Promoting Professional Equity for both Full-Time and Part-Time Faculty

“The mission of the California Part-Time Faculty Association (CPFA) is to create the opportunity for community college students to have equal access to quality education by promoting professional equity for all faculty. 

“As educators, we understand that only with faculty who share equally in the responsibilities and rewards of the profession can such opportunity for academic success and education be afforded students in the California Community College system. Students, therefore, must be provided with faculty, whether employed full-time or part-time, who undergo the same rigorous hiring, evaluation, and promotional processes; who are compensated for preparing lesson plans, grading assignments, and advising students; who are compensated for participating in departmental meetings and serving on professional committees, including the shared governance process; who are provided with the peace of mind that health and retirement benefits provide; who are provided with the protection of due process and academic freedom; and who are able to invest in their professional future through a system for building tenure or seniority, including, in the case of part-time faculty, preference for full-time hiring. 

“In this regard, CPFA is dedicated to achieving our mission by

• encouraging practices and policies that ensure our faculty is as diverse as the students we serve;
• educating the public, as well as students, faculty, administrators and legislators, about part-time faculty concerns and issues;
• serving as a coalition and resource base for all individuals and organizations interested in promoting professional equity;
• working to complement, enhance and reinvigorate the work that is already being done in faculty organizations, statewide and nationally, who share our mission;
• creating alliances with other faculty, academic, labor, or social organizations, statewide or nationally, who share our goals;
• seeking legislative means to achieve our goals.”

from the California Part-Time Faculty Association Mission Statement

SUAA Lawsuit Filed Against Senate Bill 1 (PA 98-0599)

The State Universities Annuitants Association (SUAA) has engaged the law firm of Maduff & Maduff, LLC in Chicago.  Aaron Maduff is the lead attorney, with SUAA's attorney John Carr providing much of the research.  Aaron Maduff was named in Chicago Magazine as one of the top 100 Attorneys in Illinois with employment law as his specialty.

As of this writing, there have been [four] lawsuits filed... SUAA will be the [fifth] lawsuit filed.  However, the SUAA lawsuit will be filed in Champaign County.  In addition, the plaintiffs chosen for the lawsuit are all from Champaign County.  The University of Illinois, Parkland Community College and the State Universities Retirement System are all located within a short distance of one another.  The fiscal impact on this community alone is monumental.  In addition, the plaintiffs are representative of all who are currently contributing to the State Universities Retirement System and those, of course, who are now beneficiaries.

Filing multiple lawsuits is advantageous to the participants in and beneficiaries of the State-funded pension systems.  SUAA believes that the State Universities Retirement System (SURS) has certain distinctions that sets this system apart from the others. SURS is the only system that has a Traditional Plan, Portable Plan, and a Self-Managed Plan to choose from.  It is also the only system that has the Money Purchase Formula which, with the implementation of SB 1 (PA 98-0599), will severally reduce its value.

The lawsuit will file complaints under the Pension Clause and the contracts clause in the Illinois Constitution.  Because SURS participants were compelled to make an irrevocable election in the years 1999 – 2001, a claim will be made as a violation under contract law.  Other complaints will also cite as violations:

·         The loss of Automatic Annual Increases (AAI or COLA) as agreed in negotiations with the State of Illinois;

·         The implementation of skipping AAI payments based on the age of the SURS employee at the time of retirement;

·         The salary cap on earnings in calculating pension benefits;

·         The raising of the retirement age.  For every year under age 45, the retirement age is raised 4 months, adding years of required service credit for younger workers;

·         The change in the effective rate of interest in SURS pension benefit calculations.  SURS is the only state funded retirement system with portable and self-managed plans in addition to defined benefit plan;

·         The potential of contract violations (i.e. Parkland Community College employees received an early retirement incentive through collective bargaining. Upholding SB 1 might affect collective bargaining agreements).  Additional note: contract negotiations are not to be changed;

·         The added potential of striking down the AAI is also a diminishment of benefits;

·         The grant percentages awarded to professors will not be included in pensionable income.

SUAA’s intent is to file the lawsuit by Friday, February 28.  Most likely there will be a press release following from SUAA along with other media reports. While we have focused on SURS concerns, most likely there will be an attempt to combine all pension lawsuits into one to be heard in Cook County.  We are hopeful that the SUAA lawsuit will be specific enough to be afforded its own resolve.

To contribute to SUAA Legal Fund Click Here.

Linda L. Brookhart, Executive Director

State Universities Annuitants Association

217 East Monroe Street

Springfield, Illinois 62701

217.523.4040 Office

Teachers at Chicago’s Saucedo Scholastic Academy vote 100% to boycott ISAT test. Teachers’ union has their backs: 100%.

“This morning teachers at Maria Saucedo Academy voted unanimously to boycott the ISAT test. This follows on the heels of yesterday’s press conference by parents who have opted out of the test. They represent a reported 500 parents who have opted out district-wide” (Fred Klonsky’s Blog). 

Press release from the Chicago Teachers Union:

CHICAGO – The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) supports teachers and parents at Maria Saucedo Scholastic Academy who announced today their intent to boycott the Illinois State Achievement Test (ISAT). Teachers have collected more than 300 opt-out letters and the student council voted to encourage all students to opt out of the exam. Should these courageous educators face disciplinary charges by the district, CTU vowed to mount a strong defense of this collective action.

Saucedo’s action stance against the ISAT could spark a teacher and parent-led movement to “opt-out” throughout the Chicago Public Schools system.

“The Saucedo educators have taken a bold step in refusing to administer a test that is of no use to students and will be junked by the district next year,” said CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey. “Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett has already said the ISAT will not be used for selective enrollment, and therefore this serves no purpose other than to give students another standardized test. We know that parents all over the city are opting their children out of this unnecessary test, and we commend them for doing what is in the best interests of their children.”

The ‘low stakes’ test is expected to be administered over the course of eight days in all elementary schools starting March 3rd. Formerly used to help qualify 7^th grade students for selective enrollment high schools. The district recently issued a memorandum to teachers stressing the value of “rigorous, high-quality assessments,” in measuring student progress. The ISAT, however, is not aligned to any CPS curriculum, and in Chicago, it is no longer used to measure student progress, school performance, promotion, or for any other purpose.

For the last decade, since the implementation of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the ISAT test has been the primary lever used by CPS for its destructive, destabilizing policies of closures and turnarounds. System-wide, the ISAT has infected the vigor and breadth of curriculum as teachers and students became stymied by the requirements of a narrow test-based approach to learning. NCLB has now been panned as a broad failure, but with the transition into more new tests, CPS threatens to double-down on the failed policy of standardized-test based accountability.

Standardized testing and the Eugenics movement by Karen Lewis

Many people who are convinced that standardized tests are reliable and valid indicators of student learning are not only sadly mistaken, but they are often people who also support policies that harm children, teachers and schools. This is unfortunate for a variety of reasons, the least of which is that unions, think tanks and other entities no longer pursue alternatives—multiple measures...

What many people do not know is that the use of standardized tests has its origins in the Eugenics movement, where basic tenets assert that certain races are inferior to others biologically and intellectually. From our 21st century perspective, we can look back in horror, but we have to be clear about the original purpose of standardized tests. 

The original IQ tests were designed by French psychologist Alfred Binet for benign and limited uses: a) on young children who were not developing “normally”; b) as “general” tools to make “general” decisions, not a precise measurement for precise decisions; and c) to signal when a child needed more help in their intellectual development. Unfortunately in the United States, IQ scores were posited to be fixed and innate, and were promptly used to rank and sort individuals by race and ethnic background. Businesses, government agencies and educational institutions used IQ tests to justify placing certain people into certain jobs and excluding them from others.

While the Eugenics movement died an ignoble and deserved death, the leftover love affair with standardized testing has gotten completely out of control. In a society fascinated by statistics, we are often compelled to reduce everything to a single number. Those of us who work with children know that there are so many characteristics that cannot be quantified. We also know that educators are the best positioned and best trained to judge what our children know, what they don’t know and what we must do to support their learning. 

No test written from afar—that doesn’t give us immediate feedback and is not aligned to the curriculum—can ever provide us with the information we need to adequately help our students. We should resist every opportunity to steal our time, resources and professional judgment to satisfy the insatiable data monster that No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top have created.

Ask yourselves whether you want to be part of a legacy born of the unholy alliance between the concept of “natural inequality” and the drudgery that has been imposed on many of our classrooms. Do your own research and let’s start to have the discussions on what is fair, equitable and good for our children.

--Karen Lewis, President of the Chicago Teachers' Union  

Dear Illinois Teachers: 

A Question: How about uniting and boycotting Mastery Manager, Response to Intervention, Common Core, and Race to the Top…? 

glen brown