Chicago gets more broke

The Chicago teachers union contract approved after a two-week long teachers strike is analyzed by two scholars at the American Enterprise Institute. This is an excerpt:

Chicago’s New Teacher Contract Shows Why Scott Walker Got It Right

[The contract] will boost Chicago teacher compensation — already among the highest in the nation … to nearly $100,000. (By contrast, the median Chicago household earns $52,000.)

Teachers will now be permitted to bank an incredible 244 sick days (up from 40) and claim full pension credit for those days upon retirement, creating new demands on a teetering pension system.

The deal keeps teachers’ retirement contribution at just two percent of annual salary while slashing health care copays.

The contract will cost up to $1.5 billion over the next five years, in a city whose debt burden is already a staggering $119,110 per capita.

What did Chicago win in this latest negotiation, you might ask, for its $1.5 billion outlay? Well, the CTU did abandon its demand for more affordable housing. That’s about it. …

The American Enterprise Institute’s bottom line:

⇒ Wisconsin schools have not suffered from Act 10

[A] former Obama administration education official … has observed, despite the apocalyptic predictions about the impact of [Scott Walker’s] Act 10, teacher turnover, salary growth, median years of experience, and retirement rates [in Wisconsin] “all look pretty much in line with long-term trends.”

Nor has Act 10 had any ill effects on student outcomes: Since 2011, Wisconsin’s performance on the National Assessment of Education Progress has mirrored or modestly exceeded the nation’s.

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