The tremors are small: lots of talk about needing inroads with Generation X teachers... financial problems here... possible layoffs there. In the past, membership problems were localized in the chronic, hard-to-organize states that had competing organizations. Today, the sounds are more widespread. NEA has grown every year since the mid-1980s, but for the first time the end of the boom may be in sight. The union experienced an increase of some 37,000 members this year -- about half of what it achieved in 2000-2001. More alarming if you’re an NEA official is the fact that 20 state affiliates had a decrease in membership last year -- even as the number of potential members nationwide continues to grow at a fairly steady 2 percent annual clip.

EIA cannot yet identify which state affiliates are growing and which are not, though it seems safe to assume that the large states -- California, New Jersey, Michigan, Illinois, et al. -- continue to enjoy solid growth, while perennial weak sisters are now having serious problems. Activities to reverse the trend are already underway. The NEA Board of Directors granted $175,000 to the Mississippi Association of Educators for additional organizing. The North Carolina Association of Educators is laying the groundwork for an effort in support of collective bargaining in the state. North Carolina law currently bans collective bargaining by teachers.

Accurate AFT numbers are even harder to amass, because more of its members are not K-12 teachers. Nevertheless, the same tremors are coming from AFT. The AFT Executive Council’s organizing committee met to discuss ways to get younger members more involved and active in the union. EIA estimates that about 70 percent of teachers are NEA and/or AFT members. Public school teaching may be the most highly unionized sector of the American workforce (the private sector is only 9 percent unionized). Is something about to give?

2) What You Haven’t Heard About the NAEP History Scores. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores for U.S. history were released last week and, well, they weren’t too good. EIA’s analysis of the results is a little unorthodox: a new emphasis on history is unlikely to affect these scores very much. They are the entirely predictable result of a decline in reading comprehension. It would be baffling if history scores rose while reading scores remained flat or fell. Conversely, if reading scores climbed and history scores remained flat, then we could lay the blame on a lack of effective history instruction.

The NAEP results always produce more data than can usefully be analyzed in a short newspaper story, so a lot of fascinating stuff often goes unreported. Two findings of the NAEP history assessments were particularly interesting. First was the news that, in American history, students in nonpublic schools outperformed students in public schools by a fairly wide margin. That may not be surprising, but the NAEP scores for nonpublic schools were also divided into "Catholic" and "other," and those results showed that the scores of Catholic school students went up in grades 4, 8 and 12 (compared to 1994), while other nonpublic schools saw a one-point increase in grade 8 scores and declines in scores in grades 4 and 12. Since Catholic schools are more likely to have low-income students than other private schools, this is a remarkable outcome.

Also, for the first time NAEP scores were broken down by the frequency of computer use, and here the results were startling. In the 4^th grade, students who used computers at school for social studies every day scored a whopping 47 points lower that students who "never or hardly ever" used computers at school for social studies. The margin for both 8^th and 12^th graders was 24 points. The trend was virtually unbroken for all three grade levels: the more frequently you used a computer at school for social studies, the lower you scored. Conversely, students who used the Internet for research projects scored much higher than those who did not. The lesson here seems to be that computers should be used as an enhanced library tool, but that their use in classroom instruction for history is counterproductive.

The resumption of talks was brokered by the NEAFT Implementation Committee. Even a quick agreement may take some time to ratify, as both unions have already completed their spring conventions.

4) CTA Summons School Board Ringers for Press Conference. Last Thursday, the California Teachers Association held a press conference to trot out "the growing number of school board members who are coming out in support of CTA’s AB 2160," the union’s scope of bargaining bill. CTA produced six school board trustees, and touted a resolution of support passed by the Corona-Norco Unified School District board. The press conference produced almost no print coverage, and the California School Boards Association responded with the obvious: that out of 6,000 school board members and 1,000 school districts in the state, CTA was bound to find someone to support the bill. But there is even less to CTA’s press conference than meets the eye. Most of these school board members have unusual backgrounds and connections:

1) Eric Mar of the San Francisco Unified School District. A university lecturer, Mar identified himself as a member of the California Faculty Association and CTA on an antiwar petition that claimed the Bush administration "is attempting to take advantage of this crisis to militarize U.S. society with a vast expansion of police powers that is intended to severely restrict basic democratic rights." He was endorsed for election by the United Educators of San Francisco, the local union that is affiliated with both NEA and AFT. Union officials noted at the time that Mar’s wife was a UESF activist.

2) Mark Sanchez of the San Francisco Unified School District. Sanchez ran for a board seat after co-founding Teachers 4 Change, a caucus within the UESF. Sanchez and Mar conducted a forum on "educational racism" last fall and both are prominent in the anti-testing movement. Sanchez may be best known for his resolution in March 2001 to excuse high school students from school for a day and bus them to the campus of UC Berkeley to attend a political rally in support of affirmative action. After public complaint, the district dropped the idea, citing "safety concerns."

3) Janet C. Gibson of the Alameda Unified School District. Gibson is a retired teacher and held office in the California Teachers Association, apparently as a member of the union’s State Council.

4) John Selawsky of the Berkeley Unified School District. Selawsky describes himself as a teacher, among other things, but EIA cannot determine if he ever belonged the Berkeley Federation of Teachers (BFT). BFT did contribute to his election campaign, however, and Selawsky is a member of the National Writers Union (AFL-CIO Local 1981). Former San Mateo Community College Federation of Teachers President Joaquin Rivera also sits on the Berkeley board.

5) Rick Richards of the San Leandro Unified School District. Richards does not have an obvious union connection.

6) Richard Raznikov of the Tamalpais Unified High School District. Raznikov made a national name for himself by encouraging students to boycott the state’s standardized tests. If the name of the district seems vaguely familiar to you, its most famous recent alumnus was John Walker Lindh, the American Taliban.

One of the members of the Corona-Norco board, Bill Hedrick, was a member of CTA when he ran for office last November. Both he and fellow board member Sharon R. Martinez received $5,000 contributions from CTA for their races.

The board members CTA was able to conjure up for its press conference not only personify the general lack of support for AB 2160, but they also stand as shining examples of the influence the union already wields over too many school board members in the state. Leave it to CTA to fashion a press conference that obviates the need for its own bill.

5) Miami Union Compares Shop Steward to Terrorist. The United Teachers of Dade (UTD) have had a lot of problems in recent months -- contract troubles, membership troubles, Edison troubles, spending troubles.... The strain is beginning to show. What other excuse could there be for a union to publish an editorial that compares a dissident UTD shop steward to Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh?

The April 2002 issue of UTD Today contains an editorial by union communications director Annette Katz titled "For the good of the union." In it, Katz goes off the rhetorical deep end in an attempt to address a vaguely defined problem with an unnamed UTD shop steward. She begins with:

"They allege that the government infringes on their rights. Men and women gather in clandestine meetings in the woods to rail against the perceived intrusions into their privacy.

"Tempers flared and plans are hatched. Ammunition and stockpiles of homemade bombs are purchased. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Wilson (sic), along with countless others (sic), begin their plans for what is to become the single most horrible act of internal domestic terrorism our country has yet to experience.

"Without a thought to the consequences of their actions, these militia men decide to tear down the Federal Building in Oklahoma rather than bring their set of grievances to full view through the proper channels. They don’t care who they will hurt or destroy. They only care about their own personal goals and objectives.

"It no longer mattered that America had empowered them to be free in the first place.

"UTD finds itself in an oddly similar situation these days. In Oklahoma, the misguided efforts of a few resulted in a horrendous loss of innocent lives. In the case of UTD, the misguided efforts of a few are attempting to destroy the vitality of the entire union."

Evidently a union shop steward has been charged with adding "personal bias" to "official adopted union information," and seeking to "diminish union membership." Horrors! If a union communications director ($123,000 annual salary) is going to use the Oklahoma City bombing to make a questionable point, she should at least get her facts straight. Terry Nichols was the second bomber, not Terry Wilson. There was a Terry Wilson involved in the bombing -- as a victim. Wilson was the U.S. Customs Service special-agent-in-charge in Oklahoma City. He survived the bombing, but lost two of his agents. Katz should be ashamed of herself.

6) Wisconsin Union Goes Dry While Vermont Parties On. Prohibition in the NEA? It’s too early to tell if it is a coincidence or a national movement, but delegates to the Wisconsin Education Association Council Representative Assembly passed a measure banning reimbursement to members for the purchase of alcoholic beverages. Imbibers got the upper hand in Vermont, however, where a similar measure was defeated by Vermont-NEA’s Representative Assembly last month.