POWIP » Meep

“High stakes” testing and high school diplomas

Meep — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 15:22:38 +0000

I'm very pro-standardized testing...if the tests are good. [and this reminds me, I need to order the end-of-year tests for Bonnie & Mo]

So it was with interest that I read the account recently of a school board member in Florida sitting down to take some of the "high stakes" tests that the students in his district have to take:

A longtime friend on the school board of one of the largest school systems in America did something that few public servants are willing to do. He took versions of his state’s high-stakes standardized math and reading tests for 10th graders, and said he’d make his scores public.

By any reasonable measure, my friend is a success. His now-grown kids are well-educated. He has a big house in a good part of town. Paid-for condo in the Caribbean. Influential friends. Lots of frequent flyer miles. Enough time of his own to give serious attention to his school board responsibilities. The margins of his electoral wins and his good relationships with administrators and teachers testify to his openness to dialogue and willingness to listen.

.....
“I won’t beat around the bush,” he wrote in an email. “The math section had 60 questions. I knew the answers to none of them, but managed to guess ten out of the 60 correctly. On the reading test, I got 62% . In our system, that’s a “D”, and would get me a mandatory assignment to a double block of reading instruction.

He continued, “It seems to me something is seriously wrong. I have a bachelor of science degree, two masters degrees, and 15 credit hours toward a doctorate.

The thing is, this sort of stunt happens every so often. And I wonder about the credibility of the person taking the exams, especially if he said he guessed on all the math problems. Is it really written that poorly, and nobody noticed til now... or is it that this guy sucks at math and does not think "Hey, perhaps people getting a HS diploma should actually know more than I do"?

In comments, MRW pointed to a public release of the test in question, and having looked at the tenth grade math items, I think what I said was unfair. While we have our share of students who struggle with basic algebra, I'm pretty confident that they would pass this test.

Just for fun, here's a selection of a few of the problems from the 2006 math test given to tenth graders, the one where Mr. Roach didn't know how to answer any of them, and "Not a single one of [his friends] said that the math I described was necessary in their profession." See if you're smarter than a Florida school board member:

[go to link to look at the questions... most of these I could do by 5th grade, btw]
....
Now, of course, I've cherry-picked these questions, to enable maximum snark, but you can look at the test for yourself at the link above, and see for yourself that the math involved is not terribly difficult. And, in fact, the test writers have done a pretty good job of putting the math into a useful (if occasionally a bit contrived) context, to demonstrate what it's all for. Maybe whoever selected the questions for him to take pulled out only the most abstract and difficult questions from several years' worth of tests, but that doesn't seem terribly likely.

This is yet another demonstration of a problem I've been banging on about for years: the innumeracy of intellectuals. Mr. Roach holds three college degrees, and clearly considers himself an educated person, but even a lack of practice at taking tests can't really explain this level of failure.
....
Mr. Roach's failure to score at a reasonable level on this test is something that ought to embarrass him, not the educational establishment. As much as I have problems with the notion of high-stakes testing, I have an even bigger problem with people who believe-- and teach our kids-- that basic mathematical competence is not a necessary component of education.

Now when I had seen the info about his multiple degrees, and his inability to do well on very basic math, I guessed that those degrees were in subjects with the word "education" somewhere, which are some of the most degraded degrees out there. This would be ironic, unless you understood how the current education industry "works": you get raises, promotions, etc. as a public school teacher for these degrees. The college and universities granting them get lots of money. And there's no external check on whether those holding those pieces of paper actually learned anything other than how to work the system.

So let's see if I was correct about Mr. Roach:

The man in question is Rick Roach, who is in his fourth four-year term representing District 3 on the Board of Education in Orange County, Fl., a public school system with 180,000 students. Roach took a version of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, commonly known as the FCAT, earlier this year.

....
Roach, the father of five children and grandfather of two, was a teacher, counselor and coach in Orange County for 14 years. He was first elected to the board in 1998 and has been reelected three times. A resident of Orange County for three decades, he has a bachelor of science degree in education and two masters degrees: in education and educational psychology. He has trained over 18,000 educators in classroom management and course delivery skills in six eastern states over the last 25 years.

To be sure, I had these links before I wrote this post, but I'm sure the idea popped in many minds when hearing about those degrees (and I definitely thought it when I heard the credit hours towards a doctorate). Mind you, I'm not calling all education programs to be phony, but ever heard of Gresham's Law?

Bad money drives out good.

This goes for credentials as well. The economic forces as well as the lack of any controls means that there has been a slide downward not only in the meaning of a high school diploma, but also education degrees.

I have written about this dichotomy of what is considered educated, in how much humanities, and at what level, one must take in college compared to math and science. Well, that was college, and here are two posts (post 1 on Cathy Seipp, post 2 on Richard Cohen) of me bitching about people who considered themselves educated, who would also needed to have guessed on that math exam....and trying to make up excuses that it's okay to be that ignorant in math and call one's self educated.

Look - would you consider someone educated who could not write coherently? Who could not read great literature (the accessible stuff, not when it was a virtue to be only for the elite) and comment on it?

I really have nothing to this statement from my Seipp post:

Exit exams need to mean something, or high school diplomas will continue to mean nothing. The only reason so many people feel the need to go to college is because a high school diploma means only that you showed up often enough that they gave you a diploma. If you're getting good grades in math from grades 9-12, but can't pass a 9th grade-level exam -- that should indicate to you that your grades are meaningless. I ran into this problem once before: when I taught calculus at N.C. State. There was a reason they had a pretty strict requirement on placing out of Calculus I. Because over half of the freshman class had had Calc I before and claimed to have gotten decent grades in Calculus the year before... and yet, they didn't even know how to give the equation of a line. Or what the area of a circle was.

So the question is: are people happy that high school grades and diplomas are credentials with no credibility? If they're not happy, you've got to have some kind of do-or-die certification. Having "alternatives" where people can opt out of basic math knowledge or literacy is not a good way to shore up the credential.

These "high stakes" exams do tend to be relatively low level, especially in math. I think it's reasonable to set a high school diploma at Algebra I.

Of course, there will be students, diligent and following the rules, who can't clear that hurdle. It is not kind to anybody to lower the standard such that the HS diploma is merely an attendance certificate. For those who accomplish that, give them the attendance certificate. Don't lie to them that by merely showing up they accomplished something academically.

One of the perspectives I'm coming from is that of special education -- if those students can't demonstrate that basic level of knowledge and application, then don't give them a diploma, pretending it means something. What you're doing is giving everybody a meaningless piece of paper just so that some people supposedly won't feel bad. Some of those special ed students may very well be able to clear the same minimal hurdle everybody else does, and they should have something that indicates that. I'm also fine with an "honors certificate" above and beyond the minimal HS requirements. Or vocational credentials, if that's the route they go.

The point is to change high school from a holding pen for teenagers on the way to the "real" credential of college, which will cost many people in money and time lost on wasteful activities....and find they've got yet another meaningless piece of paper, and many times, not even that.

Meep

Meep is a member of the Irish Catholic mafia, having a suspiciously high number of green-eyed, red-haired friends. While she doesn’t have red hair herself [except when she goes into the sun (rare for any vampire)], she does have green eyes. She’s a raving Papist and is a life actuary on the side [i.e., she counts dead people]. An amateur pain-in-the-ass [willing to go pro!], she likes covering retirement, mortality, math, and education issues.

Everything Must be Free!

Meep — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 14:18:32 +0000

Evidently, that's the "common cause" of the Occupy Whatever movement right now.

(By the way, I was warned yesterday of an Occupy Hartford "event" that was occurring around about rush hour, and I was concerned I was going to have an issue getting out of work. I needn't have been worried. The pathetic gathering could barely fill up one block, on one side of the street, on one city sidewalk. There was a smattering of UAW signs, but evidently the bus to bring them to CT's capital must've been very small. Or people had better things to do.)

So I see this bitchery in the NYT:

WHEN Bank of America told its customers recently that it would start charging them $5 a month to use debit cards, it argued that it was forced to make that change because of regulations that altered the economics of the cards. Other banks agreed. The chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, put the effects of the regulations this way: “If you’re a restaurant and you can’t charge for the soda, you’re going to charge more for the burger.” Both banks were responding to the Federal Reserve’s actions to limit the interchange fees banks charge stores each time a debit card is used for a purchase.

But the banks’ simplistic statements are merely an attempt to rationalize and obfuscate one of the largest illegal transfers of wealth from consumers to banks in American history.

No, it's not illegal, dumbass. You don't like debit card charges? Fine. Don't use a debit card, then. No one is forcing you to. No one is forcing you to have a bank account, even. Heck, some of the toniest places in NYC accept cash only, no debit cards, credit cards, checks, or money orders.

I've used a debit card in the past 20 years a sum total of: once. And the only reason I had used the debit card was because it had a smaller use fee than a credit card for the particular transaction I wanted to make (it was paying quarterly estimated federal income taxes, if you want to know). I had a choice. I made it.

Interestingly, after that "illegal" start to his op-ed, the author ends it with this:

Retail customers of Bank of America and of any other bank that follows its lead should swiftly move their business. I am certain that other banks will welcome the competitive opportunity that Bank of America has given them with its arrogant and disingenuous action and justification.

Exactly. People can move their business elsewhere. Nothing illegal is going on, and both retailers and customers can decide what they want to do.

I remember this sort of blather over ATM fees a while back. Funny how I don't hear about that any more, though ATMs definitely still charge fees. The main difference is that I'm explicitly told the fee before I complete the transaction, and I decide if I want to continue. Well, there's no hidden fees here, either, so you make a decision whether you want to be hit with it or not.

OWS: Free the bathrooms!

Panini and Company Cafe normally sells sandwiches to tourists in Lower Manhattan and the residents nearby, but in recent days its owner, Stacey Tzortzatos, has also become something of a restroom monitor. Protesters from Occupy Wall Street, who are encamped in a nearby park, have been tromping in by the scores, and not because they are hungry.

Ms. Tzortzatos’s tolerance for the newcomers finally vanished when the sink was broken and fell to the floor. She installed a $200 lock on the bathroom to thwart nonpaying customers, angering the protesters.

“I’m looked at as the enemy of the people,” she said.

Meep

This Is Culture. Bow Down.

Meep — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 01:11:56 +0000

No, this is not a political post.

Okay, just one political bit:

[Lee Greenwood]GOD BLESS THE USA![/Lee Greenwood]

So some pretty complete coverage here: Part 1, Part 2

A few choice costumes:

Miss Ireland has no time for Riverdance

Miss Chile got stuck in a hole for months, and all she got was this crummy costume

Miss Costa Rica is ready for the human sacrifice

Miss Japan has got some kickass platforms. And swords.

Meep

That Man Said Bad Words at Me

Meep — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 15:33:57 +0000

It seems Mr. Mayor of Chicago told off a union rep:

Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis says Mayor Rahm Emanuel “exploded” at her during a conversation in his office about his signature longer-school-day effort, pointing his finger at her, yelling and telling her, “F--- you, Lewis.”

“I just want to call it immense disrespect for me and the Chicago Teachers Union,’’ Lewis told the Chicago Sun-Times Friday. “I didn’t appreciate the way he talked to me.

“My father never talked to me like that. My husband’s never talked to me like that.”

Emanuel — long known for his salty rants — would not go into specifics Friday about the exchange, and said the meeting weeks ago ended with a hug from Lewis.

“I’m not going to get into a he-said, she-said. We had a good meeting. It was not a long meeting. We talked about a longer school day and we talked about focusing on elementary kids,” the mayor said.

So, let me understand this. You want better treatment from the mayor of Chicago than from your own family members? How, exactly, does that work?

I don't know about you, but I got (and get) the best treatment from my dad and my husband.

In any case, this seems like a desperate ploy to garner some sympathy for the teachers union, because nobody is feeling all that sorry for them having to work marginally longer hours. The retort on that is likely: "You still have summers off. And you have a job."

It's a weak ass attempt to get sympathy, though.

Rahm cursed you out? Congrats. You're now part of the club.

Meep

State of the City: Blithe Comments from Rahm

Meep — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 23:37:13 +0000

Let's see what Rahm Emmanuel has to say about his nascent mayorlty:

If Rahm Emanuel had known being mayor of Chicago was this much fun, he likes to joke that he would have “primaried” his political mentor four years ago.

“As I told Rich Daley, ‘You didn’t tell me the truth. You said it was gonna be a good job. It’s not a good job. It’s a great job.’ I tease him about that all the time,” Emanuel told the Chicago Sun-Times in an interview on his first 100 days in office.

“I’m having a blast. . . . [Wife] Amy and the kids [say], ‘Dad seems happy.’ If you want to see change and see what you’re doing impact people, this is one of the most dynamic and exciting opportunities of a lifetime. . . . It sure beats walking around with the world on your shoulders” as White House chief of staff.

Awwwww, how endearing.

Let's look at what he's been up to!

First, he's hired some consultants to cut city contracts to the bone:

Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Thursday hired a private consulting firm to consolidate and overhaul city contracts and wring at least $25 million in savings out of $500 million in purchases.

The savings generated by Accenture are expected to come from renegotiating some contracts, rebidding others and combining purchases by individual city departments to get a cheaper bulk price.

The contract calls for the company to review $500 million in contracts and get 10 percent of the first $70 million in savings, with a smaller percentage after that. But Accenture will not get paid at all until Chicago taxpayers get their check.

Actually, that sounds good to me.

But there are harder cuts as well:

Of all the sad statistics related to the financial crisis at Chicago Public Schools, one of the most alarming is simply this: The school district is spending millions more every year to educate fewer children.

Into this mess steps Jean-Claude Brizard and a new leadership team pledging to rebuild the financial footing and repair the miserable academic performance of a school district that, by most measures, is struggling.

Brizard said Thursday that the previous leadership had only recently awakened to the bloated bureaucracy at CPS — trimming central office staff by 327 since 2009 — but that cuts should have been deeper.

"If we don't make these courageous decisions, we're going to be right back where we were — where past CEOs, past administrations, have faced problems and didn't do enough to actually correct it," Brizard said in a meeting with the Tribune's editorial board. "The very financial health of the system hinges on that."

Some of the decisions envisioned include:

•Closing schools, including charters, that aren't working or are underenrolled.

•Restructuring contracts with teachers, janitors, bus drivers and other pacts that have become burdensome.

•Consolidating jobs and departments within the central office.

•Laying off staff.

•Raising taxes when necessary.

•Creating a school system where the best-performing, not the longest-serving, principals and teachers earn the most money.

Previous administrations have made similar promises, only to see the problems get worse. But Brizard says this mandate for change comes from Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Still, cutting fat is good.

But hey - what's this extra thing he wants to pay for?

Is Rahm nuts?

•

Mayor Rahm Emanuel today said the city has an obligation to pay for former Mayor Richard Daley’s legal defense if he is sued for alleged police brutality conspiracies that happened under former Chicago police Cmdr. Jon Burge.

The city will not, however, run up unnecessary legal bills to defend Daley or Burge, Emanuel said.

“We’re not going to be reckless and let the meter run legally,” Emanuel said.

Really? Why don't we stop this one before it even starts then.

Who was Daley working for when all of this allegedly occurred? Does Rahm even remember Daley's title at the time?

•Cook County State's Attorney

Chicago wasn't employing him at the time, nor signing his checks. So what the hell is Rahm doing promising to pay for Daley's alleged actions?

To be sure, if it was when Daley was Cook County's State Attorney he has absolute immunity, and my understanding is that the civil complaint is based on when Daley was mayor.

But frankly, I don't see that with all this scrounging for spare change in Chicago's couches, that Rahm can make a great case that the less-than-pristine Daley should be defended with the tax dollars of Chicago.

But I guess he's hoping for the same courtesy when he's ex-mayor.

Thanks to reader TRB in pointing me to the Second City Cop blog -- other posts of interest:

Rahm finds another $20 million

2nd City Cop on the Accenture deal

Meep

Chicago: Old Ghosts Coming for Daley

Meep — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 11:00:54 +0000

The former long-time mayor of Chicago has been dodging all sorts of reckoning over the years. It may finally be catching up with him in a civil lawsuit filed against various parties, related to long-running police brutality in Chicago that was tied to false confessions:

For the first time, a federal judge has ruled former Mayor Richard M. Daley can be sued as a defendant for his alleged role in what plaintiffs claim is a citywide conspiracy to cover up police torture.

And Daley could be deposed by lawyers representing alleged victims, all African American, who charge their abuse came at the hands of a small band of predominantly white police officers under the command of former Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge.

The Burge case has already cost Chicago taxpayers more than $43 million in settlements and outside legal fees. Burge is in federal prison.

Though Daley was questioned under oath by a court-appointed special prosecutor in 2006, it was widely criticized as an overly solicitous interview. This would likely be a more adversarial exchange.

The deposition date is set for early September.

For more info on the cases surrounding Jon Burge, the entry at wikipedia is rather comprehensive. I'll set you down at "torture methods". This may shock you, but Daley had a primary challenger in 1991 who brought up this issue... and Daley, of course, won.

But here's a twist: Daley had been county prosecutor during the time of the most notorious torture cases - the 1980s. He was able to escape civil liability due to his position then.... but he became mayor in 1989. And they're going after him for that time period, as he resisted investigation of the issue.

I bet with regards to any civil award, it will be the city of Chicago paying, not Daley's personal wealth. But what Daley could be paying is his reputation.

And it's about damn time for that to start.

So.... what is Rahm Emmanuel's connection to the Daley machine? Does he owe the old man anything? Is it in his interest to settle this quickly & quietly, or would he like the full deposition to go on?

I could see Rahm letting this fester, so he can blame the current problems of Chicago (crumbling finances, the violent flash mob activity along the Magnificent Mile) on Daley (and he would have a point), and just so that he can look like the good-government guy (snort).

Emmanuel has been doing all sorts of stuff in Chicago that has local unionists up in arms, by the way. Have you heard about it in the national news, like Gov. Walker's cuts?

Meep

Play the Chicago Game and Avoid Taxes

Meep — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 14:14:41 +0000

What's so special about Lollapalooza (that thing is still going on? Jeez, it started when I was in high school...but it looks it has much fewer venues now) that it gets a $1-million-holiday from taxes?

Oh, I'm sure it's just coincidence they had hired one of Daley's nephews:

And if Lollapalooza wasn’t already enough of a financial bonanza for its promoters, who grossed more than $21 million last year, City Hall and Cook County government officials are doing their part to boost the festival’s bottom line, even as they struggle with their own budget crises, which threaten to result in layoffs of city and county workers.

For a seventh straight year, the city and county are exempting Lollapalooza from paying the amusement taxes normally imposed on arts and athletic performances and even movies.

That will save the promoters — Austin, Texas-based C3 Presents LLC — more than $1 million in taxes on the 270,000 tickets sold for this years’s festival, which opens Friday.

Lollapalooza got its latest waiver from the city’s 5 percent amusement tax in the waning days of the administration of Mayor Richard M. Daley, whose nephew Mark Vanecko has been a lobbyist and lawyer for the festival promoters, helping to negotiate their current 10-year contract with the Chicago Park District.

Just business as usual, guys. Nothing to see here.

I liked this detail:

Also, the contract says C3 has to comply with the park district’s affirmative-action goals — which call for subcontracting 25 percent of work to minority-owned businesses and 5 percent to women-owned companies. The park district says 14 of the 57 Lollapalooza vendors are owned by minorities or women. It won’t identify them. Nor will the district or the foundation provide any records to show how much work Lollapalooza gives to minority- or women-owned companies.

I love it when old school white nepotism runs into "diversity" goals. Their problem is that they didn't marry enough different ethnicities. Only if Daley had a black or hispanic nephew...

By the way, this Vanecko nephew isn't the same one involved in a homicide case where police files were "lost".

I can imagine the Daley family reunions are so much fun. In mine, we're just comparing kid videos...the Daleys must compare who got away with the most.

Meep

Public Pensions Problem: Paying for time not actually served

Meep — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 16:11:40 +0000

Bill Zettler at Champion News looks at one of the little-known issues with public pensions -- the service time used to calculate the benefit is not the time actually worked.

As he notes, there are two ways this happens in the Illinois Teachers plan:

Why is that? Well teachers get pensions paid on “Service Credit” not actually on the years worked in Illinois. “Service Credit” is a concept that boosts pensionable years worked in IL with giveaways that have been added over the years to increase teachers’ pensions for no reason other than they are teachers.

I know of no private sector system where the workers receive pensions based upon more years than they have actually worked.

Service Credit scam 1: pensions paid on 75,000 years of sick leave never worked.

The major way to get Service Credit is via sick days. Every teachers’ contract contains an allowance for “sick days” averaging about 12 days per year. If the teacher doesn’t take the days off as sick leave (most of the suburban schools have 2-3 personal days on top of sick days so they can use those for real sick days) they can accrue them for up to 2 years Service Credit when they retire.
....
Service Credit scam 2: “Optional Service Purchase”: Pay $63,000 get $1.2 million.

Teachers may also “purchase” Service Credit, at an extreme discount, for teaching previously in other states.

Retirees have paid nominal amounts for 82,700 out-of-state work that by definition is not Illinois work. If it’s not Illinois work why do Illinois taxpayers have to pay pensions for it?
....
Why do Illinois taxpayers have to pay pensions for work not done at all or done in another state?

Very good questions.

These features are not necessarily restricted to Illinois. "Air time" (buying "Service Time" in a new job based on a job worked elsewhere) is something all over the place, and it can be abused in a big way. The amount "charged" for air time is usually well below what it will actually cost (esp. given the low retirement ages).

With regards to sick time being accrued for pension benefits, in many private companies there is a maximum number of sick days allowed to be rolled over from one year to next...and if you don't use them, they're gone.

Zettler also has some more questions related to the TRS plan.

With benefits like is, even with generous assumptions and smoothing to dampen effects, is it any wonder the funding ratio is below 50%?

Meep

Central Falls is fallin’ down, fallin’ down…

Meep — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 09:58:26 +0000

To follow up on my prior post, John Bury takes his own look at the state of Central Falls, RI. And the bottomline is that the law doesn't really matter when there's no money left.

Central Falls, Rhode Island will have to default on its pension promises. They threw in the towel in their May, 2010 Petition for Receivership claiming:

8. Because of its dire fiscal situation, the City has sold off much of its chief pension fund assets to satisfy annual pension obligations. Its actuarial accrued liability exceeds $35 million dollars and its assets are approximately $4 million. The City audit reports that for fiscal year 2009, its “required” contribution was over $2.7 million and the City’s actual contribution was $0. For fiscal year 2010, there are no funds available to contribute and over $1.5 million in assets would have to be sold to meet present obligations.

....

In poker a ‘tell’ is a clue that a player gives about the strength of their hand. Central Falls is a ‘tell’ to anyone who believes that governments are funding their retirement benefit promises adequately. They’re not and you may not find out that cold hard fact until assets are depleted and you get ‘asked’ to take less…….or ‘told’ to take nothing.

The thing is that no number of lawsuits can will money into being. This is why these sorts of promises need to be pre-funded -- if they're not, chances are pretty good that they won't be fulfilled.

Something like this doesn't develop overnight. Usually it takes years of larding up pay and benefits... starting out at a supportable amount, but then, as various groups accrue more power to themselves, they get too piggy. A point gets passed at which the excess can no longer be supported.

One can cry about fairness. Or legality. But once you've eaten up all the cake, crying won't make more appear.

Meep

“Uncharted legal territory”: No, it ain’t

Meep — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 20:11:55 +0000

I'm getting a bit tired of the abuse of language. "Unexpected!" "Unprecedented!"

To quote a drunk, fictional Spaniard: I do not think that means what you think it means.

A Rhode Island town finds itself in trouble... and the rhetoric is silly:

Central Falls receiver seeks 'significant' retiree concessions
1:52 PM Fri, Jul 08, 2011 | Permalink
Katherine Gregg Email

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- With a legal fight still raging over the state's attempts to rein in the cost of its retiree health and pension benefits, Central Falls receiver Robert Flanders is seeking "significant voluntary concessions'' from retirees in the battered city he is trying to pull back from the brink of bankruptcy.

In a letter that went out Friday to retired members of the Central Falls police and fire departments, he requested a meeting on Tuesday, July 19, to discuss the potential for a cost-saving compromise that could help avert a bankruptcy that could jettison the city -- and it retirees -- into unchartered legal territory. [sic]

Go to the original story if you want details on the specific concessions, the legal threats, yadda yadda. I want to address the "uncharted legal territory" ...

Oh come now. This isn't uncharted legal territory. Prichard, Alabama already blazed this trail. The pensioners of Prichard were SOL when the town and pension fund went bankrupt in 2009. For almost 2 years the pensioners did not get paid. At all.

Here are several posts (some by me, some by someone else) on Prichard's plight:

The rest of the article is stuff we've seen elsewhere ... "Changing our benefits is unconstitutional!" yadda yadda. Well, municipal bankruptcy is constitutional, and then when the money runs out of the pension fund.... try to sue your pensions into existence. I'm sure that will work.

I can't find the link right now, but the last I heard of the Prichard pensioners, they got some sort of lump sum settlement of their pensions, but much less than they were owed if you went by the original promises.

If you want to take this court, public employees, you do have recourse to that venue, but you need to realize that you may get far less via that route than negotiating up front right now. You need to figure out what is actually supportable. Hire your own, independent actuaries. Project cash flows under a variety of scenarios.

Because yelling that the original promises must be fulfilled doesn't mean that they will be fulfilled. You need to figure out the likelihood that they will actually be paid.