Principal Merit Pay!

In the News: CPS principal bonuses top $1.1 million Posted: 23 Aug 2013 04:51 AM PDT Despite having to spend their summer distributing pink slips and cutting back art and music programs, 134 CPS principals on Thursday received bonuses—ranging from $5,000 to $20,000 apiece—doled out  by Mayor Rahm Emanuel. CPS is able to give with one hand and take away with the other because merit pay is bankrolled by $5 million ponied up by four philanthropic families, $2 million of it from Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner. More than 130 Chicago Public Schools principals were awarded cash bonuses Thursday ranging from $5,000 to $20,000, as they were recognized for excellence in leading their schools. Mayor Rahm Emanuel and CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett congratulated the principals by offering bonuses totaling more than $1.1 million in bonuses to principals who helped boost academic achievement in their schools. Last year, in the inaugural Principal Quality Initiative, CPS awarded bonuses to 84 principals. (DNAInfo) BOYCOTT AND RALLY: Activists from several Chicago community groups on Thursday called for a one-day boycott of Chicago Public Schools because of what they say are discriminatory practices against poor African-American and Latino students. The group is asking students to skip school Wednesday and parents and supporters to forgo a Chicago Board of Education meeting to attend a rally in front of the board's downtown office, followed by a march to City Hall. (Tribune) FROM OWENS TO GOMPERS: Jesse Owens Community Academy on the South Side was one of the dozens of elementary schools Chicago Public Schools closed this year and soon it will have a new name. But the Olympian's daughters are fighting to keep their father's legacy alive. The West Pullman neighborhood school is now official called Gompers South. "Kids don't know who Gompers is, I don't know who Gompers is, or was," said Beverly Owens Prather. (ABC 7) IN THE NATION TEACHER OUTRAGE: Hundreds of teachers in Philadelphia voiced their outrage on Thursday at proposed pay and benefit cuts as public school officials demanded $133 million in concessions from employees because of a financial crisis. With the teachers' labor contract due to expire on Aug. 31 and school set to start about a week after that, the district and union leaders are still far apart on terms, according to George Jackson, spokesman for the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers. (Reuters) TESTING THE BABIES: Public charter schools in Washington, D.C., will soon be giving new standardized tests to very young children — aged 3, 4 and 5 — for the purposes of assessing their academic progress and ranking schools according to the results. (The Washington Post)