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1) EIA Report Ranks
Per-Pupil Spending in Over 14,000 School Districts.
Last Tuesday, the U.S. Census Bureau released Public Education Finances
2001, a 99-page report that highlighted school revenues and expenditures
for the 2000-01 year. The report is a treasure trove of information,
providing not only statewide averages for various spending, but extensive
tables for the largest school districts. The report’s statistics received
substantial media attention nationwide.
But if the Census
Bureau report itself is overflowing with numbers, imagine the sheer bulk of
the source data it used for the report. To compute statewide average
expenditures, the Census Bureau gathered financial information from each of
America’s nearly 15,000 local school districts. Armed with this source data,
EIA has constructed a report of its own, What Price They Will: Per-Pupil
Spending & Labor Costs for More Than 14,000 Public School Districts.
The report ranks school
districts within each state on their 2000-01 per-pupil spending, and
includes the percentages of that total they spent on instruction, total
employee compensation, and compensation for classroom personnel only. The
tables also include the enrollment figures for each district, so that
comparisons with districts of similar size can be made. Each page also
contains the state and national averages in each of the above categories for
easy reference.
Links to each state’s
table can be found at
http://www.eiaonline.com/districts.htm You will need Adobe Acrobat
Reader to view, print or download the tables. Your download time will depend
of the number of districts in that state. Even the largest table, however,
is only 27 pages long. If you wanted to print all 52 tables, it would eat up
about 250 pages.
2) NEA’s Columbus
Local Seeks to Add AFT Affiliation.
Ohio’s Columbus Education Association continues to blaze its own trail when
it comes to relations with its parent organizations. Last September, EIA
reported on the union’s decision to disaffiliate from Central OEA, its
regional parent, and affiliate directly with the state organization. Now the
5,400-member NEA affiliate is seeking dual national affiliation, as it has
applied for a charter from the American Federation of Teachers.
NEA and AFT already
have a number of merged state and local affiliates, but AFT has no local in
Columbus. Current union guidelines don’t address a procedure for a local to
simply get a charter from the other national teachers’ union without
dropping its current affiliation. NEA and AFT officials are hashing out an
agreement so Columbus can get its wish. Money would obviously be a key
issue. Would Columbus teachers have to cough up additional money to pay AFT
dues, or would NEA forego a portion of the dues it gets from Columbus and
pass it to AFT?
3) Estimated 30,000
Teachers Get Layoff Notices in California.
On February 12, The Oregonian reported on a two-day teacher’s job
fair being held in Portland. Representatives from California’s public school
districts were signing up recruits. “It is the promise of California, a
state with a glut of teaching jobs it must fill,” wrote reporter Jim
Tankersley.
A month later, the
Los Angeles Times reports that as many as 30,000 California public
school teachers are receiving layoff notices – enough to staff the entire
state of Oregon with teachers. This is only the cherry on top of the
giant hot fudge sundae of nonsense going on in the Golden State.
Because of seniority
rules, the teachers who will ultimately be laid off are those the state and
local districts just spent millions of dollars to recruit and train. And the
reaction from the California Teachers Association (CTA) promises more wasted
money. The union notified members who received layoff notices that they “are
entitled to a hearing before an administrative law judge where the district
must prove it had legal grounds for the layoff.”
School boards and
administrators are also looking to alter the state’s class-size reduction
program. A proposed bill would allow them to still receive state funding for
the program if the school averages 20 students per K-3 class, rather than
the current requirement of no more than 20 students in each and every K-3
class. One consulting service estimates this legislation would save $200
million statewide annually. CTA President Wayne Johnson called the bill “a
slippery slop to oblivion,” although the California Federation of Teachers
supports the bill. “In budget times like this… we believe you ought to give
districts as much leeway as possible,” said CFT spokesman Mike Weimer.
At the same time CTA is
opposing flexibility for districts on class size, it is putting its full
weight behind a bill that would allow districts flexibility in deciding
whether to implement the state’s high school exit examination. Assemblywoman
Loni Hancock, who is carrying CTA’s bill, said “I think in (budget-cutting)
times like these, you need to leave more and more flexibility to local
districts.”
CTA officials aren’t
the only ones whistling the theme from “Lost in Space.” Last week, the
California Assembly spent 45 minutes debating a bill with a provision to
refer to lousy schools as “high priority” rather than “low-performing.” It
passed, 51-22. This move came years too late for manufacturers of the Yugo,
who could have launched an ad campaign calling their car “Your High Priority
Automobile.”
4) Ontario Union
Holds Convention and Hockey Game Breaks Out.
The Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association held its annual convention
last week and, unlike the NEA, decided boring policy speeches weren’t
entertaining enough. Upset with the answers they received during a meeting
with Education Minister Elizabeth Witmer, a band of “angry teachers punched,
jostled and threw water on” her, according to several published reports.
The incident occurred
after Witmer’s planned open address to convention delegates was changed to a
question-and-answer session closed to the press. The attendees were
reportedly hostile to Witmer’s responses. After taking three questions,
Witmer decided she had had enough and left. According to the National
Post, Witmer was then “chased up an escalator by about two dozen
people,” some of whom wore paper bags over their heads. As her aides tried
to escort her through the crowd, the punching and water-throwing occurred.
The union eventually
issued an apology, although not all participants were contrite. One
letter-writer to the Toronto Star, who claimed to be an eyewitness,
said “the anger demonstrated at this meeting is steeped in the chronic
underfunding of education by this government and its continued dishonesty on
the subject with the public. After coming to a meeting 15 minutes late
because she considered it more important to entertain a media opportunity
outside, after refusing to answer honest questions, after insulting
delegates by calling them liars, Witmer and her handlers craft a story about
being chased out of a meeting and make an allegation about punches being
thrown.”
5) Australia Also
Wonders About Teacher “Shortage.”
International comparisons of public education are fraught with hazards, but
international comparisons of education journalism are less so. The
Australian press, for example, seems to be asking questions about the
conventional wisdom in public education in a much more direct and forthright
way than the American press does. Case in point: a March 5 article by Seamus
Bradley in the newspaper The Age, headlined “The Teacher Shortage –
Crisis or Con?”
Bradley goes down the
list of competing interest groups and their competing claims on whether
there is a teacher shortage in Australia or not. The numbers each side
musters are persuasive, but, just as in America, it is the human cost of
being wrong about shortages that catches the eye.
“The Federal and State
governments’ no-crisis claim is backed up by scores of teachers who can’t
find jobs,” Bradley writes. “Most days they can be heard on talk-back radio
telling tales of how the system ritually humiliates them in their search for
work. Several have phoned and written to The Age, outraged at reports
of a teacher shortage when so many qualified people can’t even find
part-time employment. Many say they feel they were conned into joining the
profession with the promise of plentiful jobs and a slick $1.5 million State
Government advertising campaign.”
Teaching is not day
labor. Declaration of a “shortage” must be based on the best estimates of
the employment situation at least a year from now, because of the time
involved in going through the training pipeline. How could school
administrators have gone so wrong, so fast?
6) Vote Turnout Not
an Internal NEA Priority. One of
the things that make teachers’ unions such a political powerhouse is their
ability to identify voters and get them to the polls. Their methods for
doing so are legendary – which makes their failure to turn out voters for
internal union elections all the more curious.
The Education Support
Employees Association of Clark County, Nevada, in the midst of a
representation battle with Teamsters Local 14, claims about 5,000 members.
Yet its elections produced a total of no more than 227 votes. Similarly, NEA
New Mexico (about 6,700 active members) generated no more than 273 votes in
its recent statewide elections. That’s a 4.1 percent turnout. EIA estimates
that if you added up all of NEA New Mexico’s statewide officers, state reps,
local officers and site reps, the number would almost certainly exceed 273.
This suggests that even union activists aren’t voting.
Are these two examples
representative or anomalous? Who can say? Most teacher union affiliates do
not elect state leaders by rank-and-file vote, and most do not release
turnout figures for local elections.
7)
Quote of the Week.
“If they succeed with this, the ideologues of the right will have their way.
Government will be much smaller and employees will have no say in what
happens to them.” – Mark Neimeiser, chief lobbyist for the American
Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) in Florida,
commenting on a paycheck protection bill working its way through the state
legislature. (March 17 Tallahassee Democrat) |
