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1) Why the AFL-CIO Is Wasting Dues.
The AFL-CIO held its executive council meeting in Florida last week, and
voted to raise its assessment on member unions by 48 cents. The additional
$6 million is earmarked for its campaign war chest to unseat President Bush.
“This is an election of a lifetime from my perspective,” Terry O’Sullivan,
president of the Laborers International Union of North America, told the
Associated Press. “We can’t live four more years under Bush.” The umbrella
group of 64 labor unions is expected to spend $44 million on the
presidential campaign.
The AFL-CIO is free to spend as much
money, time and energy as it likes to put John Kerry in the White House. If
the stars align correctly, the group might even get the job done. But it is
delusional to think a Kerry presidency is going to have anything other than
a marginal effect on the fortunes of Big Labor.
Recent history is instructive. In 1993,
the first year of the Clinton administration, there were 105 million
employed Americans, of whom 16.6 million were union members (15.8 percent).
In 2000, Clinton’s last year in office, there were 120.8 million employed
Americans, of whom 16.3 million were union members (13.4 percent). Today,
after three years of the Bush administration, there are 122.4 million
employed Americans, of whom 15.8 million are union members (12.9 percent).
Almost 92 percent of private sector jobs are non-union, which is actually
understated because the U.S. Department of Labor does not count the
self-employed in these statistics – and any intuitive reasoning would
suggest the number of self-employed people has skyrocketed in the past 10
years.
The AFL-CIO can blame its problems on
Bush, Reagan, or Ulysses S. Grant. But taking $44 million from the paychecks
of truck drivers and bricklayers to scare up support for its third choice
for President of the United States isn’t really going to help it out of its
hole.
2) New National Certification Study
Full of Surprises. EIA has been among the skeptics
regarding national certification of teachers. The amount of money funneled
to the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) since
1987, coupled with the bonuses and fees paid by various states to national
certification awardees and applicants, has been enormous. Yet there has been
little attention paid to what we are getting for our money, and no
large-scale empirical study of the effects of national certification on
student achievement. Until now.
Dan Goldhaber and Emily Anthony of the
Urban Institute released a reported titled, “Can Teacher Quality Be
Effectively Assessed?” (available in full at (http://www.crpe.org)
Goldhaber and Anthony matched more than 600,000 student records with more
than 32,000 teachers in North Carolina, covering school years 1996-1999 and
grades 3-5. They concluded that nationally certified teachers “appear to be
more effective than their noncertified counterparts.”
That sentence was all national
certification supporters needed to hear. “New research underscores the
importance of NEA’s support of and promotion of National Board
Certification,” announced the union. NBPTS Chair Roy E. Barnes added that
the study “provides state and national policymakers with proof that National
Board Certification is a smart investment.”
Ay, there’s the rub.
As is usually the case in education
research, the report’s findings are far more equivocal than is reported in
the newspaper headlines. The report shows no signs of bias and, to their
everlasting credit, Goldhaber and Anthony actually address the cost
effectiveness issue.
First, let’s look at the actual gains
achieved by students of national board certified teachers (NBCTs) when
compared to others. Goldhaber and Anthony found that teachers who never
applied for national certification increased their students’ reading scores
by 5.69 points, and math scores by 9.75 points. Teachers who applied for
national certification, but failed to achieve it on the first try, increased
their students’ reading scores by 5.83 in reading, and 9.14 in math. NBCTs
increased student reading scores by 6.18 points in reading and 10.21 points
in math. Goldhaber and Anthony themselves call the differences “relatively
small.”
Goldhaber and Anthony estimate direct
payments to NBPTS at over $350 million, not counting the additional bonuses
and fees paid to teachers who underwent the national certification process.
The authors conclude that national certification is much less cost-effective
than even class size reduction – another highly expensive program – but may
be more cost-effective than paying a premium for teachers who hold a
master’s degree since the evidence on the value of this credential is “quite
mixed,” according to the authors.
The most fascinating part of this story
is not the report itself, which, by the standards of the education field, is
as good a piece of empirical research as one may hope to find. No, the
fascinating part is the NEA’s applause. Let’s summarize what Goldhaber and
Anthony have done:
* Used the standardized tests of
students to measure teacher effectiveness (strictly a no-no per NEA
Resolution B-57).
* Chose North Carolina to study because
that state administers standardized tests annually, beginning in third grade
(a major NEA complaint against NCLB).
* Concluded that national certification
is a better investment for public school systems than a master’s degree (a
hallmark of the traditional salary schedule championed by NEA).
* Found that going through the national
certification process itself “does not appear to make teachers more
effective.” (contrary to the testimonials of NBCTs)
For all these compromises, the union
(and the rest of us) gets an extra half-point in reading and math. Goldhaber
and Anthony’s report, rather than close the book on national certification’s
effectiveness, seems to have opened up volumes of questions.
3) Washington State Legislature
Approves Charter Schools. Over the strong
objections of the Washington Education Association (WEA), the Washington
state legislature approved a modest bill that would allow the creation of 45
charter schools over the next six years. Gov. Gary Locke is expected to sign
the bill into law. When he does, Washington will become the 41st
state with a charter school law.
Despite efforts to standardize its
policies toward charter schools over the past few years, NEA continues to
hold conflicting attitudes towards charters. While the union is funding an
effort to organize charter school teachers into locals, some affiliates are
doing their best to alienate them. WEA President Charles Haase told the
Seattle Times that charters give “a foot in the door to those who would
like to privatize public schools and turn them over to profiteers.”
Meanwhile, in Buffalo, New York, the
local unions so despise charter schools they are refusing to participate in
a fundraising event if charter schools also take part.
Buffalo schools raise money for school
field trips and supplies by holding a “Carnival in the Park” every June.
This year, the Buffalo Teachers Federation and the principals’ union decided
to boycott the event because charter schools will also be there to raise
funds. “They have chosen not to put children first,” Michelle Stevens,
founder and organizer of the carnival, told the Buffalo News. What
makes the unions’ boycott even more curious is that charter schools have
taken part in the carnival for the past three years.
4) Circular Logic Surrounds Boston
Strike Vote. The Boston Teachers Union (BTU)
overwhelmingly approved a one-day strike to take place March 23, in protest
of the failure to reach a contract settlement with the school district. But
teacher strikes are illegal in Massachusetts, and the state labor relations
commission is investigating the union’s actions.
The union’s defense is brazen. BTU
officials claim Superintendent Thomas Payzant canceled classes on March 23,
so the strike is not an illegal work stoppage. “The superintendent has
already called off school, so there will be no impact on the children,” BTU
spokesman Stephen Crawford told the Boston Globe.
But Payzant canceled classes (making
March 23 a professional development day), after the March 10 BTU
strike vote. He specifically cited the strike as his reason for closing
schools in a March 11 letter to parents.
BTU posted what it claims is a verbatim
transcript of President Richard Stutman’s remarks to the rank-and-file just
prior to the union’s debate and vote on the strike on March 10. Stutman
outlined what the union’s actions would be in case of various eventualities.
The following two sentences are copied here exactly as they appear on the
BTU web site:
“If they do not call off school OR if
they schedule another activity at school that day – let’s say professional
development for staff – we will picket in front of every school building
beginning :45 before sign-in and lasting for :30 after sign-in. We will
expect that no one enters school and if anyone does.”
“If anyone does,” then what?
5) Amid Layoffs, Nashville Union
Demands Treadmill Pay. School officials in
Nashville, Tennessee, are facing a $42.2 million budget deficit in the
coming school year and, if the situation doesn’t improve, are planning to
lay off as many as 240 classroom teachers.
The district is also in contract
negotiations with the Metro Nashville Education Association (MNEA), whose
demands are entertaining, to say the least. Reporter Diane Long of The
Tennessean uncovered an MNEA proposal to have the district “pay 50% of
fees for teachers to join a health club or other wellness program.”
MNEA chief negotiator Eric Huth told
Long that the union’s proposals “are things that help the district attract
new teachers that are highly qualified and retain the highly qualified
teachers we have.”
6) “Beware of March 15.”
One of the themes of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is
suffering the consequences of ignored warnings. Two articles were published
last week – at opposite ends of the country – that act as educational
soothsayers, if only we pay attention to them.
The first was by reporter Laura Diamond
in the March 7 Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The piece was headlined
“To read or not to read,” and it detailed the use of Shakespeare study
guides in Atlanta high school classrooms – specifically, study guides that
modernize Shakespeare’s language.
Diamond dutifully found people on both
sides of the issue, but performed an even greater service by providing
examples of the original language and their “modern translations.” Among
these are the soothsayer’s warning (translated in the title of this item)
and Marc Antony’s funeral oration, which is translated as “Friends, Romans,
countrymen, give me your attention. I have come here to bury Caesar, not to
praise him. The evil that men do is remembered after their deaths, but the
good is often buried with them.”
Shakespeare can be tough sledding for
adults, never mind high school students, but the above “translations” have
little to do with explaining the quirks of Elizabethan English or archaic
references. At best, they turn poetry into prose. At worst, they assume a
word like “interred” is beyond the capacity of a high school student to
understand in context or even (gasp!) look up in the dictionary.
The second soothsayer is Suzy Ronfeldt,
a Bay Area third-grade teacher who wrote an editorial in the March 12 San
Francisco Chronicle. In a piece headlined “Why Johnny Can’t Add,”
Ronfeldt sought to warn us about the evils of Rod Paige, NCLB and
standardized tests. Instead, Ronfeldt inadvertently explained why
California’s schoolchildren rank near the bottom of states’ rankings in
mathematics. Ronfeldt, it should be said, is the author of a third-grade
math book, and here she describes how the problem of 38 minus 19 is handled
in her classroom:
“First, the children share their
problems, and we discuss whether they make sense for 38 minus 19. Then the
children share their various strategies for solving these problems. One
child breaks 19 into ‘friendly numbers’ such as 10 and 9 before she begins
subtracting. Another ‘counts up’ from 19 to 38, and another decides to
‘round’ the numbers, subtract them and then compensate for the rounding. All
the while, the children are sharing their thinking and reasoning with one
another. You won’t find this kind of ‘math talk’ in a workbook or a
standardized test.”
Maybe Johnny can’t add because he’s too
busy talking about adding.
7) Quote of
the Week.
“Collective bargaining isn’t a public process. We’ve learned over the years
that bargaining in public is not productive because the parties can get more
involved in playing to the audience, so to speak, than in getting a contract
negotiated.” – NEA staffer Bob Strunk, quoted in the March-April 2004 issue
of The Advocate’s Voice, the organ of NEA New Mexico. |
