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1) NEA Republicans Meet in Minneapolis. Eighty
Republican members of NEA attended the union's Republican Leaders Conference
in Minneapolis August 2-5. Mitt Romney was the only presidential candidate
to attend the reception hosted by NEA President Reg Weaver, but Rudy
Giuliani sent a representative, and the White House sent political director
Jonathan Felts.
NEA has long sought some influence in the Republican
Party, even at
its own electoral expense in 2006, but this cycle the union is receiving
some reciprocal attention from the candidates because the field is wide open
and most need help wherever they can find it. If they are so inclined, they
can also share the common ground of dislike for the No Child Left Behind
Act, which has substantial Tenth Amendment opposition on the right.
But I expect the GOP candidates are unprepared to
understand NEA's political demographics. For example, in the union's
2006 member and local president surveys, even those who described
themselves as "conservative" (a majority of NEA members, if you can believe
it) voted for Democrats more often than for Republicans. And the union's
decision-making echelons are overwhelmingly populated by liberal Democrats,
a fact which makes their support in any capacity problematic.
Still, I'm loath to criticize such efforts, either by
NEA or the Republicans. Engagement leads to knowledge, and knowledge, they
say,
is good.
2) Invoking Godwin's Law in Alabama. Normally a
story about the Alabama Education Association, two-year colleges and elected
officials employed at same would not make the cut here. But AEA Associate
Executive Secretary (and heir apparent) Joe Reed decided the already
overblown controversy needed an application of nuclear fission.
You can find the details of the dispute in
this Birmingham News article, and the comedic elements in the
Flashpoint blog. But I want to focus only on the August 6 letter from
Reed to the state chancellor for two-year colleges, Bradley Byrne.
You can read
Reed's letter in its entirety here. It is full of insults and
recriminations, but the attention-getter was the line, "You are the
Chancellor, not the Fuhrer!" Clever.
This sort of thing has a long and
storied history, encapsulated in the observation now immortalized as
Godwin's Law, which states, "As an online discussion grows longer, the
probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." It
also led to the formulation of the logical fallacy called
reductio ad Hitlerum.
But as I see it the main objection is
not that it employs lazy or faulty logic (it does), or that it is hurtful to
call someone a Nazi (or a terrorist,
see Item #3 here). The problem is that it trivializes the Nazis, or the
terrorists.
The Nazis were real people who were
real evildoers, not cartoon icons to rationalize some petty labor dispute.
3) Teacher Quality Enhanced by Hiring More
Teachers? Washington Post reporter Michael Alison Chandler
suggests a significant amount of the
No Child Left Behind Act's professional development funding isn't being
spent wisely or well. Chandler cites U.S. Department of Education
statistics that reveal about half of the federal teacher quality money was
used to hire teachers to reduce class size.
So, I have a teacher, and I want to improve his/her
quality. The federal government gives me money, and I hire another teacher.
Eh, OK. Now how do I improve the second teacher?
4) Three More NEA Locals Seek AFL-CIO Affiliation.
There hasn't been a flood of NEA local affiliates looking to join the
AFL-CIO, but three are in the pipeline to join the four that have already
signed on.
The first is the Jefferson County Teachers Association,
representing teachers in Louisville, Kentucky, which was rejected the first
time around because of its association with the Change to Win federation (see
Item #4 here). I don't know how the situation has changed since March,
but perhaps a reader will enlighten me.
The other two locals are from California: the Hayward
Education Association and the Oakland Education Association. The former is
best known for its April 2007 strike and the latter for being home to the
authors of most of the fringe new business items introduced at each year's
NEA Representative Assembly.
5) Last Week's Intercepts. EIA's blog,
Intercepts, covered these topics from August 6-13:
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Return of the Pancake Police. If the government ran IHOP.
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How Would You Like to Negotiate with These Guys? A union officer sues
someone for libel and slander. Not me, but his own local president.
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Catholic School Students Are, Uh, Industrious. Yes, they do clean it up
afterwards.
6) Quote of the Week. "Do you send a person to
prison before they're convicted?" – Alabama Education Association Executive
Secretary-Treasurer Paul Hubbert, explaining why teacher Alvin Penez Taylor,
fired in March 2005 for inappropriate sexual activity with a student, is
still collecting paychecks – and raises – from the Talladega County school
system. (August 11
Associated Press)
Arguments
about the case aside, we do, in fact, send people to prison before they're
convicted. |
