A WCT Welcome!

Dear CPS Teachers,

Thanks for visiting our blog! Ours is a blog of the teachers, by the teachers, and for the teachers of Chicago Public Schools.

We at Windy City Teachers are proud to be CTU members and educators in a regular CPS high school serving neighborhood students.  Unlike Chicago police officers and other city workers, who have many opportunities to communicate with POs outside their districts, we are largely isolated within our school (unless we're "lucky" enough to attend a Central Office-led PD).

Our vision is a blog that represents the realities and concerns of CPS teachers' working lives. WCT hopes to be a place where a conversation can begin about the concerns teachers face. Particularly:

• CPS teachers are not always aware of the extent of corporate influences on policy changes in American public education
• Charter schools undermine our nation’s promise of public education for all students
• Corporate educational profiteers are using CPS to line their pockets with no measurable benefit to students
• Corporate educational profiteers hope to replace the CTU’s core values and beliefs with their own
• Many CPS administrators are entering into increasingly corporate schemes in order to get off probation; these schemes include introducing wall-to-wall IB and AP-for-all curricula (with unclear benefits to students), manipulating data, and embracing “corporate churn”
• An alarming amount of tenured African-American teachers and older teachers have been replaced with young non-tenured recent college graduates
• The REACH evaluation and Common Core standards are flawed

Help us achieve our vision by commenting on posts that catch your eye, or by emailing us tips for new stories. Please note that we love gossip, and have plenty to share, but need your stories so we can put ours out there, too. We are versed in using the utmost discretion when reporting it.

Click on anonymous to leave your comment or email us at wct.tips@gmail.com. Hoping to hear from you soon!

In solidarity,

Windy City Teachers