Chicago Bled Dry by Striking Teachers’ Unions

John Fund at The Corner: Chicago teachers have the highest average salary of any city at $76,000 a year before benefits. The average family in the city only earns $47,000 a year. Yet the teachers rejected a 16 percent salary increase over four years at a time when most families are not getting any raises or are looking for work.

The city is being bled dry by the exorbitant benefits packages negotiated by previous elected officials. Teachers pay only 3 percent of their health-care costs and out of every new dollar set aside for public education in Illinois in the last five years, a full 71 cents has gone to teacher retirement costs.

Just 15 percent of fourth graders are proficient in reading and only 56 percent of students who enter their freshman year of high school wind up graduating.
And this, at Instapundit: Plus, the blog comment of the day: “The teachers are upset because they must be (gasp!) evaluated on their work. The parents are upset, not because their kids’ educations are impacted, but because they don’t have a place to drop off their kid. The only people cited as having any concerns whatsoever about education were 16 and 17 year old students.”