Californians for Public School Accountability, the coalition of administrator and business groups put together to oppose the bill, said the bill was more than 10 votes short of the 41 needed for passage. There are 50 Democrats in the Assembly. Johnson was upset by the decision not to have a vote, saying it was the "weaselly way out." He threatened to turn AB 2160 into a ballot initiative and bring it before California voters -- an initiative he believes would cost upwards of $25 million.

However the post mortems go, school reformers all across the U.S. own Johnson a debt of gratitude. In one grand act of hubris, he demonstrated to Americans how the public education system is run. He took a monumentally bad idea, sank millions of dollars of other people’s money into it, tried to ramrod it through the legislature, and when it failed, he came to the obvious conclusion: to try it again with more money.

One of the major criticisms of AB 2160 was that it gave the teachers’ union veto power over education policy without any accountability for its decisions. The AB 2160 campaign mirrored this worry. Johnson took millions of dollars of members’ dues and managed to unite the education community, the business community, parents and the media -- against the union. In so doing, he also informed the public, without evasion, that the union was in the business of buying legislative votes, and wondered aloud if he was getting his money’s worth. In a rare display of backbone, 40 or 50 lawmakers told Johnson to take a hike.

Johnson will not lose his job over his enormous miscalculation. No one inside the union will criticize him publicly. No one will be demoted or reprimanded for the ongoing PR disaster this bill created. This weekend Johnson will make a defiant speech before the union’s State Council, and the same 770 delegates who elected and and reelected him will cheer and applaud his every utterance -- even if he were to repeat his swipes at NEA and AFT. And if he called for a $25 million ballot initiative, or a march on the Capitol with pitchforks, the only question would be which delegate would be first in line to sign up.

It’s doubtful Johnson learned anything from this debacle, but Californians learned something. Just because CTA brings out the big hammer doesn’t mean the rest of us have to be nails.

2) Merger Talks Called Off in Texas. Angered by a partnership arrangement between the Texas Federation of Teachers (TFT) and an independent union, the NEA-affiliated Texas State Teachers Association suspended merger talks with TFT for an indefinite period. In addition, TSTA filed a complaint with the NEAFT Partnership Implementation Committee, alleging that TFT’s arrangement violates the national unions’ jurisdictional agreement.

The often-rocky negotiations finally came to an end after TFT ratified a cooperation agreement with the United Educators Association (UEA), an independent union of some 11,000 members in the Arlington and Fort Worth areas. TSTA has lost many members to UEA, which has been especially galling because UEA’s executive director is a former TSTA staffer (see EIA Communiqué of 4/29, 5/6 and 5/20 for the gory details).

Neither side has ruled out resuming talks at a later date, and officials from both TSTA and TFT will continue to meet informally to try to work out differences.

3) Union Sues Over Teacher Pay Hikes in Shortage Areas. The Progressive Policy Institute, a think tank associated with the Democratic Leadership Council, released a study titled Better Pay for Better Teaching, which calls for teacher pay differential based not only on job performance, but on willingness to teach certain subjects and at certain schools. The report couldn’t be more timely, as a lawsuit in Missouri demonstrates the obstacles of taking such an approach.

The tiny Sherwood Cass School District paid up to $2,000 extra to seven teachers who took assignments in shortage areas, specifically special education and science. In exchange for the cash incentives, the teachers signed two-year contracts to remain in those specialties. The local union, the Sherwood NEA, filed suit, claiming that excluding 70 other teachers from pay hikes violated state law and the local contract. "From our perspective, any teacher pay issue should be done through negotiation," Kansas City Federation of Teachers President Judy Morgan told the Kansas City Star.

But the independent Missouri State Teachers Association supports the district. "We’re in favor of doing what’s best for kids, and if giving teachers incentives is one way, we’re for that," said MSTA representative Todd Fuller.

This is an age-old argument, but Maurer helpfully provides an example of what he means — and betrays his thesis for the cop-out it is. The NAEP U.S. history test asks: "The opening of diplomatic relations between the United States and China’s Communist government occurred during the presidential administration of a) Harry Truman, b) John Kennedy, c) Lyndon Johnson, d) Richard Nixon. Only 37 percent of high school seniors correctly answered "d."

"A better question," Maurer writes, "and one that we in Illinois would be more in line with the Illinois learning standards, would be as follows: Was the opening of diplomatic relations with Communist China good or bad for the U.S. economy? Write an essay defending both points of view. You must be able to explain your reasons for each response."

Maurer is right. His question is better. But how could a student write an essay on the economic effects of diplomatic relations with Communist China if he or she doesn’t know when it happened. A student, under the mistaken impression that Harry Truman opened diplomatic relations with Communist China, could conceivably write a persuasive essay that it helped create a post-war economic boom. Or that it led to the Great Depression, because it occurred under Herbert Hoover. What grade would they get in these cases? History is not a rhetorical exercise, but events, decisions, motivations and, most importantly, people. And unfortunately for those like Maurer, these events occur in chronological order, making a knowledge of what came when and who was around at the time absolutely essential to an understanding of what came next.

The distress over the NAEP history results is simple to explain. If Johnny can’t answer a multiple-choice question, then it’s hopeless to ask him anything about diplomatic relations, economics, Chinese communism, or why it was noteworthy that Nixon went to China instead of one of the other three presidents. We don’t teach surgeons problem-solving skills. We teach them where the organs are.

Maurer says that schools should ask students "How would you find out who was president when?" and suggests that most students would quickly turn to the Internet for the answer. Perhaps it’s old-fashioned to say that the answer to that question used to be: "I’d ask the teacher."

5) Maine Education Association Takes Bold Step to Address Member Concerns. In April, the Maine Education Association (MEA) had three members arrested for refusing to leave a union board meeting (see April 15 EIA Communiqué). The district attorney refused to file charges and the members were released, but the incident exposed a continuing discontent among several locals about how the state association was conducting its business. Faced with criticism from local presidents, a growing bloc of dissident activists and terrible press, the MEA went into last month’s representative assembly needing to address the issue. And it did. In the long tradition of bureaucratic organizations everywhere, MEA courageously stepped forward and... formed a committee. The committee’s mission is to "address apparent divisions within the MEA." No word on whether committee members would also be subject to arrest by order of the union president.