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1) NEA Declares War on 65% Solution and TABOR.
The NEA board of directors
approved some unusual things at its February meeting, but it also took
actions that weren't the least bit surprising:
* NEA will send another $250,000 to
Americans United to Protect Social Security.
* NEA will spend more than $583,000 on research and
polling to fight the so-called "65%
Solution" and
Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) legislation and initiatives.
* NEA dues for 2006-07 will be $145, an increase of $5.
Education support employees will pay $80.50. A bylaw amendment creating an
"associate membership" will also be placed before the union's representative
assembly in July (see "Union
Membership Growth Sector?").
2) Teacher Retention: Did You Read the Report?
The Associated Press story from California was headlined: "Report:
State needs to do more to keep teachers from quitting." The story
highlighted the findings of a Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC)
study titled,
Retention of New Teachers in California.
"A moderate salary raise for new teachers boosts the
chances they'll stay in the profession, but mentoring programs and training
are even more effective," the story begins, adding, "Providing just $4,400
more in annual pay increases the chance an elementary teacher would stay by
17 percent."
Here we go again.
In fairness, PPIC explains very clearly in the report
the limitations of its data. Of course, the qualifications and caveats
rarely make it into newspaper stories, leaving us with several levels
between the data and the newspaper account. Do the data support the
research? Does the research support the conclusions? Do the conclusions
support the executive summary? And, does the executive summary support the
story written about it? The PPIC report breaks down at each of these levels.
* Old data. The comprehensive data cover only
the 1990s, making the report very useful as a historical study but much less
useful as a policy prescription more than six years later. There was also a
significant event in the mid-1990s that the authors admit greatly affected
teacher turnover: the statewide class size reduction program.
* Compared to what? The giant omission of all
teacher turnover studies. PPIC tells us that we lost one-quarter of new
teachers over their first seven years on the job. How do we know if that's a
lot, too many, or not enough? No one provides information for comparable
professions, in the public or private sector, to let us know.
* Did they really leave? The data are limited to
California, so teachers who left to teach in other states are considered
"leavers." Fair enough, but the data also show that 31 percent of leavers
return to teach in California over a period of eight years after they leave.
That seems odd, until we also ask…
* Why did they leave? The authors found that
"about 60 percent of new teachers who left public school district employment
during the 1990s did not work for a California employer in the following
year. Some of these teachers left the state (perhaps to teach in another
state) and others may have become homemakers." The large percentage of
teachers who leave, and then do not work the following year, plus the high
percentage who return to teaching later, plus the fact that a majority of
teachers are women in their child-bearing years, suggest the obvious: many
teachers leave to start families, and a significant percentage of them
return to teaching when their children are old enough.
Of the other leavers, 16-21% left to teach in private
schools. Another 10% moved on to teach in higher education, suggesting that
solving the K-12 teacher turnover "problem" might help create a higher
education turnover problem.
* Did they leave of their own volition? The
authors admit, "Indeed, we cannot distinguish between teachers who left
voluntarily and those who were fired." Yet this is crucial information. The
report's policy recommendation is based on findings about teachers in their
first two years. But two years is the California probationary period. If
administrators are firing teachers after the second year, is that a turnover
problem? No, it's a training problem or an aptitude problem, either of which
require different solutions.
* Is it really a problem? Depending on how many
education research reports you read, it may surprise you to discover that
the authors stated, "For California, we find that turnover improved during
the 1990s." Yes, teacher turnover was reduced in the 1990s. "Over the 1990s,
the probability that a new teacher would leave public school employment fell
from about 8 percent in 1993-94 to just over 5 percent in 1998-99," the
authors wrote. Well, never let the lack of a problem stop you from
suggesting a costly solution.
* How much would it cost? PPIC concludes:
"Controlling for other district factors, a $4,400 increase in starting
teacher salary reduced the probability that a new teacher would leave public
school teaching in the first two years by 17 percent for teachers with
multiple-subject certifications and by 9 percent for teachers with
single-subject certifications during the early 1990s. With over 300,000
public school teachers working in California, the cost of increasing all
salaries by that increment would be over $1.3 billion."
* And the effect would be…? PPIC tells us that
California hired about 20,000 new public school teachers in 2004-05. "At
20,000 hired per year, we would expect about 5,000 teachers to leave during
their first seven years of teaching," the authors state. That's roughly 714
teachers per year.
"Put differently," they continue, "reducing teacher
turnover in the first seven years by half, for example, would cut the total
number of new hires each year to about 17,500."
So, let's see if I have this straight. If California
increased teacher salaries by $1.3 billion annually, we would have to hire
2,500 fewer new teachers each year. That comes to $520,000 per retained
teacher.
Somehow, I think I prefer the turnover.
3) California Teachers Association Not Tapped Out
Yet. The California Teachers Association (CTA) may be paying off the
bills for the November 2005 election for a few more years, but as long as
teachers keep getting paychecks, the union will have some cash to spend on
political campaigns.
CTA's State Council recently authorized the union to
spend up to $2 million on June 2006 ballot initiatives. The only two
measures on the June ballot are a $600 million library construction bond and
Rob Reiner's universal preschool initiative. Which of these do you think
will get the money?
4) South Carolina Education Association Is Under
Construction. Only days after EIA reported the ouster of South Carolina
Education Association Executive Director Richard Miller, the union's web
site was
taken down for remodeling. What other cracks are being filled?
5) Nebraska Also Has a Hiring Curve. Last week,
EIA noted the executive director hiring process at the Michigan Education
Association (see next item). Now the Nebraska State Education Association is
trying just about the same thing.
NSEA Executive Director Jim Griess announced his
retirement, effective at the end of 2006. The union's board of directors
decided to offer the job to Craig R. Christiansen, an NSEA associate
executive director. Prior to holding that job, Christiansen was a UniServ
director, and before that he was a two-term NSEA president.
Even now, Christiansen's successor may be working his
own way through NSEA (see
Nebraska Pipeline).
6) Last week's Intercepts. EIA's blog,
Intercepts, covered these topics from February 13-19:
*
I Stand Corrected. I first thought NEA's arrangement with the AFL-CIO
was merely to allow its locals to participate in the federation's central
labor councils. But I was wrong. Under the new agreement, NEA locals will be
able to join the AFL-CIO at local, state and federal levels. The two
organizations also signed a no-raid agreement. On the horizon: a "creeping"
merger with AFT.
*
Michigan Line of Succession Becomes a Curve. Sitting Michigan Education
Association president gets executive director job in his own union.
*
One Size Fits All or Too Many Sizes? The Harvard Civil Rights
Project criticizes the U.S. Department of Education for being too flexible
in implementing the No Child Left Behind Act. Really.
7) Quote of the Week.
"Carpenter agents just
walked into the building, representing themselves as labor-standard
representatives to our employees and took their names and phone numbers.
They later called my employees at home and tried to negotiate union status
in exchange for them lying about my company. What's wrong with this picture?
I believe in working with the unions and I have signed with some of them,
but to have representatives call me and use gestapo tactics and to tell me
I'm going to have problems is not my way of dealing." – Luis Cruz of Cruz
Inc. General Contractors, testifying before the Philadelphia School Reform
Commission. (February 17
Philadelphia Inquirer) |
