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1) Palace Coup Underway in Puerto
Rico Union. One might think that events in Puerto
Rico would barely qualify as a sidelight in overall interests of the
American Federation of Teachers, but with about 37,000 potential members,
the Federación de Maestros de Puerto Rico (FMPR) could eventually rival the
Chicago Teachers Union in size. The stakes are high for AFT, and all
indications suggest the union is making its play.
On July 15, EIA reported exclusively on
an open letter distributed to AFT delegates by FMPR President Rafael
Feliciano Hernandez, accusing AFT of "improper intervention in the internal
affairs of the FMPR." Feliciano Hernandez was elected in 2003 on a platform
that included disaffiliation from AFT (you can read his agenda – in Spanish
-- at
http://www.geocities.com/codemi2003/). In particular, Feliciano
Hernandez claimed AFT was building a parallel structure of FMPR officials
who wanted the federation to remain in AFT.
Last Monday, Feliciano Hernandez
announced publicly that FMPR had officially begun the disaffiliation
process. AFT had no public comment about the announcement and, privately,
the union expressed no concern about it at all. Now we know why.
Today, the FMPR governing board
announced it would call on the union's representative assembly, meeting on
September 29, to formally investigate Feliciano for 40 alleged violations of
the organization's regulations.
After AFT presidents have been ousted in
Miami, Washington, DC, and New Hampshire, it is impossible to dismiss the
charges against Feliciano Hernandez out of hand. But one must also wonder
whether this is exactly what the "parallel structure" was designed to do. At
the very least, the disaffiliation will be stalled until Feliciano Hernandez
addresses the charges.
2) Aborting the Renaissance in
Chicago. Last June, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley
announced a new school reform plan dubbed Renaissance 2010. The project will
take about 70 poorly performing schools and transform them into 100 new
schools – many of them charter or "contract" schools that will be allowed to
hire non-union staff. As you might expect, the Chicago Teachers Union is
less than thrilled with the idea, but it appears counter-tactics are already
in the works.
The new schools will be designed by
"transition advisory councils," which will be 15-member teams of parents,
educators, students, and business and community leaders. But the councils
might simply become new political battlegrounds. "What you would do is get
on [a council] and sabotage the new school from being a charter or
contract," one unidentified teacher told the Chicago Sun-Times.
3) Upholding the Law in Public
Education. In Kentucky, the governor's budget will
require most public employees to pay a higher share of their health
insurance premiums. The Kentucky Education Association (KEA), among others,
is upset about this. Representatives of KEA's largest local, the Jefferson
County Teachers Association, approved a one-day strike in protest. The voice
vote was unanimous. Next Friday, KEA will take up the question of a
statewide strike.
Public employee strikes in Kentucky are
illegal – a fact no one denies. KEA lobbied for a state collective
bargaining law in 2000, reassuring the legislature and the public that the
no-strike law would remain in force. Yet the local union announced it had
voted to break the law, and the state union will now consider a vote to
break the law.
EIA is on record in opposition to
no-strike laws (ref. September 30, 2002 EIA Communiqué) because of
their general lack of enforcement. But it is ironic that while very few
governments are willing to enforce no-strike laws for teachers, a growing
number of governments are willing to energetically enforce school district
residency laws for parents and students.
Over the past three years, EIA has
published eight items on the "black market in school choice," a practice by
which parents lie or misinform school district officials about where they
live in order to get their children into better schools. Many districts have
resorted to hiring what amounts to a border patrol to follow children home
after school. This morning's Cleveland Plain Dealer has the latest
roundup on this issue.
A number of districts have anonymous tip
lines to rat out these undocumented students. The districts that keep
statistics reported that about one out of every four investigations resulted
in the withdrawal of a student. Some parents are being prosecuted. The
removals save local taxpayers the cost of educating out-of-district
students, but it also means that local taxpayers are footing the bill for
investigators who are spying on innocent people three out of every four
times.
I expect that if some of these junior
G-men were acting on anonymous tips down at the local union hall there would
be more outrage.
4) Sinking Ship Raises the Jolly
Roger. Since 1994, the South Carolina Education
Association (SCEA) has lost nearly one-quarter of its membership. In a state
where teachers' organizations have to compete for members, the SCEA is no
longer competitive.
Over that period of time, NEA has
committed resources, money and staff to South Carolina in an attempt to
reverse the trend. SCEA underwent a "redesign" earlier this year (see
February 2, 2004 EIA Communiqué) to make the organization's structure
more appealing to potential members and leaders. But when the union's
delegate assembly meets on November 13, representatives will vote up or down
on a real visionary idea: more PAC money!
South Carolina is one of the
states where the union enjoys a "reverse check-off" policy for PAC
contributions. Currently, each SCEA member automatically contributes $5 to
the union's political action committee, unless an individual designates the
money for the union's (general fund) legislative program or asks for a
refund. While the contributions are segregated once they reach SCEA, many
members are probably unaware that their dues payments include a PAC
contribution.
The SCEA delegates will vote on a
proposal to double the annual PAC contribution to $10, which would give the
union a six-figure war chest to spend on state legislative races and other
campaigns.
5) Grammar the Way Grandma Learned
It. Like most things worth knowing, proper grammar
is difficult to master. For example, that last sentence doesn't sound quite
right. Dawn Burnette is a high school English teacher in Georgia who was
frustrated with her students' lack of knowledge of the basic rules of
grammar. But she did something about it.
Burnette created her own program, called
Daily Grammar Practice, consisting of a five-minute daily lesson in which
students fix the errors in a grammatically incorrect sentence. First
published in 2003, the program is now used in 33 states and overseas.
Students learn to identify the parts of speech and also (gasp!) diagram
sentences.
"If you don't understand structure, you
don't know how to frame your thoughts to get your point across," student
Jane Welch told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "This helps you
write more coherently."
Details about Daily Grammar Practice are
available at
http://www.dgppublishing.com.
6) Quote of
the Week.
"First, charters are not in themselves a reform strategy;
they are a blank slate. They are simply an opportunity to try something new,
and they run the gamut from alternative schools for inner-city dropouts and
incarcerated teens to International Baccalaureate academies in posh suburbs.
A welter of studies has laid claims to both the superiority of charters and
their inferiority, but we don't learn much from that. To discuss their
effectiveness as a group means about as much as trying to evaluate whether
restaurants, as a group, are good. Some are wonderful, some dreadful, some
have shut down and some probably ought to." -- Jonathan Schorr, author and
high school program director for the KIPP Foundation. (September 11
Washington Post) |
