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Its provisions include using standardized tests to fire teachers, regardless of seniority, tenure, qualifications, or how students respond to effective classroom practices, what rote memory tests can't measure. It also lets school districts increase hours per day, and add extra school weeks, with no additional compensation. In addition, teacher strikes are prohibited until after four months of negotiations plus a special arbitration panel's ruling.
Even then, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) must give 10 days notice backed by 75% of its members to approve a walkout. In other words, SB 7 empowers state and city authorities over their right to demand equity or walk out.
At the same time, CPS executives got salary increases up to 30% over their predecessors. Emanuel's new CPS head, Jean-Claude Brizard, earns $250,000 plus a 15% incentive package. Earlier as Rochester, New York public schools superintendent, 95% of teachers deplored his policies in office.
Moreover, he's named in two federal lawsuits regarding improper handling of budget cuts and school closures. Earlier, he attended the notorious Superintendents' Academy of the Broad Center for the Management of School Systems, founded by corporate predator Eli Broad to train administrators on restructuring and privatizing public education at the expense of educating kids.
Nonetheless, Emanuel wants him to replicate what he did in Rochester. Elizabeth Swanson is his deputy chief of staff, formerly (billionaire Penny) Pritzker Traubert Family Foundation executive director.
It advocates merit pay, school privatizations, and other regressive policies supported by Arne Duncan, former CPS head. He's now Obama's Education Secretary, appointed to wreck public education nationwide through his Race to the Top scheme, linking federal funding to compliance with retrograde federal standards. They mandate:
-- open-ended conversion of public schools to charter or for-profit ones;
-- running them by marketplace rules;
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