|
1) NEA Memo: Kerry Backs Away From
“Pay for Performance.” A confidential memo from
National Education Association President Reg Weaver to union officials
detailed a meeting he had last week with U.S. Senator John Kerry in which
Kerry backed away from the “pay for performance” language in his proposed
education plan.
Senator Kerry gave an education policy
speech at a California high school on May 6 that expressed support for
higher pay for math and science teachers and for those who work in
hard-to-staff schools. He also stated the need “to find ways to reward
teachers for excellence, and to reward the students’ teachers who obviously
show tremendous success.” Kerry said that greater achievement “ought to be
able to command greater pay just the way it does in every other sector of
professional employment in the United States of America.”
After the speech, Kerry’s campaign
released a press statement declaring the candidate “will establish new
systems that reward teachers for excellence in the classroom, including pay
based on improvement in student achievement.”
Many elements of Kerry’s plan caused
consternation at NEA headquarters, but none more so than the reference to
performance pay, which NEA strictly opposes. NEA released a press statement
in response to Kerry’s speech, saying, “We look forward to discussing ways
to help strengthen Senator Kerry’s proposals in ways that will meet the
needs of America’s public school students.”
That opportunity evidently occurred last
week in Washington, D.C., when NEA President Weaver, Executive Director John
Wilson, and Director of Government Relations Diane Shust met with Kerry. In
a memo dated May 21 and disseminated widely to high-ranking NEA officials
nationwide, Weaver described what he called “a very positive meeting in
which the Senator expressed strong interest in working closely with NEA and
outlined his support for a number of NEA priorities.”
On the issue of performance pay, Weaver
reported, “We raised our concerns that the Kerry campaign used the language
‘pay-for-performance’ in his press release, although the Senator himself did
not use those words in his remarks and the formal policy document did not
use it. The Senator clarified that the campaign did not intend to use that
language and would not do so in the future. He asked that I convey this
point to NEA leaders.”
Weaver went on to note Kerry’s
commitment to fully fund the No Child Left Behind Act, to advance early
childhood education programs and to “roll back the Bush tax cuts” to pay for
education and health care. Weaver’s memo did not mention Kerry’s proposals
for differential pay, teacher testing, or expedited teacher dismissal
procedures.
In a May 7 speech to the Democratic
Leadership Council, Kerry said, “Yesterday, I proposed the most far-reaching
reforms in teacher pay in our nation’s history.” Whether or not Kerry uses
the words “pay for performance” in the future is irrelevant to the central
question: Will those reforms survive the resistance of education’s most
powerful special interest group?
2) Great Moments in Black History.
Last week’s commemorations of the 50th anniversary of the U.S.
Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling did contain some
surprises. And while celebrating a historic advancement in equal opportunity
for African-Americans, it bears noting that a similar advancement may be
taking place now. It isn’t being signaled with the certainty and immediacy
of a Supreme Court decision, but African-Americans have come to see that
getting through the schoolhouse doors was only half the battle. They now
seem more than willing to take up the other half.
At an NAACP event last week, comedian
Bill Cosby delivered a rant that may rank as one of the all-time greats. He
lambasted black students and their parents as “knuckleheads” for their
failure to speak proper English, noting that the civil rights leaders in the
audience “marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education
and now we’ve got these knuckleheads walking around.”
Cosby wouldn’t accept poverty as an
excuse. “Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic people are not holding up
their end in this deal,” he declared. “These people are not parenting. They
are buying things for kids -- $500 sneakers, for what? And won’t spend $200
for Hooked on Phonics.”
Some observers have complained that
Cosby’s remarks have not received the media attention they deserved.
Perhaps, but there is something they have not received that we might have
expected: wholesale condemnation. In fact, those who have ventured an
opinion agree with Cosby.
Washington Post columnist Colbert
I. King wrote on Saturday that what Cosby said needed saying. “Fifty years
ago few if any children in my neighborhood went to school hungry,” King
wrote. “Oh, we may not have carried a nutritionally balanced lunch in our
brown bags. And breakfast may not have satisfied the recommended standards
of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But bellies were full of something
when we left home and when we went to bed at night, and it didn’t fall to
the government to do the feeding. Time was you could leave your doors
unlocked. Your mother could walk to church meetings at night without a male
escort. A child didn’t have to fear strangers. And no boy would ever, ever
think of robbing a helpless old man.”
All this came a few days after the
New York Times highlighted a previously unexamined trend: the growth of
black flight to private schools. The story followed Lesley-Anne Jones, a
public school teacher who sends her three sons to the private Trey Whitfield
School in Brooklyn. When they asked her why they can’t attend the school
where she teaches, she didn’t explain school district boundaries to them,
she simply told them: “I’m your mother, and I know what’s good for you. And
the public school won’t be.”
Finally, try parsing this sentence from
a speech given by NEA President Reg Weaver at an event hosted by the Florida
Conference of Black State Legislators: “Let me send my kids to the schools
where yours go and you send yours to where mine go and then you tell me if
money is not important.”
Reasonable people can argue over how
important money is when it comes to education, but when even the foremost
opponent of school choice can offer up as a hypothetical, “Let me send my
kids to the schools where yours go…” it’s a different world out there.
Fifty years from now, will
African-Americans look at these days as ones in which they changed their
focus from access to equal education to access to good education?
3) NEA Briefs.
On March 29, EIA reported that NEA’s troubled web portal OWL.org was about
to undergo a facelift and a name change. It now has been revealed that the
new name will be NEA Interactive. Woes by any other name…
Also, NEA General Counsel Bob Chanin
informed the union’s board of directors that the ongoing U.S. Department of
Labor investigation now includes questions about NEA’s project to organize
charter school employees. No word yet on what DOL’s specific concerns are.
4) Granite Union Officials Forced
Out, No One Says Why. The Granite Education
Association (Utah) board of directors forced the union’s president and two
vice-presidents to resign last week, but no one will reveal why.
President Dean Sheffer, and vice
presidents Debbie White and Rita Heagren submitted resignations, with
Sheffer issuing a statement that his resignation was not due to “any issue
regarding money, honesty, morality, criminal conduct, or any conduct that
might be considered disparaging to Dean Sheffer or the board or staff.”
Union site representatives who attended
the board meeting are still in the dark. “We tried to get the board to
explain why they did what they did,” representative Paul Rosander told the
Salt Lake Tribune. “We still don’t know what’s happening.”
The Granite officers had a history of
being mavericks (see the April 26, 2004 EIA Communiqué), and
Sheffer’s statement is curious considering his resignation agreement also
includes a gag order. We haven’t heard the last of this.
5) Chicago Teachers Union Election
Headed for Runoff. Union politics and school
district finances in Chicago will be intimately intertwined for the next
three weeks. Chicago Teachers Union President Deborah Lynch received 42
percent of the vote in her bid for reelection, short of the majority she
needed. She will now face challenger Marilyn Stewart, who received 31
percent, in a runoff to be held on June 11.
Even as the results were disclosed,
Chicago Public Schools officials were announcing district pay and staff
cuts, and sending layoff notices to 2,180 teachers and 1,300 support
personnel. Whether the cuts, blamed on declining enrollment, have any effect
on the runoff remains to be seen, but clearly Lynch herself thinks they
might.
The union issued a press release this
morning headlined, “CTU President Deborah Lynch Blasts CPS for Slashing
School Staffing” and Lynch appeared personally at a media event to protest
the layoffs at Colman School.
Scheduling Note.
The next issue of the EIA Communiqué will appear on
Tuesday, June 1.
6) Quote of the Week #1.
“They should get teachers who have been proven to increase the test scores
of low-achieving kids and put them in. There’s a lot more to being an
effective teacher than a high degree of content knowledge, pedagogical
skills, and interpersonal skills.” – Nationally certified teacher Louise
Grant, registering her opposition to a South Carolina proposal to assign
nationally certified teachers to high-poverty, high-need schools. (May 23
Augusta Chronicle)
Quote of the Week #2.
“Nothing should be on autopilot. The Big Kahuna in this whole debate is
salaries and benefits. And if you don’t have an opportunity to control those
costs, when enrollment is going down, you can’t manage your budget.” –
Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, commenting on the relationship between teacher
contracts and budget deficits. Extra points for using the term “Big Kahuna.”
(May 23 Minneapolis Star Tribune)
Quote of the Week #3.
“Employees shouldn’t have to take the hit to save public education.” –
Minneapolis Federation of Teachers President Louise Sundin. (May 23
Minneapolis Star Tribune)
Quote of the Week #4.
“We cannot discriminate against someone because they have a criminal
background.” – Milwaukee Public Schools spokesman Phil Harris, explaining
that state law allows convicted felons to work in public schools as long as
their crime is not “substantially related” to the job. WISN-TV found a
teachers’ aide who had gone to prison for giving tequila and cocaine to a
17-year-old girl. (May 18 WISN-TV News)
Quote of the
Week #5.
“We have adults every 30 feet so any student misconduct should be readily
observed.” – Columbia County (Georgia) Superintendent of Schools Tommy
Price, explaining how 20-year-old registered sex offender Christopher Allen
Hall was enrolled as a junior at Harlem High School. Hall was arrested last
week for molesting a 15-year-old student at the school. (May 20 Augusta
Chronicle) |
