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1) Union Money Floods into Utah. Today was the
first campaign finance disclosure deadline in Utah for the November
referendum on vouchers, and the state received
the shocking news that the National Education Association had already
sent the Utah Education Association $1.5 million for the campaign.
UEA continues to insist that the
$3 million promised by NEA is "speculative." We'll see.
NEA gave $34,811.68 directly to Utahns for Public
Schools on July 24 (perhaps in-kind), and its $1.5 million to UEA was
delivered in three equal installments on August 22, August 31 and September
10.
The Associated Press has
now picked up the other news from the disclosure reports. UEA also
received additional sums from NEA state affiliates: $1,000 from the Ohio
Education Association, $1,003.50 from the Wyoming Education Association,
$1,000 from the Maine Education Association, and $5,000 from the Colorado
Education Association.
EIA can also report here exclusively that the Nebraska
State Education Association will send $10,000 to Utah from its own ballot
initiative fund. All of these state affiliate contributions are in addition
to the funds promised by NEA.
There is no mention of
Communities for Quality Education in these disclosure reports, though
the NEA front group's activities in support of the anti-voucher campaign
have been reported in the state press.
We can expect the NEA grants and the state affiliate
donations to continue, limited only by UEA's assessment of how much will be
necessary to defeat the referendum. NEA sent $10 million to California in
2005 to defeat Gov. Schwarzenegger's education initiatives, and that was
with a national fund for ballot measures that was about half the size it is
today.
2) No Guile Left Behind in Reauthorization Debate.
I applaud the fortitude of those commentators who waded into the midst of
the Congressional hearings on reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind
Act while they were going on. Instant analysis in such situations is
dangerous waters, and I opted to stay on dry land.
As I write this, I have in front of me some three dozen
different news stories, op-eds, blog posts, and other documents from last
week. These are just the ones I printed out of the hundred or so I read.
I've divided them into three categories, none of which really have anything
to do with the substance of the law, but which highlight NCLB's unique
status in today's American national political debate.
Liberal Democrats vs. Liberal Democrats – Splits
in the Democratic Party tend to be along the moderate/liberal fault line,
even on Iraq. But on NCLB, you have liberals on both sides, moderates on
both sides, and conservatives on both sides. In a political atmosphere where
you can easily predict which group will support what position, I find this
refreshing, if a bit weird.
Miller vs. NEA – The newswires and the
blogosphere lit up when Rep. George Miller and NEA President Reg Weaver had
a
testy exchange over the inclusion of a performance pay proposal in the
reauthorization discussion draft, with Miller saying, "You can dance around
all you want. You approved the language."
This was followed by an exchange of letters, first from
Weaver to Miller, then
Miller to Weaver. Then we had op-eds and press releases galore.
It's easy to make too much of this. Few remember that
NEA and Sen. Ted Kennedy went at it hammer and tongs (in private) during the
run-up to the original NCLB. But Miller, Kennedy and the mobs of Democrats
who voted for NCLB have constituencies other than NEA to please, which makes
this one rare education law.
On the other hand, Rep. Miller (like
Sen. Obama in July) failed to recognize NEA's internal imperatives. I
don't know what conversations NEA and Miller had about performance pay when
discussing the TEACH Act of 2005, but Miller should have known that putting
the same provision in an NCLB reauthorization bill was a different kettle of
fish.
NEA has red meat issues. Vouchers, seniority, tenure
and merit pay are just a few. The union holds the positions it does on these
issues not only because it is in its interest to do so, but because it also
serves a greater organizational purpose. Many people have commented on the
NEA presence at the hearings and its series of action alerts before the bill
has even been introduced. Could the union generate that kind of
participation, enthusiasm and activism if the purpose was to cut a deal on
performance pay?
A union officer would much rather tell the members, "We
oppose this bill because it contains merit pay" than tell them "We support
this bill because it contains many good things for us, despite the merit
pay."
In short, you can't give a rousing battlefield speech
and then join the other side without angering your troops.
NEA vs. CTA – This was the oddest angle of the
entire week. For the better part of a day, some commentators thought there
had been a split between NEA and the California Teachers Association over
the Miller-McKeon discussion draft. As it turned out, it was a
misunderstanding because CTA announced its opposition to the draft at a
press conference on September 10, which made news a lot more quickly and
prominently than
NEA's own press release, announcing its opposition to the draft
language.
What made it more confusing is that CTA is more
militant about NCLB than NEA is (yes, really!). There is a significant
faction in the California union that wants the law entirely scrapped.
However, the hypothesis that CTA could publicly oppose such a high-profile
bill that NEA supported demonstrates a poor knowledge of NEA governance. If
for no other reason, a state or local affiliate's annual UniServ grants from
NEA require active support of "national program priorities."
Don't expect to see much NEA movement on any provision
of NCLB. They've invested in a zero-sum game and they'll be the last to
fold.
3) The Coriolis Effect. Members of the
Australian Education Union (AEU) in Victoria plan to strike in November over
the state government's failure to comply with their demands for a 10 percent
wage increase each year for the next three years. In order to bolster its
bargaining position, the AEU released a survey containing the phrases "new
teachers," “five years," and "half leaving."
But because it is in the
Southern Hemisphere (or perhaps because it is on the other side of the
International Dateline), AEU's survey posited that
half of all new teachers will leave in the next five to 10
years.
5) Last Week's Intercepts. EIA's blog,
Intercepts, covered these topics from September 10-17:
*
Jonathan Kozol's Diary: Day 68. If Jonathan Kozol were hitting himself
in the head with a hammer every morning to protest NCLB, would it be a noble
act?
*
Flat Buns Bring Bitter Rivals Together. What do the Tennessee Education
Association and the American Family Association have in common?
*
Valerie Bertinelli Reveals Diet Was Partial Fast to Support NCLB
Reauthorization. An EIA exclusive.
*
Today's One-Size-Fits-All Standardized Test. Fill in the bubbles.
6) Quote of the Week #1. "Do I like the NEA
better than the NRA? Sure, but in terms of the way they operate and what
they do, they're the same – and you should be equally skeptical of their
claims. There are times when the interests of the adults and the interests
of the kids are not the same, and it's naïve to deny that." – Andrew
Rotherham, co-director of Education Sector. (September 14 National
Journal)
Quote of the Week #2. "In higher education,
finance professors make more than economists, and economists earn more than
history professors. It's a simply matter of supply and demand in the labor
market. Some skills command higher returns outside of teaching than others.
That doesn't demean history professors. History professor know they are
likely to earn less money than finance professors (with exceptions like
Stephen Ambrose) when they enter graduate school. There's a saying we have
in economics – 'you can't repeal the law of supply and demand.' What that
means is that if you don't let price clear the market then something else
will. In the case of science and math, since we don't allow relative pay for
these teachers rise, the market clears in the quality dimension. We have
many educators 'teaching out of field' in those areas as compared to fields
in which supply is more plentiful." – Michael Podgursky, professor of
economics at the University of Missouri-Columbia. (September 17
EducationNews.org).
Quote of the Week #3. "'A lot of districts are
kind of stuck in the old mindset' that parents are responsible for their
children's breakfast, Chandran said, 'And that doesn't yield good
participation.'" – from a San Diego Union-Tribune story about
under-use of the school breakfast program, quoting and paraphrasing
Sivakumar Chandran of California Food Policy Advocates. (September 15
San Diego Union-Tribune)
Quote of
the Week #4.
"To be honest, Britney's a national treasure. Believe it or not, for my
generation, it's just as big of a topic as 9/11." – Chris Crocker, 19, star
of the viral video "Leave Britney Alone" on
YouTube (language warning). (September 13
MSNBC.com). |
