President Lewis Defends CPS Teachers
Bashing teachers
The Chicago Tribune editorial board hit a new low in its rant "Save the best teachers" (Editorial, Aug. 5). Clearly fact-checkers took a bye on this muckraking piece and the editors chose to neglect their duty to advocate for the welfare of Chicago's children so they could freely advance a different agenda: teacher bashing.
The Chicago Teachers Union filed suit against the Chicago Board of Education to ask the courts to intervene in a lawless move by the board. The layoffs include 239 career teachers who were summarily fired without due process. Exactly 214 of these teachers, or 90 percent, were recognized by Chicago Public Schools for outstanding classroom work with students and invited to become "teachers of teachers" to help others affect children's lives in the same profound way. A cursory read of the CTU's lawsuit seeking injunctive relief — to cease and desist all firings and provide each teacher with due process hearings as outlined in the CTU-Chicago Board contract — would have clarified that point for the Tribune's editors. They would have seen that the lawsuit serves to protect students from the traumatic loss of their teachers.
Apparently the Tribune was unconcerned with the facts. Nor did the Tribune check its facts on the 241 teacher firings under Washington, D.C., schools chief Michelle Rhee, citing that 165 were "judged as the worst teachers in the system." It turns out only one-third of those dismissed teachers received poor ratings on a newly installed teacher evaluation system that has been proven neither valid nor reliable.
But that would make the Tribune's persistent teacher-bashing, under the guise of protecting students, moot.
Can the editors truly make the next leap in their logic? That laying off 239 expert career teachers this year while Teach for America novices, 80 percent of whom will leave the classroom in fewer than three years, remain in classrooms, is in the best interest of students?
Those of us who actually have spent some time in the classroom know the difference that a consistent career teacher makes in the lives of students — many of whom do not have consistent adult support in their lives beyond the classroom.
It is difficult to understand whom the Tribune is trying to protect here.
— Karen G.J. Lewis, president, Chicago Teachers Union
