September 24, 2013
The Chicago Tribune, on behalf of the corporate sector, is touting the merit pay plan the Chicago City Colleges have implemented, but Chicago Public School teachers avoided due to a major strike last year. Here is a perspective written by CCC teachers that the Tribune completely avoided in its totally biased report, breaking every journalistic rule of presenting both sides of a story on merit pay.
To the great delight of Chicago’s business leaders, the City Colleges of Chicago has taken yet another step in its move to gut the institution of its role as educator for those who most need it and to track it largely toward a job training center for the corporations.
On September 19, hundreds of Adult Educators (who teach thousands of English as a Second Language and GED students) for the first time received bonuses based on examination scores rather than years of service. Similar bonuses will go to credit teachers, as a result of union contracts. The bonuses are just the first step toward a system which rewards teachers for fulfilling the goals of “Reinvention,” the program established by mayor Rahm Emanuel (through his appointee as chancellor, Cheryl Hyman, formerly a vice president of Commonwealth Edison) and the Commercial Club of Chicago. The bonuses won praise from Hyman and from the Chicago Tribune, which usually ignores the City Colleges, but printed an article praising the bonuses on September 21.
In all likelihood, these bonuses will disappear in the future since, as the Tribune noted, “The targets teachers have to hit will rise, too.”
The consequences of what is going on will be felt as fewer and fewer poor and minority students are able to get a general education at the City Colleges (after all, this system has few if any jobs and certainly no future for millions upon millions, except for prison, the military or drug dealing), and more and more are tracked into job training programs, which do the work at public expense of training workers for private corporations. One example: this summer, ESL students took the first of a new series of examinations to pass from one level to another. The tests are so difficult most of the students failed.
What will this do? Discourage many who haven’t historically done well on standardized tests from continuing in school—even though this is exactly the group of students the City Colleges should be serving.
There have been doubts about the real goals of “Reinvention,” since it is couched in terms of improving “student outcomes” and giving more people a chance to get a college education. But these goals also
became a lot clearer this spring, when one of the most hated and hateful institutions on this planet, the
World Bank, responsible for enslaving and impoverishing hundreds of millions of people worldwide,
arrived in Chicago to lavish praise on “Reinvention” and express its desire to copy it everywhere!!
“City Colleges of Chicago was honored to host 17 representatives from The World Bank this week.
They were interested in learning more about Reinvention and the College to Career initiative. Their
focus was on how what we’re doing here in Chicago could potentially be replicated in the countries in
which The World Bank is currently operating to improve economies through education and workforce
development. After two days of meetings and tours of our colleges and partner facilities the delegation
returned to Washington DC much impressed by what they experienced at City Colleges.” (from
Reinvention website, May 11, 2013 (https://talk2uscoe.wordpress.com/category/reinvention/)
The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund impose "Structural Adjustment Programs" (SAPs) on countries as a condition for receiving loans. SAPs restructure Third World economies to make them more fully subordinate to the needs of international capital and multinational corporations.
SAPs result in the impoverishment of hundreds of millions of people. Poor countries are forced to produce and export more, and spend and eat less. To pay back loans, they are told they must earn more on the world market, which means cutting back on domestic spending, exporting more, and making exports cheaper (reducing costs and lowering the value of their currencies). Poor countries must open their economies up even more to foreign investors. Government cuts demanded by the IMF usually fall heaviest on health care, education, food subsidies and housing.
The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund say they are “neutral” agencies concerned with issues of economic development and stability. But in truth, the World Bank and the IMF intensify
poverty, environmental destruction, and economic dependency in the Third World. Despite their
rhetoric and promises, they increase the gap between rich and poor.
What does it say that the World Bank is “impressed” with “Reinvention” and wants to “replicate” it
around the world?
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City Colleges teachers start to see bonuses for hitting performance targets
Goal of incentive pay is to increase number of students getting GEDs, moving on to college courses
Teachers in City Colleges of Chicago's adult education program this week received their first bonus checks based on performance, not seniority.
In a contract negotiated in April 2012, City Colleges and the union representing the adult educators agreed to give up retention pay, a bonus based on years of service. Instead, adult educators — who teach courses for high school equivalency, English as a second language and adult basic education programs — can earn bonuses for hitting student achievement and enrollment targets.
A five-year contract between City Colleges and the full-time faculty union signed in September 2012 includes similar performance pay measures.
The bonus was good news for Andrew Oloffson, who has been teaching adult reading, math and college readiness classes at Truman College for about a year and a half and would have been among the nearly 30 percent of teachers who didn't qualify for a tenure-based bonus in the 2012 fiscal year.
This year, all 476 adult educators earned bonuses because performance pay is tied to overall targets rather than individual achievement. Bonus amounts depend on the number of hours taught but averaged $440. In total, teachers received $200,000 out of a possible $250,000, up to nearly 2 percent of their salaries.
"Any incentive to work harder is beneficial. Now we know there are benchmarks and have to strive to do better," Oloffson said.
City Colleges hopes to double by 2016 the number of students getting GEDs and transitioning to college courses, said Sameer Gadkaree, associate vice chancellor for adult education.
Over the past year, 33 percent more students moved into college courses and 21 percent more earned GEDs compared with the 2012 fiscal year, according to a City Colleges statement. Overall, adult education enrollment increased by 5 percent.
In the past year, the college system added 30 locations in areas that had high demand for ESL and GED courses, which may have accounted for some of the growth, administrators said. But they said teachers are having an effect, too, with initiatives to support students transitioning to college and greater emphasis on writing skills.
The size of the potential bonus pool increases each year, so that by the time the contract ends in 2016, performance bonuses could account for up to 7 percent of instructors' salaries, the City Colleges statement said. The targets teachers have to hit will rise, too.
"Some difficulties could come in down the road," Oloffson said. "I think they negotiated fair incentives this time. I just hope that continues to be the case."
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