Intercepts

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 07:44 | Permalink | Comments

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 12:13 | Permalink | Comments

The National Education Association is advising its activists to urge Congress to take action on "a timely, targeted stimulus package that will provide relief to low- and middle-income families."

With economic disaster looming, NEA believes "the government needs to step in with an immediate solution." What solution? "Congress and the president must come to an agreement as soon as possible to stimulate new spending right away, so businesses don't have to lay-off workers or cut back on production."

The boys at NEA's Gosplan even have some suggestions for what should be included in this stimulus package:

"* Assistance to help communities repair and modernize schools. In addition to improving learning environments, such assistance will help create jobs.

"* Funding for the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self Determination Act. This critical program, which provides guaranteed funding to rural, timber-dependent schools, has expired and, without immediate relief, many communities will have to layoff school staff and cut programs.

" * Provisions to address the Government Pension Offset and Windfall Elimination Provision. Repealing these unfair offsets will provide long overdue relief to millions of retirees currently facing significant financial insecurity.

" * Repeal of the Helium Privatization Act of 1996 to restore jobs lost in the dirigible industry."

OK, I made up that last one.

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 11:09 | Permalink | Comments

Number of Democratic presidential candidates who abandoned the race before being deemed "acceptable" by the National Education Association: Zero.

Number of Democratic presidential candidates who abandoned the race after being deemed "acceptable" by the National Education Association: Four.

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 14:05 | Permalink | Comments

Events at the Bruce Randolph School in Denver have been all over the Colorado papers and blogs for weeks, but for some reason the story hasn't broken out in the rest of the country. It should, because it's more important than the district's much-ballyhooed performance pay program.

The short version: Bruce Randolph was once one of the worst schools in the state, but recent reforms have turned it around. Now the school's principal, teachers and union reps want exemptions from several provisions of the teachers' contract, which they say are hindering their efforts.

Guess what the union said.

In an unusual moment of insight from an editorial board, the Denver Post correctly analyzed the problem as having little to do with the school or its performance. The editors wrote:

"But the union, frankly, had been backed into a corner on this issue. Decline a request from a successful inner-city school that has gotten national attention and you look like obstructionists. Agree, and run the risk that other Denver schools will want the same thing and your organization ebbs into irrelevancy. So the union tried to come out somewhere in the middle, granting waivers but not buying off entirely — a move that ends up smelling of desperation."

Too often, education stories completely miss the labor angle - mainly because education unions don't want to admit they have self-interest.

In any event, it's going to get very interesting in Denver, because the Bruce Randolph administration and faculty refuse to back down. Greg Ahrnsbrak, a union rep at the school, said, "They [the union] are doing everything they can to block a real reform effort. Reform is happening. You're either going to be on the bus or beneath it. I want to be driving it."

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

"Get a life! Do (sic) bad the jury wasn't deliberating whether to shut you up or not!" - the full text of a message sent last night through EIA's Dead Drop page.

Dude, I'm not the one sending misspelled anonymous e-mails at 11:40 p.m.

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 08:50 | Permalink | Comments

Click here to read:

1) EIA Exclusive: NEA Gave $12 Million to Advocacy Groups
2) Last Week's Intercepts
3) Scheduling Note

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 14:19 | Permalink | Comments

No matter your position on public education and unions, we can all agree that New York City's "rubber rooms" for teachers accused of wrongdoing are good for no one. The innocent teachers are kept from teaching for extensive periods of time, the guilty teachers are paid full salary and benefits for doing nothing, the administrators are forced to spend time and resources operating a holding facility, and the taxpayers have to pay for this idiocy.

Yesterday a group of teachers filed suit to get rid of the rubber rooms. The United Federation of Teachers isn't supporting the lawsuit, citing its own efforts to address the problem with the city. And, to be sure, the plaintiffs' motives are far from pure; they claim the rooms are a scheme to "reduce salaries by forcing teachers to quit or be fired."

It's not much of a scheme. There are more than 70,000 full-time equivalent teachers in New York City. There are fewer than 700 teachers in rubber rooms.

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 09:17 | Permalink | Comments

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 10:41 | Permalink | Comments

Still on jury duty, but even on the night shift I've got this for you:

As reported late last Friday here on Intercepts, NEA decided to continue its past practice of finding certain candidates "acceptable" and others not, in lieu of an endorsement of a single presidential candidate. The union named as acceptable all seven Democrats who answered NEA's questionnaire and appeared in front of its representative assembly last July (three have recently dropped out of the race), but not Mike Huckabee, the lone Republican to do so.

This is bad news for Huckabee, who continues to get hammered by his GOP opponents for an NEA New Hampshire endorsement that had little relevance, and who will now receive no help from national NEA for his trouble.

Reliable sources tell EIA that the leadership of the Arkansas Education Association was instrumental in the effort to sink any chance Huckabee might have had in winning NEA's national endorsement in the GOP primary.

This is a bit of a surprise, since Huckabee had a relatively good relationship with AEA during his tenure, getting the union's endorsement for his district consolidation plan in 2003 (see Item #3 here) and getting general kudos from AEA for raising teacher salaries.

The word is, however, that AEA felt he didn't quite measure up to NEA standards - I guess in the same way Dennis Kucinich did - and that the Arkansas affiliate's opinion carried significant weight with the NEA PAC Council, who clearly weren't predisposed to endorse Huckabee anyway.

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 18:03 | Permalink | Comments

Note: There will be no EIA Communiqué on Monday due to my summons for jury duty (four times in seven years!), so here's something to gnaw on until I resume.

It has taken a full month to determine what happened to the much-promised and postponed National Education Association presidential endorsement. It's still on hold.

Unable or unwilling thus far to settle on a single candidate, NEA President Reg Weaver and the union's PAC council did what they have done in previous presidential elections - create a list of "acceptable" candidates. The union's affiliates can materially support any, all or none of the "acceptable" candidates.

The affiliates' job was made easier by the fact that three of the acceptable candidates have already dropped out of the race: Senator Joe Biden, Senator Christopher Dodd and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. The four remaining are all Democrats: Senator Hillary Clinton, Senator Barack Obama, former Senator John Edwards and Representative Dennis Kucinich.

The PAC council could still choose to endorse one of these candidates before the primaries end, but the decision has to be approved by the NEA Board of Directors, and the board's next meeting is not until February 8 - three days after Super Tuesday.

Notably absent from the list of acceptable candidates is former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, the only Republican candidate to speak before the NEA Representative Assembly last July and the recipient of NEA New Hampshire's endorsement in that state's GOP primary.

Whatever NEA does, it can undo, so it is always possible that an endorsement of Huckabee could occur later on, but all signs point to NEA finding Huckabee unacceptable for a national endorsement - something that remains available even to Dennis Kucinich.

NEA's actions have succeeded in keeping all of the union's options open, but it will have no unique leverage over whichever candidate ultimately wins the Democratic nomination. As for Huckabee, he comes out badly because his opponents will continue to bash him for the NEA New Hampshire endorsement, but no national help for his campaign is forthcoming.

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 17:10 | Permalink | Comments

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 08:46 | Permalink | Comments

Writers' strike got you down? Head over to This Week In Education for the tastiest bon mots from host Alexander Russo and guest star Joe Williams. Amid the cracks and one-liners you get some genuine insight, like:

"What do you wish reporters understood about education politics that you've learned since starting in at DFER?

"JW: They need to understand just how scared the average politician is of teacher union leaders. There are politicians who literally whisper sometimes if they are talking about education and they aren't exactly sure what the union's talking points are on that topic. Some of them worry that the union president is going to jump out of the bushes and yell 'gotcha' if they aren't careful. It makes it an awful lot easier for electeds to just keep their mouths shut and do nothing about the fact that we have thousands and thousands of kids who are getting completely screwed by our school systems."

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 08:31 | Permalink | Comments

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 08:43 | Permalink | Comments

It's the flip side of the phony "half of all new teachers leave the profession in the first five years." I've railed against that one for years, to some small effect, but this one is even more ridiculous.

Here we have Iowa State Education Association President Linda Nelson prefacing a question on teacher retention by informing presidential candidate Barack Obama in a December 3 interview, "Senator, as you know, nearly one-half of the teachers that are currently in the classroom will be retiring over the next five years." It's at the 11-minute mark.



Hogwash. Even NEA's alarmist rhetoric cites a need for two million new teachers over the next decade. Nelson's claim would require 1.5 million new teachers over the next five years to replace retirees alone, never mind those who leave for other reasons.

Perhaps I'm going about this all wrong. Maybe the solution is simply to float my own phony statistic, like "half of all teachers have six-figure incomes" and then let others do the work disproving it.

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 07:57 | Permalink | Comments

EIA is proud to present the 2007 Public Education Quotes of the Year, in countdown order. Enjoy!

10) "The rhetoric of 'No New Taxes' will not be recorded in our history books and if by chance it is marked at all, it will be by the dead end milepost!" – Education Minnesota President Judy Schaubach, in her farewell speech to the union's representative convention on March 16.

9) "There were people in accounting [who] didn't know the difference between a debit and credit." – Barak Ben-Gal, former budget director for the Oakland, California, public schools. (June 22 Wall Street Journal)

8) "Being suspended with pay is not a vacation." – Dena Rosenkrantz, staff attorney for the Virginia Education Association, discussing the case of local affiliate president Joyce Tyree, who was suspended with pay for brandishing a butcher knife in class last March. (May 17 Culpepper Star Exponent)

7) "I was also unaware that someone who claims to support unions is required to do so in the fashion that, say, Stalin demanded of his politburo." – lefty media critic Eric Alterman, in a tête-à-tête with United Federation of Teachers staffer Leo Casey. (January 31 MediaMatters.org)

6) "There's a group out there that thinks all you need to be a teacher is a bachelor's degree, a background check and to pass a computerized test, but you know they're not going to send them to teach where the wealthy folks are. They're going to send them to teach where Ray-Ray, Little Willie, Little Man, Too-Sweet, and Chiquita are in the classroom." – National Education Association President Reg Weaver, delivering the keynote speech before the Oklahoma Center for Innovation in Teaching Excellence in Tulsa. (November 2 Tulsa World)

5) "In education the hours are long; you take home a lot of your work. Why choose that when they can just go right into corporate America and make mega bucks and not take anything home?" – Former St. Landry Parish Association of Educators President Elinor Eaglin, on the teacher shortage in Louisiana. (June 15 Daily World of Opelousas)

4) "Too often, union leaders like to have unquestioning, uninformed members who don't raise too many questions about what they're doing." – Deborah Lynch, candidate for president of the Chicago Teachers Union. (April 26 YouTube video interview)

3) "I cannot claim to be a good teacher simply because I have a master's in education, two licenses and eight years of experience. I can claim to be a good teacher only if the data demonstrate that my students have learned." – Jason Kamras, 2005 National Teacher of the Year. (September 10 Washington Post)

2) "What happened on the plantation when the slaves had enough?" – Baltimore Teachers Union President Marietta English, unhappy with the district's contract proposal. (April 25 Baltimore Sun)

1) "People take money every day for things I would not do… there are people that are paid to be assassins. Sometimes it’s just not worth the sacrifice you would have to make for the money." – Metro Nashville Education Association President Jamye Merritt, explaining why her union opposes performance pay. (January 7 Tennessean)

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 10:47 | Permalink | Comments

From the Washington Post campaign blog The Trail:

"We're here in a gym in Derry, watching Barack Obama, who is for Change. I was for Change when I got here, but then I had to wait like two hours for Obama to arrive, so now I'm not so sure I'm for Change. Now I am more for Punctuality."

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 08:17 | Permalink | Comments