Real Lesson Of The Chicago Teachers Strike Analysis

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“Real Lesson of the Chicago Teachers Strike—Fire Them All and Start Over!”, an opinion piece written by Wayne Allyn Root, on Foxnews.com, argues that we need to quit supporting the use of government tax money to fund inefficient teachers and instead should hire replacements at one-third of the cost, but implement a pay based on performance policy. Root claims that Chicago teachers are among the highest paid, yet have the worst performance rates. By increasing their pay during this “Great Depression,” we are increasing the billion dollar debt in Chicago 's education system. In order to uncover Root’s underlying purpose, the following articles will be used in contrast which also serve to further complicate Root’s argument. Horace Mann’s Report
To begin with, Root informally expresses his thoughts on the Teacher’s Strike. “The Chicago teachers are among the highest paid in the nation. And their results are among the worst in the nation...they went on strike because they were unhappy with a big fat raise, and they did not want to face evaluations of their performance from time to time.(Root 2012)” Root expresses himself in a sarcastic manner, which by default understates the purpose of the strike in order to discredit the teachers to convince the audience to support his claim and reduce school funding. The reason why we are Investing more money into a teacher 's “gold-plated health care packages” is evident. Root does not consider the dangers of Chicago, where parents assault young students, gang activity is in every corner. There are far more factors than can be blamed on teachers for the student 's performance. Various reports lead to the children 's lifestyles where most of them are way below the poverty line and live in violent neighborhoods. Teachers voluntarily work in these situations acknowledging the type of
Statistically, more and more children are getting involved in gangs. These “little homies” are children that have been showed their whole lives that the only way of survival is to be in this cycling system of violence. The only way to break this chain of abuse is to introduce these children to a higher quality education where they will learn more than pulling triggers. It is a fact that there is an increased chance of a child to become involved in criminal activity if not educated properly. Whether there is more money being invested into willing educators or not should be the last concern for our society. Kozol’s commentary on the 2012 teacher strike, interpreted by Liz Dwyer, stresses that the money invested into the education system is not as important as the quality of the education itself. Kozol and Horace Mann believe that all students should have a common, high quality education despite the costs. “The other question wealthier people ask, "Jonathan, can you really buy your way to better education?" also sets him off. "I don 't

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