Intercepts

According to today's Wall Street Journal, the Utah Education Association "wouldn't confirm or deny" its upcoming $3 million grant from NEA's national ballot initiative and legislative crises fund, as reported exclusively by EIA on August 20.

What is this, the Pentagon Papers? It will be public record as soon as UEA receives it and starts spending it on ads, billboards, consultants and paper clips. The evasiveness is just too cute for words.

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 10:26 | Permalink | Comments

Some other edu-bloggers have skipped town, so I thought I'd follow suit. I'll update if events warrant.

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 06:30 | Permalink | Comments

Click here to read:

1) Additional Reading on Teacher Turnover for the New York Times
2) September EIA Video Intercept Highlights Convention Process
3) North Carolina NEA Affiliate Recommends Non-Candidate
4) Scheduling Note
5) Last Week's Intercepts
6) Quote of the Week

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 12:40 | Permalink | Comments

In this space is where you'll see the September EIA Video Intercept - at least you will once YouTube is back and operational.



Fortunately EIA is a big fan of redundancy, and you can watch the video in its entirety on the home page.

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 07:34 | Permalink | Comments

Why do we want students to pass high school exit exams?

So we don't have to teach high school in college.

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 08:19 | Permalink | Comments

The New York Sun has published what may be the first newspaper story ever about guest bloggers. It's a coup for Eduwonk.com, where for the past two weeks New York City Public Schools Deputy Chancellor Christopher Cerf and United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten have taken turns sitting in.

I'll leave commentary on the substance to others, but I'd like to direct both Cerf and Weingarten to the section of the Sun story where Joe Williams of Democrats for Education Reform gives some crucial advice about blogging:

"He said the art is to be lively and avoid dragging on. 'It's harder to do than many people may think,' he said."

Be Lively and Avoid Dragging On.

And, if I may, avoid comical disclaimers like "Opinions here are my own and not necessarily those of the United Federation of Teachers, where I serve as President."

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 07:47 | Permalink | Comments

I'd hate to think my blog entry on the teachers' unions and Wikipedia somehow inspired a juvenile-minded attempt at vandalism.

Someone with an IP address in Reston, Virginia, made an edit to NEA's Wikipedia page last Sunday (since undone) that altered the paragraph on NEA's logo to read:

"Adopted in 1966, this symbol, which appears inside the 'e' in the NEA logo, combines the mathematical symbol for Pi (the ancient Greek word for education) with a monkey, both of which are set upon a background shaped as a spherical triangle, which represents the mutually supportive programs of local, state, and national education associations."

Hilarious.

So, Reston boy, if you're reading this, cut out that crap. And while I'm riding this horse, I think the folks in Utah need to cut out this crap. It's stupid and counterproductive. If you want people to understand why NEA opposes vouchers, just tell them how many private school teachers belong to a union. Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 10:55 | Permalink | Comments

Some Florida schoolchildren get a free bus tour.

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 08:22 | Permalink | Comments

Thanks to all of you who sent in suggestions for solving my real world math word problem (see 100% - 50% = 76%, or Something in yesterday's communiqué). Each had a unique approach to it, and I had to adjust as necessary to get what I was after, namely, an example of a situation in which both half of all new teachers leave within the first five years, and 24% of all teachers have five years of experience or less.

In order to keep things simple, I've assumed zero total growth in the teacher force, and zero retirements or loss of teachers with more than five years of experience. Also, the rolling population makes it necessary to start somewhere, so I crafted it this way:

Let's say I've opened a new school district and at the start of Year 1, I'm handed 1,000 teachers, 760 of whom have more than five years of experience. My calculations, therefore, deal entirely with the 240 teachers I receive who, fortunately enough for my math problem, have zero experience.

In order for the first statement to be true, I have to lose half (120) of these 240 teachers by the start of Year 6, and hire enough new teachers to offset that loss, plus the attrition from each new year, so that at the start of Year 6 I still have 240 teachers with five years of experience or less, thus fulfilling the needs of the second statement. I've tried to use a constant rate of attrition, but it would still work with a fluctuating rate.

Start Year 1: 240 with zero experience

Start Year 2: 209 with 1 year's experience; 31 with zero.

Start Year 3: 182 with 2; 27 with 1; 31 with zero.

Start Year 4: 158 with 3; 23 with 2; 27 with 1; 32 with zero.

Start Year 5: 137 with 4; 20 with 3; 23 with 2; 28 with 1; 32 with zero.

Start Year 6: 120 with 5; 17 with 4; 20 with 3; 24 with 2; 28 with 1; 31 with zero.

You'll see if we keep the pattern going that the 31 teachers we hired to start Year 2 will be down to 15 at the start of Year 7, affirming the first statement. Starting with this as a base, I'm sure we can construct a model that accounts for changes in the veteran teacher force, and growth in the total force.

OK. No problem is solved until it is independently evaluated and checked. So did I miss anything? I'm pretty sure my math is correct, but if I've messed up my assumptions, let me know.

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 12:46 | Permalink | Comments

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 08:00 | Permalink | Comments

Click here to read:

1) Searching for the Real Union Candidate
2) NEA Slated to Send $3 Million to Utah for Anti-Voucher Campaign
3) Minority Rules
4) Austin City Limits
5) 100% - 50% = 76%, or Something
6) A Whiter Shade of Pale
7) NEA Affiliate Personnel Moves
8) Last Week's Intercepts
9) Quote of the Week

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 14:58 | Permalink | Comments

Utah is short of teachers.

Ohio has too many.

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 08:01 | Permalink | Comments

The story of Canadian teacher Jean-Alix Miguel stopped me in my tracks.

Miguel was hired by the Montreal school board in 1998 and fired in 2004 when it was discovered that Miguel failed to mention on his original employment application that he had just completed a seven-year prison term after pleading guilty to killing his wife.

Miguel's union took the dismissal to arbitration, where the arbitrator ruled it "violated Quebec's charter of rights, because his crime did not in any way relate to his work." The board appealed the decision to superior court where, this week, it was upheld.

A columnist for the National Post thinks this is all to the good:

"Under Quebec's civil rights laws, his criminal conviction for murdering his wife has no relation to his job teaching electronics. If he had robbed a bank and applied for a job as a bank teller, then the conviction would be relevant. Whatever we may think of a person capable of murdering his wife, we also live in a society that does promote the principle that having served one's time for a crime, a person has the right to re-enter society, which includes seeking and winning gainful employment. This is one case where principle has rightly trumped the populist sentiment that at first blush would lead one to think Miguel should not have the chance to teach at all."

By this logic, as long as Miguel didn't murder a teacher, student, principal or other education employee (presumably on school grounds), the fact that he's a confessed and convicted killer is irrelevant. I wonder what Mrs. Miguel would have thought of this reasoning. Alas, we cannot ask her.

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 08:10 | Permalink | Comments

Some of you may have come across a number of stories this week about the Wikipedia Scanner tool that identifies the Internet domain from which various Wikipedia edits originated. It has proven to be an embarrassment for a number of folks who have - shall we say - "massaged" Wikipedia entries that involve them in some way. You can see a list of the more entertaining ones here.

You can try to access the scanner at http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr but good luck trying to get through. Fortunately, most people are interested in determining the origin of the editors, while I'm interested in the edits to particular pages. So after some experimentation I was able to find the direct links to the edits made to the Wikipedia pages for the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=National_Education_Association&diff=previous

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=American_Federation_of_Teachers&diff=previous

These links will give you the latest revision first, and you can work your way back through time by clicking the "older edit" link. If your prefer to start at the beginning and work your way forward, replace the word "previous" with the word "next" in the above links.

For the record, I have never made a Wikipedia edit.

There appears to be no serious monkey business around the NEA Wikipedia page. If any of the editors before May 2007 had any links to the union, they are tenuous. Of particular interest to me was the addition of an external link to Intercepts, added in February 2006 by an unknown California editor, likely in the San Jose area. It was removed by a Pittsburgh attorney 90 minutes later, restored 30 minutes after that by the San Jose person, removed again by someone near Reston, Virginia, on March 1, 2006, restored 30 minutes later by the San Jose person, deleted on August 15 by some guy from Maine, restored by the San Jose editor on September 8, who then changed the link to the Communiqué page on September 9.

It was deleted again by "Wvutrombone" on May 1, 2007, and restored by a New Jersey editor 30 minutes later. This is also where we see the first appearance of "NEAEditor," who is someone clearly affiliated directly with the union. Over the next few months, NEAEditor added a great deal of specific information, most of which expanded on NEA's history and structure. While delivered through NEA's point of view, the edits are not unreasonable.

Though NEAEditor hasn't touched the EIA Communiqué link, editor Tim1965 deleted it on June 15, 2007, which my San Jose fan restored on June 18. That same day a number of edits were made from NEA's IP address, supporting the union's point of view, but not deleting any of the listed criticisms.

The NEA Wikipedia page has been struck by vandals a few times, with one New York editor adding the sentence, "So they are very partisan Libby lib libs."

As for AFT, well, my San Jose fan added a link to Intercepts on April 9, 2006, which Tim1965 deleted on June 18, 2006.

I see no evidence of AFT involvement in editing its own pages, though NEAEditor added a link to the NEA website on AFT's Wikipedia page.

The back-and-forth over my link on the unions' pages is a microcosm of the kind of stuff that is endlessly going on with most of Wikipedia's pages. Let's simply remind everyone to always check your sources. If your research begins and ends with Wikipedia, you're wasting your time.

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 11:02 | Permalink | Comments

California Senate Bill 92 is the latest attempt to strangle the establishment of charter schools by severely limiting the power of the State Board of Education to issue charters. L.A. Weekly reports on the origin of the bill:

"Oddly, the man behind Senate Bill 92 is self-described charter-school supporter and Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, who represents a Los Angeles district where 52 charter schools operate, and where Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa touts charter schools. The Mayor’s Office declined to comment on Núñez’s bill. Written by Rick Simpson, Núñez’s deputy chief of staff, Senate Bill 92 was probably instigated behind closed doors by the California Teachers Association, according to Larson, a powerful union with an anti-charter-schools history. Simpson acknowledged to the L.A. Weekly that he spoke to the Education Coalition, which includes CTA, before writing the bill."

What L.A. Weekly didn't mention, and perhaps didn't know, is that Simpson used to work for CTA, as its lobbyist in the Capitol.

A CTA spokesperson stated that the union doesn't have an official position on SB 92, adding, "We're not opposed to charter schools."

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 07:29 | Permalink | Comments

If I'm losing my mind, I'll just admit it and move on, but remember the NEA conspiracy flow chart that was bandied about the blogosphere (and in the EIA Communiqué)?

I got an e-mail from someone who told me my link was broken and, sure enough, when I clicked it I got a 404 message from Wordpress.com, the home of NEA's NCLB blog. I tried a number of work-arounds and was able to access it (once) from a different IP address. But now nothing works.

The direct link is http://nclbchange.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/diagram.pdf.

Well, it could be a glitch, or it could be NEA removed it from the site, but I could have sworn there was at least a sentence referencing the chart and a link to it in NEA's blog entry of August 2, headlined "Bush Cronies Profited While They Halliburton-ized Public Schools." Now the sentence and the link are missing as well. The Google cache has already been updated, so that's no help.

So, again, if I'm screwing something up or there's a simple explanation for this, I offer my preemptive apologies. But if NEA is in the habit of sanitizing its blog, that's worth noting for future reference.

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 10:08 | Permalink | Comments

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 07:55 | Permalink | Comments

Click here to read:

1) NEA Republicans Meet in Minneapolis
2) Invoking Godwin's Law in Alabama
3) Teacher Quality Enhanced by Hiring More Teachers?
4) Three More NEA Locals Seek AFL-CIO Affiliation
5) Last Week's Intercepts
6) Quote of the Week

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 13:55 | Permalink | Comments

The students at Cathedral High School in Indianapolis have a back-to-school tradition.

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 08:12 | Permalink | Comments

I could have written a long, tedious post about the shenanigans in Alabama over two-year college faculty members serving in the state legislature, but Flashpoint provides what amounts to a Babelfish translation of a recent e-mail blast from Alabama Education Association honcho Paul Hubbert on the topic. Classic.

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 08:15 | Permalink | Comments

I thought the brouhaha within the Teachers Association of Long Beach (TALB) had simmered down once Executive Director Scott McVarish had been reinstated, but now comes word that a member of the board of directors is suing the union's president for libel and slander.

Board member Dale McVey accuses TALB President Michael Day of claiming in an e-mail that McVey and four other board members "illegally voted to remove" McVarish.

Because of this, the lawsuit states, McVey "has suffered loss of reputation, shame, mortification, humiliation and hurt feelings all to his general damage in a sum to be determined at trial."

There has been more than enough shame, mortification and humiliation to go around in this story, and the lawsuit will only add to it.

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 07:41 | Permalink | Comments

Racial/ethnic tension between Miami-Dade Schools Superintendent Rudy Crew and Hispanic school board members/employees/community members seems to be responsible for the death threats Crew received after a heated school board meeting last week.

The Miami Herald has the details. Quote from a Miami detective: ''Not only are they death threats, they are also ethnically intimidating calls.''

I don't know what ethnic (ethnical?) intimidation is, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't make a death threat worse.

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 08:06 | Permalink | Comments

This "problem" arises again and again, but today's newspapers are full of the latest report from the Food Research and Action Center called School Breakfast in America's Big Cities. The reports finds that in many urban school districts only a fraction of eligible schoolchildren are taking advantage of the free and reduced-price school breakfast program.

Feeding hungry children is a noble and necessary act. The problem is that its very nobility and necessity keeps us from asking pointed questions about the program itself. The survey asked school administrators to choose from a list the "barriers to school breakfast participation," none of which is "don't want it" or "prefer breakfast at home" or "reluctance to turn over crucial aspect of child-rearing to the government."

The report has other troubling aspects. One section is titled "Reaching 70 out of 100: The Nutritional and Financial Benefits," and begins, "For each day a low-income child was not being served breakfast in 2005-2006, the school lost $1.27 in federal nutrition funding for every child who would have received a free breakfast, and $0.97 for every child who would have received a reduced-price breakfast. If those children attended a 'severe need' school – one of the thousands of schools in which at least 40 percent of lunches served were free or reduced-price – an additional $0.24 per meal was forfeited. Those uneaten meals not only represent potential harm to children's health and development; they also add up to tens of millions of dollars in federal child nutrition funding going unclaimed by districts every year."

Finally, there's a list of FRAC's sponsors, which include the Food Marketing Institute, General Mills Foundation, Grocery Manufacturers Association, Land O'Lakes Foundation, National Dairy Council, and Nestle USA.

Obviously there is more than one chow line here.

The school breakfast program is not a failure and it is not deficient. Every eligible child has access to a free and nutritious breakfast. Let's leave it at that. A government that labors so mightily to demonstrate it is a better parent cannot thereafter complain about the responsibility.

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 10:27 | Permalink | Comments

The Washington Post warns against backsliding on the No Child Left Behind Act.

The Palm Beach Post suggests that the reason the presidential candidates aren't talking about education is because it's low on the public's list of priorities.

The Los Angeles Daily News exposes an underhanded attempt to restrict the number of charter schools in California.

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 08:08 | Permalink | Comments

Click here to read:

1) Please, PLEASE Form a Bloggers Union
2) NEA's Latest Web of Conspiracy
3) California Reaming
4) Latest on Teamster-NEA Battle in Vegas
5) School Board Logrolling
6) Freudian Headline of the Week
7) Last Week's Intercepts
8) Quote of the Week

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 14:25 | Permalink | Comments

The Santa Fe New Mexican casts a critical eye on the education policies of Gov. Bill Richardson. Bottom line: Too early to tell if any of them are working.

But National Public Radio informs us why education policy is so critical to Richardson's campaign. Apparently a lot of people aren't aware that New Mexico is a state.

Spun correctly, Richardson can blame the No Child Left Behind Act's narrowing of the curriculum for public ignorance of the Republic of Texas, the Mexican-American War, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hildalgo and the Gadsden Purchase. Or even the Taos Pueblo Uprising of 1847.

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 08:25 | Permalink | Comments

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 11:57 | Permalink | Comments

Education Week tips us off to a just-released report by the National Center for Education Statistics titled To Teach or Not to Teach? Teaching Experience and Preparation Among 1992-93 Bachelor's Degree Recipients 10 Years After College.

It's worth looking at all the tables in the 112-page report, but here are just a few of the highlights:

* "Although teacher retention has attracted much concern, it should be noted that bachelor's degree–holding teachers are less likely than many other graduates to leave their initial occupation, even in the first few years. For example, a wide range, between 17 and 75 percent, of 1992–93 college graduates changed occupations within 4 years of receiving their bachelor's degrees, when grouped by occupation held at the 1-year point (Henke and Zahn 2001). Teachers were among the least likely to change occupations in this time period, at 18 percent."

* "For example, 77 percent said they were satisfied with the learning environment at their current school, while 48 percent expressed satisfaction with parent support, with students' motivation to learn, and with pay. Roughly 3 out of 5 teachers were satisfied with class sizes (61 percent) and with student discipline and behavior at their school (57 percent)."

* "Relatively few teachers said they would leave before retirement for a nonteaching job in education or for a better job (8 and 10 percent, respectively)."

What about those who did leave? About 19 percent left to raise children or other family reasons, 18 percent to work outside of education, 15 percent to work in a non-teaching education job (such as vice principal, principal or administrator), 13 percent to earn a higher salary, 7 percent because of job difficulties, and 3 percent were laid off. Other reasons accounted for 22 percent of the cohort.

The report also debunks the notion that the smarter teachers leave. The researchers found that those with better grades in college were more likely to remain in teaching.

NEA and AFT have yet to comment on the report, but I doubt they are going to cheer the news that America's teachers are largely satisfied with their jobs, dedicated to their profession, and are not fleeing in droves to the private sector. Which makes you wonder why they would have you think otherwise.

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 08:51 | Permalink | Comments

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 07:43 | Permalink | Comments