Chicago’s Politics and Public Education

It was cool to have a speaker from the Teachers union of Chicago to be able to come in and talk with us in person. I didn’t agree with him on some of topics that were discussed during our class time. I have had personal experiences with teachers on tenure and needless to say they weren’t very good ones. It is sad because any student can tell when they have a teacher that is tenured because they are typically all the same; old and crabby.  I did agree with his statement though that it would not make sense to get rid of all the teachers that a school already has in order to reform a school, instead train the teachers that are there so they get a chance to adapt to the new environment and curriculum. Because who is to say that the new teachers coming in would be better than the current ones? They wouldn’t be anymore qualified. Extending the school day was another issue brought up during our discussion and I do not see anything wrong with is idea and his points implied that most teachers would be more than willing to have more time due to the fact that all their current time is spent learning for the tests rather than creating their own lesson plans. But what I did not think was right about this idea was the incentive that came along with teachers committing to this agreement. Although they made it out to be that this would benefit the students and more or less the teachers, the city officials and leaders seemed to be getting something out of it too. Another issue was the topic of Charter Schools and whether they are more benefiting than public schools and I have had to do research on this particular question and I do not believe the speaker gave an overall picture of what charter schools actually look like. I do not know exactly what the right answer to all of this is, but what I do know is that every one including, teachers, students, and leaders within our city all need to be to looking out for the STUDENTS best interest and not their own. I think that is said to be the main goal and on the outskirts made out to look like it is the main goal, but is not always the case when looking closer on the idea.