Freedomain Radio

Chicago Bled Dry by Striking Teachers’ Unions

The coverage of the strike has obscured some basic facts. The money has continued to pour into Chicago’s failing public schools in recent years. Chicago teachers have the highest average salary of any city at $76,000 a year before benefits. The average family in the city only earns $47,000 a year. Yet the teachers rejected a 16 percent salary increase over four years at a time when most families are not getting any raises or are looking for work.

The city is being bled dry by the exorbitant benefits packages negotiated by previous elected officials. Teachers pay only 3 percent of their health-care costs and out of every new dollar set aside for public education in Illinois in the last five years, a full 71 cents has gone to teacher retirement costs.

U.S. Department of Education: 79% of Chicago 8th Graders Not Proficient in Reading

Seventy-nine percent of the 8th graders in the Chicago Public Schools are not grade-level proficient in reading, according to the U.S. Department of Education, and 80 percent are not grade-level proficient in math.

Anyone in private industry with incompetency in their job like that would have been fired ten times over.  Seventy-nine percent are you kidding me!?  That's pathetic.  There's a word to look up, kids.  Pathetic.  It's the big rectangular thing with the white sheets and the funny markings.

Those poor poor kids are so screwed...god do I hate statism.

I think this is political theater. Rahm and the unions are running a game to get the teachers an insane raise which will appear to be a compromise by both sides.