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1) NEA Pledges $2.5 Million to Fight
Arnold in California. The National Education
Association's board of directors approved an allocation of $2.5 million to
aid the California Teachers Association (CTA) in its opposition to the
education initiatives championed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The money will come from the national
union's ballot initiative/legislative crisis fund, to which each NEA member
across the country currently contributes $5 annually. The NEA contribution
is in addition to the approximately $10 million in CTA's own initiative
fund, and the proposed $54 million CTA could generate if its state council
next month approves a $60 annual dues increase that would last for the next
three years.
Although the NEA grant is large, it is
actually a decrease from the almost $3.5 million it gave CTA for various
ballot initiatives last year, the $3 million it gave CTA in 2001-02, and the
$4.5 million it supplied to CTA to defeat a voucher initiative in 2000-01.
NEA will also take an active hand in the
California campaign. The union will publish a list of those who financially
support Gov. Schwarzenegger and his various initiatives.
2) NEA Proposes Multi-Leveled Union
Dues. Last year, NEA's membership committee was
asked to study "the impact of the changes in the financial status of states
and state/local affiliate budgets on the current dues structure at NEA and
its affiliates and make recommendations as deemed necessary." (see the
July 3, 2004 EIA Communiqué) That's another way of asking,
"Should we change the way we assess dues?"
The current formula for NEA's national
dues is .00225 times the national average annual salary for classroom
teachers for the previous year (this portion retained by NEA) plus .00055
times the same average salary (this portion returned to affiliates in the
form of UniServ grants). An additional assessment is extracted for the
union's ballot initiative, media and legislative crisis funds. All full-time
teachers pay that same amount, whether a brand-new teacher in Mississippi or
a 35-year teacher in New Jersey.
Over the weekend, the NEA Board of
Directors approved, in theory, creating a new national dues structure that
will set different dues levels depending on a member's actual salary. The
number of different levels and the dues for each will be assembled for board
approval just prior to the NEA Representative Assembly in July. If the board
approves the specific plan, the necessary amendments will be presented for
delegate approval in July 2006.
3) More Spending on "Classroom
Instruction": Are You Sure? Minnesota Gov. Tim
Pawlenty is supporting a bill in the state legislature that would require
school districts to spend at least 65 percent of their revenues on classroom
instruction. Leaving aside the question of whether this is a good or bad
idea, what exactly constitutes classroom instruction spending?
The federal government's definition
includes current spending for teachers' salaries and benefits, along with
"supplies, materials, and contractual services." Generally speaking, that
means textbooks, paper, pencils, chalk, and all the other usual materials
associated with a classroom that need to be replaced periodically.
EIA's analysis indicates the United
States directs 90 percent of instructional spending to teacher salaries and
benefits. The percentages in the states range from Indiana's 96.8 percent to
the District of Columbia's 77.5 percent. Minnesota ranks 16th, devoting 91.8
percent of its instructional spending to teacher salaries and benefits.
Since nine of every ten dollars will go
to the teacher, it's an unnecessary obfuscation to describe it as higher
classroom spending. Unless Minnesota or other states plan to radically
change this ratio, they should just call for a floor of about 59 percent of
district budgets to go to teacher compensation. But is that what they really
want?
See Table 5 of EIA's school pay and
staffing statistics report for state rankings of teacher compensation as a
percentage of instructional spending on the EIA web page at
http://www.eiaonline.com/statistics.htm.
4) Is Montana a Glimpse into the
Future of the AFL-CIO? The New York Times
ran another story on the dissension among the leadership of the AFL-CIO,
this time in the wake of layoffs of about one-quarter of the federation's
staff (foretold in the
March 14 EIA Communiqué under the headline "Evil Corporation
Balances Budget on Backs of Workers").
Though there are a lot of different
agendas, the key players appear to be dividing into two camps, with the SEIU,
Teamsters and hotel and restaurant workers on one side, and AFL-CIO
President John Sweeney and his supporters on the other. What happens between
them will certainly have a great effect on the direction of organized labor
in the short term.
But in Montana, where the stakes are not
nearly so high, a similar battle is taking place that might actually have
greater long-term ramifications for unions. Montana AFL-CIO executive
secretary Jerry Driscoll is stepping down, and next week his successor will
be chosen by delegates to the federation's convention. The candidates are
firefighter and Democratic state legislator Bob Bergren, and Jim McGarvey,
vice president of MEA-MFT, the merged state affiliate of both the NEA and
AFT.
Education employees make up the majority
of AFL-CIO-affiliated union members in the state, meaning McGarvey is the
prohibitive favorite. "We have never split our votes," MEA-MFT President
Eric Feaver told the Associated Press. "If there is a roll call vote at the
AFL-CIO, I will stand up and cast all 15,000 votes for Jim McGarvey, and
that will be the end of it."
There are other states where education
employees make up the majority of union members (Alabama springs immediately
to mind), but Montana may be the first to have a teachers' union – and
especially an NEA-affiliated teachers' union – in the forefront of the
organized labor movement. As the AFL-CIO continues to lose market share, NEA
and AFT vastly improve their relative standing in the labor movement, even
in lean years.
There is still a great reluctance among
many NEA state affiliates to associate with the AFL-CIO unions. One of the
biggest concerns is how a close relationship with industrial unions would
affect NEA's public image. But what if the influence was in the other
direction? Could teachers' unions reshape the AFL-CIO? Montana might be a
test case.
5) Does This Frighten You?
Last week the Associated Press reported on a study by university researchers
on the ethical standards of journalists and other professions. The angle of
the AP story was that journalists scored higher than expected on a standard
test that poses ethical dilemmas. The test-takers make a decision, then
answer a series of questions about why they made a particular decision.
Journalists trailed only seminarians, medical students and doctors when it
came to basing their decisions on sound ethical reasoning.
The study chose an odd assortment of
groups for comparison purposes, but whatever the limitations of the
research, it should stop us all dead in our tracks to learn that junior high
school students scored lowest on the ethics test – below prison inmates.
Of course, age must be a factor. As we
mature we are more likely to do the right thing (at least I hope so).
Nevertheless, even the notion that adolescents might have fewer scruples
than criminals is a jarring one.
6) Dispatch from the Trenches.
As we all argue in the abstract from on high, here's a story about what it
all means at ground level, from the May 4 Amsterdam News in New York
City:
http://www.amsterdamnews.com/news/Article/Article.asp?NewsID=56809&sID=4
7) Quote of
the Week.
"No state is compelled to take this money. What the union and
the state of Connecticut are basically doing is putting their hand out to
the federal taxpayer and saying, 'Put up and butt out.'" – former U.S.
Department of Education general counsel Brian W. Jones, commenting on the
National Education Association’s lawsuit over the No Child Left Behind Act.
(May 4 Education Week) |
