How Chicago contract talks, teacher evaluations, consumerism and school privatization intersect "as we shift from citizenship values to consumer values"

It came on the last day of the fiscal year, as Illinois was sliding into a state government shutdown and contract negotiations between the Chicago Teachers Union and the city schools were at an impasse. And it was hidden in the comments to a statehouse political blog item about teacher evaluations -- one of the CTU's sticking points. So it was easy to overlook with all the other news.

But it was one of the best explanations I've seen -- anywhere -- of how consumerism, corporate school "reform" and punitive teacher evaluations based on standardized test metrics are destroying the public schools.

The blog is called Capitol Fax at http://capitolfax.com/, and owner-publisher Rich Miller has been covering Illinois politics and government since fax machines were cutting-edge technology back in the 1990s. It is a far better source of information than the Chicago Tribune, the Sun-Times and the downstate metro dailies put together, although it aggregates from all of them.

This morning Miller wrote, "The Chicago Teachers Union believes that mass layoffs are coming to the school system, so they agreed to no cost of living raises in contract negotiations, but stuck firm on their evaluation demands." Quoting the Trib, he explained that the CTU contends a glitch in the Chicago Public Schools' four-tier rating scale for teacher evaluations will lead to more classroom teachers' ratings being downgraded, and "in the context of potential mass layoffs, that downgrade could mean lots of teachers lose their jobs."

This led to a spirited exchange in the comments section. (Many of Miller's readers are political players themselves, and their comments tend to be civil and incisive.) One came from a frequent commenter who calls himself VanillaMan, whose partisan leanings aren't always easy to sort out but who can be counted on for a thoughtful response to the issues -- as well as, on occasion, delightful parodies of popular song lyrics. I'll quote it in full:

- VanillaMan - Tuesday, Jun 30, 15 @ 9:59 am:

Teachers are human beings teaching little human beings. After decades of hearing horror stories about monsters in our classrooms, we’ve began applying standards. After decades of hearing how much education costs, we’ve started coupling those standards with performance measurements used in business.

We aren’t talking about manufactured productivity. Teaching 20 children every day, rain or shine, in illness or in health, among all 21 human beings, and expecting some kind of performance measurement out of it, is foolhardy.

Yet that is what we’ve been doing to teaching over the past few decades, thinking that somehow we’ll get better education out of it. We now have a huge retiree generation sucking up our budgets, who haven’t had children in school in a decade or two, who have no connection with their neighborhood schools, except through their tax bills. Consequently, they don’t see any value in what teachers are paid, how schools are [run], or what home conditions are effecting school children. We have a growing population of adults without children who can only relate to society’s education issues abstractly and from memories.

So as we shift from citizenship values to consumer values, tax payers are no longer willing to sacrifice towards community schools. All these performance measurements and all these standards applied over the years are opening salvos in a society no longer committed to unquestioning community sacrifice.

As our society shifted towards consumerism, school boards resolved conflicts and controversies with increasing oversight, bureaucracies and legalese. The results are seen today. Schools cannot turn out education like iPhones. There will always be a student or a teacher displaying human shortcomings. Yet the consumer market values being embraced by our society today, expects schools to produce education like these kids are Toyota Corollas.

Consumer mentality is telling us that we need to privatize education. That we need to make public schools compete. That we need vouchers. On and on. What is really the problem is that our people are no longer willing to accept themselves or their neighbors, as human beings.

Human beings need citizen rights because when your money runs out, consumer market values won’t let you buy them.