underserved by the schools they attend?

i just think it can very easily turn into a "blame the victim" thing of "oh it's so hard to reach poor kids and their families because education is not a priority for them, they don't have good role models, etc"

see the part in the wikipedia article on "blaming the victim"

xpost All of the above. Like I said, systemic failure: i blame parents, teachers, city and students, and there's a legit reason all four of them have for not adhering to some ideal measure. Not saying I have a solution, but not sure how what the teachers are asking for helps anyone but themselves. (which is their prerogative!).

sounds like you're quite down on education, not sure "there's no solution" is a good starting point for fixing education

i mean, we have one of the better educational systems in the world by any measure except perhaps spending-to-results ratio

here's an excerpt from an email written by a berkeley economist who studies teacher-evaluation methods. let me know if i can help anyone parse this. i think it's one of the most even-handed things i've read about this:

Teacher evaluation is a difficult business. I have done some research on the limitations of test-score based measures of teacher effectiveness, and have become quite skeptical of these measures as a result. Other researchers are more positive about them. But there are a few things to know about what the research shows that rarely, if ever, make it into the reporting about them:

A) There is evidence that test score based measures are correlated with careful classroom observations and with principal evaluations of teachers. But the correlations are quite weak, *even after you adjust for the fact that the test score measures are noisy*. A typical result is that the underlying trait measured by value-added-type measures and the underlying trait measured by classroom observations are correlated around 0.4. Now, no one knows which is right, as one can criticize either measure. But they aren't the same -- the idea, common among reformers when talking to the press, that any measure will identify the very worst teachers, is just not supported by the evidence.

B) All of the studies of value-added take place in low stakes settings. The real concern about relying too much on it for evaluations is that high stakes will distort the measure -- in short, lead teachers to redirect effort toward improving test scores at the expense of other things teachers ought to be doing. No one knows how big the distortion would be. But this, I think, is the reason that just about every researcher will say (at least when talking to their peers; some have a bad habit of saying different things to the public) that VA should be no more than one component among many in a teacher's evaluation. This includes vocal proponents of VA-based evaluations like Tom Kane and Rick Hanushek. Rick excoriated me this summer at a conference for criticizing moves to base as much 50% of a teacher's evaluation on VA, saying that no one would propose doing any such thing. Rahm is proposing 40%; that doesn't seem enormously different to me.

C) The rub in this area is that the _other_ components of evaluation are very expensive, especially if you want to do them well. No one is proposing putting the kinds of resources into hiring classroom observers/evaluators that would be required. My guess is that the teachers unions would oppose evaluations even if they were done carefully and well. In that case, I'd have some sympathy for management. But no one is seriously proposing to do that. And it is easy to imagine how a badly designed evaluation system could be worse than none at all -- see (B) above.

D) One can compute a value added measure only for teachers in certain grades and subjects -- typically, for somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of teachers. Policies like the Illinois law require that student achievement be a specified percentage of _every_ teacher's evaluation. So you have to figure out what to do with the teachers for whom there isn't a value-added measure (typically because they teach in non-tested grades or subjects). Typical approaches -- I'm not sure what CPS has proposed -- are to use average test scores or value added in tested grades & subjects for the student achievement component of the evaluations of teachers in non-tested grades/subjects. It is pretty hard to defend a system in which 40% of a PE or social studies teacher's evaluation is tied to the school's average reading scores.

This is long enough, so I'll stop here. But it simply isn't the case that opposing a particular evaluation system must arise from not caring about the kids, as it is sometimes characterized.

also i gotta give credit where it's due: jim derogatis, one of the worst music critics to ever take up a word processor, has written a very cogent argument in support of the CTU:

http://www.wbez.org/blogs/jim-derogatis/2012-09/chicago-teachers-rock-102377

careful classroom observations and with principal evaluations of teachers

i would say that one principal measure of teacher evaluation should be growth based on classroom observation - if your principal comes in and says "yell at kids from the front less and spend more time over their shoulders" and you learn how to do it, that's great! even if you're still not a master of classroom management, your growth as a teacher is what is important to the school

The real concern about relying too much on it for evaluations is that high stakes will distort the measure -- in short, lead teachers to redirect effort toward improving test scores at the expense of other things teachers ought to be doing.

agree 100%

No one is proposing putting the kinds of resources into hiring classroom observers/evaluators that would be required. My guess is that the teachers unions would oppose evaluations even if they were done carefully and well.

disagree! esp if you did peer observation and evaluation, but built enough time into the day for teachers to actually do this. we could cut back on some less important stuff like, i dunno, grading worksheets every night

One can compute a value added measure only for teachers in certain grades and subjects

interesting point

thank you, amateurist! could you link the original article?

i would say that one principal measure of teacher evaluation should be growth based on classroom observation - if your principal comes in and says "yell at kids from the front less and spend more time over their shoulders" and you learn how to do it, that's great! even if you're still not a master of classroom management, your growth as a teacher is what is important to the school

which is to say, growth with respect to autonomous professional standards rather than with respect to result-production (better students, better scores)?

what kind of agreement is there in education about how to do that? i occasionally look at the ed. lit out of my own higher-ed professional interests, and it always looks like a big mess that has been utterly colonized by / conceded to neoliberalized/bureaucratized ideas that make even assessment in terms of autonomous professional standards, i would imagine, really fraught.

i can try to find an article but most of 'em are published in economics journals and who wants to read that stuff (...who is not a professional economist). i'll see if i can find something and link to it.

i don't have JSTOR anymore so if i need that forget it

i mean the idea would be that the observer would also be able to observe gains in "better students" - ie more student self-management, better student self-efficacy, more engagement in the material, more signs of understanding, more signs of authentic work being produced

i'm not a proponent of *removing* test scores because student achievement is important, the problem is deciding exactly what achievement is (i.e. is recognizing "the four types of lines" really an authentic understanding of algebra?)

the second and third parts of that post are to j.

xxxxxxxx...post

My guess is that the teachers unions would oppose evaluations even if they were done carefully and well.

there's some truth in this, sadly. i'm in a union (currently decertified, thanks scott walker!) and have sat in on contract negotiations and sometimes i kind of wanted to hide my head.

that said... i've been told that to counter rahm's testing-first evaluation proposals, the CTU's evaluation committee responded with some proposals of their own, but those were either rejected out of hand or the city simply decided they would cost too much. but who knows when all the bargaining takes place behind closed doors.

this shit is complex. americans don't really do complex, unfortunately.

yeah i'm adamantly in favor of evaluation ... because fuck man, we evaluate students every day!

but the move in teaching is actually to move away from evaluation (you're an A, you're an F, you make some arbitrary cut and you don't) and move toward "assessment and feedback" which is basically a more rounded and less-closed form of evaluation, there is strong evidence it helps students learn and i would wager the same would be so for ineffective teachers teachers with great growth potential

amateurist you're in higher ed too, right?

i hate how pedantic my posts come ouit sometimes usually

hey you're bringin it

I think teachers unions could actually have avoided some of the pain they're feeling now if they'd been a little less intransigent on certain key issues in the past -- tenure, the ability to fire bad teachers (sorry, they are completely full of shit on this being easy enough as it is), etc. My views of both teachers and teachers' unions have become a lot less idealistic since my wife entered the public school system about six years ago. I mean sometimes the teachers unions self-presentation has such an air of "we can do no wrong" about it that it strains their credibility.

the key phrase in that email i excerpted above is "it is easy to imagine how a badly designed evaluation system could be worse than none at all"

swap "evaluation system" for "privatization scheme" or anything else the chicago public schools have been pushing for and you've got the problem in a nutshell, more or less.

xpost

the national teacher's unions have had better messaging on this than the locals, frankly.

karen lewis is a horrible leader when it comes to messaging--she projects arrogance, intransigence, and little else. i really wish somebody else were in charge.

xpost to late great, I think public education in America is largely strong, actually, though I have no idea how it compares to the rest of the modern/rich world. But the quality of city public schools? New York, LA, Chicago, etc? Pretty uniformly shitty, isn't it? They sure are in Chicago, at least. And due largely to the problems of inherent to our cities, the same problems that lead to crime, pollution, failing infrastructure, etc.. And that may be what sets us apart from the rest of the world. Are the schools in other major world cities as shitty as ours? Paris? London? Toronto? Tokyo? Berlin? Madrid? I have no idea, but I bet they're better. But maybe not!

There's a solution, but until the pervasive problems of our cities are solved, everything from income inequity to public transportation on up, the schools are unfortunately hitched to a pretty crap train. And when will that happen?

By the way, DeRo is an excellent reporter. He's best when he's away from music.

Oh, and I asked earlier, but do any of you have kids in public school? Just wonderin', 'cause I do.

the thing is public schools in chicago are stratified. there are amazing high schools: jones, whitney young, payton. and there are a ton of schools that are little more than holding pens.

it doesn't make sense to compare inner city schools to urban schools in other countries because they don't have the same geographic history (paris is where the best schools in the country are) and they don't fund them locally

the thing is public schools in chicago america are stratified!

yeah but i'm just pointing out that w/in CPS it's complicated.

sorry :*(

And that's it, really. Our schools are funded by property tax, which guarantees they will be stratified, at least economically.

Oh, and I asked earlier, but do any of you have kids in public school? Just wonderin', 'cause I do.

87 of them a day

Where do you teach? Is that several classes?

Oh, fwiw, I see all sorts of weird combinations here. People who move here, pay the high property taxes but still send their kids to private school, People who move here, pay the high property taxes, then send their kids to private school in Chicago. People who live in fancier 'burbs out west who send their kids to private school here. Completely nuts to me.

Though the vast majority of parents I know send their kids to public school here.

That's four classes per day, plus various supports and meetings and ancillary duties. Currently, I teach in a wealthy, highly-ranked public system in an affluent suburb, but that hasnt always been the case. Mind you, I'm not complaining about my job at all.

Just curious, if you're comfortable, could you illustrate some benefits via the union you have? Aspects of your particular school, like class side, facilities, programs? Do you have any idea what people pay in taxes in your district? It's wild how divergent school systems are.

And that's it, really. Our schools are funded by property tax, which guarantees they will be stratified, at least economically.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, September 12, 2012 5:05 PM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

except that's not quite how it works within chicago proper. in the mid-late 70s/early 80s, when white flight was really threatening to unravel the city in terms of property tax revenue etc., CPS began to set up "magnet" schools that would attract the best students from the whole city (michelle obama graduated from one) and hopefully keep middle-class families in the city. it worked, actually, to some extent; chicago didn't have the same level of urban flight as places like detroit, buffalo, cleveland, etc. (of course that also has a lot to do with a more diversified economy but i digress). over the years they doubled down on the magnet model, and there are now major magnet high schools that either didn't exist or were just "local schools" when i was in the chicago PS system in the 80s-early 90s. these schools attract top teaching talent (often folks with MAs, even PhDs), the best students (and are incredibly ethnically diverse), more money, consequently many more extra-curricular programs. they aren't charter schools because they are operated by CPS and have the same level of accountability as any other public school. and of course the teachers are in the CTU.

(xp to Josh) my school is in a town with a median (assessed) house value of $500k, and 15% property tax. all of my benefits (health, dental, retirement, wellness incentives, professional development) come through the union – a traditional off-the-top pay-in plan. tenure isn't quite the deal it once was, it's offered /after/ pro status is achieved, and there are plenty of ways in which pro status can be denied. i teach 4x daily classes of 22-25 students, each approximately 60 minutes in length. i've also got a homeroom, study hall duties, tutoring, and a pretty hefty meeting schedule. my union guarantees me at least one prep period/day. our facilities are generous but not excessive, nor lavish. extra funding has gone (thankfully) toward improving the special education program, and hiring more paraprofessionals. i'm lucky to live in an area in which the school committee, the union, and the faculty are pretty simpatico. annual pay increases tend to be between 1 and 2 percent, which ... keeps pace.

I think public education in America is largely strong, actually, though I have no idea how it compares to the rest of the modern/rich world

It's enormously difficult to compare education systems. The PISA rankings have a go, but they're quite limited in what they measure.

The general theory a lot of people seem to accept is that a good school in the US will be at least as good, if not better, than a good school anywhere else in the world but that an average school in the US is likely to rank below a average school in the bulk of Europe and a few Asian countries - although not by any great amount. So much of that is subjective and based on conjecture, though.

agreed. Caveat being that US schools have a much more difficult job than many/most other industrialized nations w/r/t diversity and difference of student body.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/education/6098915-418/no-pay-hike-for-cps-teachers-but-raises-for-execs.html

lol

Oh, and I asked earlier, but do any of you have kids in public school? Just wonderin', 'cause I do.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, September 12, 2012

My son just graduated from a public high school

How'd it go? Good school, bad school? Good experience? Are you in a suburb or city?

BTW, being reported that a deal is likely today. Lewis said it was a "9 out of 10" on the likelihood scale. Which is pretty good progress, because on Tuesday she said the two sides were nowhere near close.

x-post-- suburban school but close to big city, and kinda citified itself. Good experience. Lots of AP and IB classes, made Newsweek's listing of best American High Schools.

I know this is all about Chicago, but in Ontario we're moving into the no-extra-curricular phase of broken contract negotiations. It's an unofficial directive right now. We've met as a staff to make sure we're all on the same page--you don't want tension because different people are interpreting that different ways (i.e, teams and clubs are obvious, but then you get into things like pizza days, extra help at recess, etc.).

i'm still baffled at the idea that public school teachers earn $70k

new / young teachers don't - i made around 50k and that was considered quite a lot for a new teacher - and if it's anything like california it's bimodally distributed between young teachers who make around what i made or less and very experienced lifers w/ graduate degrees and extra responsibilities who make about $100k, w/o a lot of people in the middle

entry salary in england is like £22k, for reference. (i think a couple thousand more in london.)

Corey Robin:

http://coreyrobin.com/2012/09/12/why-people-do-hate-teachers-unions-because-they-hate-teachers/

I heard a union leader going on and on yesterday about how minus experienced teachers you'll have low-paid, inexperienced, fresh out of school and plopped into classes young teachers to teach your kids. Then she quickly pulled a CYA and made sure to complement the many low-paid, inexperienced fresh out of school young teachers on the strike lines, too.

So apparently this is running in USA TODAY, uh, today.

http://imageshack.us/a/img88/3460/a2wweqlcqaazoxe.jpg

Whoever Corey Robin is, he's right.

Would be interesting to know who's funding that campaign.

Some asshole.

Striking teachers sleeping in on Fridays, I guess. Disappointed because I couldn't give my usual honk and raised fist during my morning commute.

xp Probably not an individual one, though. Whether it's part of a wider anti-union campaign or whether it's funded by businesses that have a specific interest in education would be interesting to know. I'd kind of assume the former because it's obviously NAGL for any company that needs to have an ongoing relationship with teachers.

If I had to totally hypothesize, I'd guess that some anti-teacher animosity stems from the fact that teachers are paid from budgets bolstered by property taxes. Any home owner is very aware of how much a year they're paying in property taxes, so my guess is some of the frustration is a feeling of powerlessness when folks paid out of those taxes ask for - or even are perceived as asking for - more. One of the more fascinating stats about where I live is that apparently only 20% of the population of Oak Park comprises households with K-12 aged kids, which means that the vast majority of homes are paying for services they do not use. Fortunately, the sense of community here is such that when a school referendum was put up for a vote last year, the referendum passed and more money went to our (very good but not necessarily exceptional) schools, but I know there was some loud push-back from not just the conservative faction (which is a minority in a place that votes 85% democratic) but from lots of different corners. It seems that anti-union, anti-teacher stuff is both directly and indirectly tied into anti-tax stuff, which becomes magnified, perhaps, when property values are down or stagnant yet property taxes go up every year. And maybe especially in a city like Chicago, where the results of tax revenue may not be as apparent in the schools as they are elsewhere, which is of course a facet of a larger vicious cycle.

I also think a lot of it just boils down to people who are pissed off to be struggling financially, and since they are stuck working in non-union situations, they project their frustration and jealousy on a large, visible group that can use a strike to their benefit.

That's absolutely true, I'm sure. Most people don't have half the benefits or pay that teachers do, but of course, that's partly because they don't belong to a union, let alone a strong union, in turn in part because unions have been systematically beat down for the past several decades.

And so many places, Target and Wal-Mart come to mind, bend over backwards to make their employees feel that unions are THE WORST THING EVER.

My wife showed me an open letter/FAQ that a teacher friend of her's wrote, and in it her friend ... well, here:

Q: Teachers make $76,000 a year. That seems like a reasonable salary. Why fight for more?

A: This amount, which the media has repeated directly from the CPS Board, includes thousands of retired teachers and is inaccurate. The CTU found the median (middle) salary of an active teacher to be $56,000 and the average to be $69,000. While that amount seems decent (after all, it is about $20,000 more than the average Chicago salary), it is well below the average state-wide salary for people holding similar degrees. That includes all the lower-paying regions of Illinois outside the Chicago area. Many teachers have multiple Bachelors and Masters degrees and student loans, yet according to media outlets, our salaries should be closer to those of rural employees without college degrees. According to the Sun Times, a family must make $150,000 per year to live a middle class lifestyle in the city of Chicago, where we are required to reside. It is disturbing that so many people are offended by teachers making less than half of what it takes to be a middle-class Chicagoan.

The amount Chicago teachers get paid is, per Ezra Klein, closer to the $76K number than the lower number, but whether that number is high or low, overpaid or underpaid, is irrelevant, because this strike was not really about pay. When this person goes on to cite a $150,000 income as the number needed to live a middle class lifestyle in Chicago, my sympathy drifts. $56K, let alone $76K, is several factors above what most people make in Chicago. To downgrade that number as less than the $150K needed to live a "middle class" lifestyle in Chicago I thought was unseemly, though I admit the system seems a tad rigged when you require teachers to reside in Chicago, which in some ways is tantamount to a cost of living driven salary cut.

Josh OTM. I kinda feel like people don't really understand what a "middle class lifestyle" means when they start throwing around figures like that $150,000 number.

I think a lot of people have mixed views on teachers unions which seems to be a healthy position in a debate like this where there's not a clear 'right answer'

That's super true, but I'm talking more about the people who jump immediately to, "all unions are bad, eliminate them all", which isn't the answer.

In Wisconsin, if memory serves, a huge number of union members voted against the Scott Walker recall. I don't get it when people vote against their interests, but it does imply something deeper or at least more nuanced at work.

Union members in Wisconsin have a tendency to be socially conservative, Reagan Democrats.

And a lot of people in this state thought the recall was a massive waste of public resources in the service of a small portion of the population.

Public sector unions are not well loved here, even in liberal strongholds like Madison and the city of Milwaukee.

Even my friends who belonged to public unions hated them, and these are 20 something Democratic leaning voters.

Yeah, ime people I know or knew consider it kind of shameful to have to belong to a union b/c of their profession, like it's asking for trouble or a handout they don't want.

Plus I'd guess that there are schools in states without strong teachers’ unions where there are kids doing as lousy on tests as those in union states. Mississippi for example

You would have thought, though, after it got to that point, with all the money spent already, that they could have just swallowed some pride and voted against Walker.

Yeah, ime people I know or knew consider it kind of shameful to have to belong to a union b/c of their profession

This has not been my experience with the teachers I know, can't speak for other professions.

I don't know any union members who are ashamed of being union.

In Wisconsin, if memory serves, a huge number of union members voted against the Scott Walker recall.

I guess it depends what you mean by "huge." Per this coverage

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57447980-503544/how-scott-walker-won-the-wisconsin-recall-election/

union members went for Barrett over Walker 71-29, which is a pretty serious walloping. Wisconsin is about half Democratic and half Republican, and you'd be hard pressed to find a group of voters more solidly Democratic than 71-29. If I remember correctly, that's about the same as the vote breakdown for the city of Madison, and I would not describe Madison as a place with a huge number of Republicans.

So the Republican union members were possibly split?

One of the more fascinating stats about where I live is that apparently only 20% of the population of Oak Park comprises households with K-12 aged kids, which means that the vast majority of homes are paying for services they do not use.

LOL that's how i feel about the fucking FIRE DEPARTMENT

Ha. To be fair, a large role of the fire department is preventative.

so is education, if you think about it

on the civic level they should just rebrand education 'society insurance'

then there'd just be fuckers goin around all, i don't neeeeed insurance, i take care of my mind just fine, and other fuckers that would be all, i'll just go on the internet if i suddenly need to know somethin!

on the civic level they should just rebrand education 'society insurance'

― iatee, Friday, September 14, 2012 1:25 PM (56 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i like this. don't know if school boards in texas would go for it.

in case of nuclear war, we're going to put all the national merit scholars in a bunker

woo-hoo!

wait, where's the bunker

In between the sofa cushions...IN HELL.

Would be interesting to know who's funding that campaign.

― Temporarily Famous In The Czech Republic (ShariVari), Friday, September 14, 2012 8:32 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Some asshole.

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, September 14, 2012 8:37 AM (5 hours ago)

Very much so - it's the Center for Union Facts, one of a number of front groups run by Richard Berman (father of the Silver Jews' David). See http://www.bermanco.com/advertising/print/

it's in north dakota dan, in the basement of NORAD

I just couldn't resist making a Buffy joke, it is actually in North Dakota...IN HELL.

bad news for some ppl: I was a Natl Merit Scholar

good news for everyone who likes watching ppl bicker tho

specially selected corps of deaf navy seals

http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e66/LimitedLiabilityGirl/Deafseal.jpg

is that fella listening for nuclear subs

"Preventing conflicts is the work of politics; establishing peace is the work of education" - maria montessori

hippie

that's me

sigh

http://www.salon.com/2012/09/27/the_corporate_education_agenda_behind_wont_back_down/

I also met an entrepreneur who tried to convince me that the future of education was 3-D. He was in the conference vending hall repping his firm, Elixir XES 3D, which specializes in glassless 3-D video monitors. “With this technology we can bring dinosaurs or presidents or whatever to life!” he said. “Learning can be fun, just like a video game or a 3-D IMAX movie.” He then handed me a paper titled “3-D: The Technology Brought a Pot of Gold to the Motion Picture Box Office. It Has the Potential to Bring ‘Golden’ Learning Back to Our Schools, at Warp Speed.” The paper, which seemed simultaneously geared toward investors, advertisers and school board officials, explained that his super-exciting XES 3D technology is currently in 10 school districts and counting, bringing benefits to both students and advertisers.

what's next, this fool's TED talk?
smdh

industry rule #4080, textbook people are shady, same as it ever was, these bloodsuckers have been around since the day textbook companies and promethean boards were invented

teaching is already in 3D iirc

It has real potential for music class

*3-D trombone slides you*

We start one-day rotating strikes this week across the province. We'll probably be legislated back if a second day for any one board is imminent.

Waiting around for a decision from the Ontario Labour Relations Board tonight on whether our one-day walkout tomorrow is a) a political protest, b) an illegal strike, or c) neither, because they rule against us and we cancel. If it's the second, the Premier says fines or jail time are options. If I go in for some hard time, please, tell the world my story.

We're all still in limbo. Ontario high school teachers have been advised by their union to resume extra-curricular in exchange for...no one's sure, so I was glad to hear today that many of them will continue to boycott. If they buckle, we (elementary panel) surely will in short order.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ydqjqZ_3oc

Good job.

All that creepy jargon on political round-tables--getting your message out, winning the news cycle, etc.--seems more urgent when you're on the wrong end of it in your own life.

We're on work-to-rule right now. We appear to be heading towards something major next fall, but for now, relatively small stuff around provincial testing and report cards. There was a big development concerning the latter today--there won't be any, just a form promotion letter--and as I listened to the way it was being reported on the way home, it was infuriating to hear the other side's position being presented as fact, with nothing from us. What we should be saying seems incredibly obvious to me, but no response, not yet. I'm going to do something tomorrow I've never done in the close to 20 years I've been doing this--call the union and see if I can talk to someone. Basically I want to say, "You need to get someone in front of a camera, and here's what they need to say--you need to do this right away."

I wish I'd written this:

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/cayla-hochberg/tdsb-teacher-report-cards_b_7576696.html

I'll have to keep that in mind next time something's not being said that needs to be said.

So get in front of a camera and say it again. Or whatever you need to do!!

If a TV station stuck a mic in front of me tomorrow, I'd speak up. None outside my house right now--easier said than done. I do get a little nervous commenting about this stuff. Not here, but I just responded to the link above on Facebook, and that little voice in my head was saying "Be careful." I'm not sure if I'm more nervous about how my employer would react to public discussion of this or my union.

surprised this wasn't updated after the WV and OK strikes.

BREAKING: Arizona teachers vote to walk off the job in the first-ever statewide strike to demand increased school funding.

— The Associated Press (@AP) April 20, 2018

surprised this thread wasn't bumped, i mean. anyway, arizona teachers join the fray!

I brought it up a few times in the US politics threads to limited traction. anyway, right on, solidarity, etc.

oh, i mentioned the previous strikes a few times there, too. not exactly the best thread for it, though.

btw: CLASSIC

Have all or any of the strikes (wv, Oklahoma ...) been formally settled yet?

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/los-angeles-teachers-protest-ahead-of-likely-strike.html