On Monday, 26,000 Chicago school teachers went on strike. This is the first time in more than 25 years that there has been a strike over schools in Chicago. The strike is about contract disputes between the Chicago Teachers Union and Chicago Public Schools, including disagreements about compensation and teacher evaluations based on standardized test scores.
On the issue of pay, teachers were offered a 2 percent raise, which they refused, saying that this was too little, considering teachers were denied a 4 percent raise last year due to budget cuts. The president of CTU Karen Lewis said new teacher evaluations based on standardized test scores are unfair to teachers and do not take into account larger issues such as urban poverty.
This incident on the national stage is just one example of how teachers have been overlooked, even singled out, during these difficult times.
The undervaluing and cutting down of educators is an issue that is not only relevant nationwide, but also here at UNM. A recent trend among American universities has been to replace tenure faculty with part-time lecturers and graduate employees. Indeed, according to a recent article by Al Jazeera English, 67 percent of American university faculty members are in this situation. In this reality, both the teachers and the students suffer. The part-time faculty members receive little of the benefits given to full-time instructors and many are paid piecemeal for the classes they teach, meaning that often part-time university faculty members have incomes below the poverty line. Students also get the short end of the stick as they are receiving an education from someone who may have less experience and who is in a less secure position than a tenured professor.
A number of UNM graduate students have tried to organize and do something to reverse this trend. UNM Graduate Employees Together formed in 2010 with the mission to stand up for the rights of academic labor at the University. Last year, this group and a number of other organizations appealed to the Board of Regents, demanding changes in UNM’s budget plan. These demands included a reverse in the trends of “increasing reliance on part-time instructors and adjuncts in place of tenure-track faculty” and “increasing the student-to-tenured-faculty ratio.”
These demands seemed to fall on deaf ears as they were met with little to no response from the regents. Although there have been efforts and changes made at UNM, including giving more benefits to part-time faculty and working toward faculty retention, the overall trend continues.
These are two examples, although on very different scales, of educators standing up and organizing for their rights. Teaching is often seen as a noble profession, one that should be above monetary value, but educators can’t survive on prestige alone, and in tough economic times our nation’s teachers shouldn’t be some of the first on the chopping block.
