In an opinion piece in USA Today, Jack Schneider, assistant professor of education at the College of the Holy Cross, wrote about the teachers strike in Chicago, and called for the teachers to concentrate on the welfare of their students rather than their work conditions.
The teachers “are on the verge of permanently alienating the American public sympathy for a fairer contract, especially in the midst of a recession,” Schneider wrote, of the Chicago Teachers Union’s apparent self-interest.
In order to show their dedication to their students, Schneider explained that it would be more advantageous for Chicago teachers to alter their platform by demanding that standardized tests become more effective. “[T]hey emphasize strategic guesswork and memorization of minutia,” Schneider said of such tests, “while ignoring more important factors such as performance and habits of mind.”
With an eye to the future, Schneider asserted that shifting the focus of their strike from teacher evaluations to the quality of standardized tests might actually be the Chicago Teachers Union’s best bet.
- Read the USA Today op-ed (edited for space)
- Read the full version (.pdf)
- Read Schneider's piece on the same issue that appeared in the popular education blog Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice
This "Holy Cross in the News" item by David Cotrone '13.
