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1) Is Reg Weaver Stalling for Obama? Let's see.
Hillary is leading in the polls. NEA has a long and warm relationship with
Hillary. AFT endorsed Hillary. NEA instituted a "meet the candidates"
session at the 2007 representative assembly and tweaked its procedures so a
candidate could be endorsed before the primaries. So who's holding things
up?
NEA President Reg Weaver, if the scuttlebutt I'm
hearing is to be believed. Last month,
This Week in Education reported a sighting of Hillary entering NEA
headquarters. The item was picked up by the blog at
The American Prospect, with a commenter noting that Obama and Edwards
had also made appearances at NEA headquarters.
What was going on was that Weaver was conducting
one-on-one interviews with each of the candidates. Although private meetings
between NEA presidents and Democratic presidential candidates have occurred
in the past, this time it appears to be part of the union's official
endorsement process. Weaver met with the candidates in September so the
interviews would be completed before the NEA board of directors met at the
end of that month.
But when the interviews were done, Weaver asked the
union's PAC council not to endorse a candidate at this time. What's the
hold-up?
EIA is hearing speculation that Weaver, with roots in
Illinois, is stalling a Hillary endorsement to give Sen. Barack Obama an
opportunity to gain some traction.
This is not as forlorn a hope as it might first appear. Indeed, the
perfect scenario for NEA would be to endorse a candidate who was trailing in
the polls, but starting to move, propelling him to victory, the nomination
and the White House, where the union would be poised to reap the spoils.
The perfect scenario, however, is also the riskiest
one. Though the union will ultimately support whichever Democrat comes out
of the pack, the question of an endorsement and its timing is a difficult
one for NEA. Pick the losing candidate in the primary and the winner can
afford to pay less attention to your wishes. Pick the winning candidate, but
too late, and you look like a bandwagon jumper.
Whatever happens, NEA will have to move by the end of
next month. The endorsement must be approved by the board of directors,
which meets the weekend of December 8. The Iowa Caucus will be held January
3, 2008.
2) "Dumber Than Dirt" and the Phenomenon of "The
Guy." You don't see too many things go viral in the education corner of
the blogosphere, but I'm surprised that last week's column from Mark Morford
of the San Francisco Chronicle hasn't made a national splash.
The headline and subhead alone should warrant some
attention: "American
kids, dumber than dirt" and "Warning: The next generation might just be
the biggest pile of idiots in U.S. history." But other than Northern
California edu-bloggers
Buckhorn Road and
Right on the Left Coast, it doesn't seem to have caught on elsewhere,
despite its status as the Chronicle's most e-mailed article and an
incredible 517 reader comments, at last count.
It's hard to tell if Morford's article is a manifesto,
a polemic, an overreaction or a publicity stunt, but he cites the
experiences of an Oakland high school teacher of his acquaintance. Here's a
taste:
"But most of all, he simply
observes his students, year to year, noting all the obvious evidence of
teens' decreasing abilities when confronted with even the most basic
intellectual tasks, from understanding simple history to working through
moderately complex ideas to even (in a couple recent examples that
particularly distressed him) being able to define the words 'agriculture,'
or even 'democracy.' Not a single student could do it.
"It gets worse. My friend
cites the fact that, of the 6,000 high school students he estimates he's
taught over the span of his career, only a small fraction now make it to his
grade with a functioning understanding of written English. They do not know
how to form a sentence. They cannot write an intelligible paragraph.
Recently, after giving an assignment that required drawing lines, he
realized that not a single student actually knew how to use a ruler."
Morford worries that the world's problems pale in
comparison to that of "a populace far too ignorant
to know how to properly manage any of it, much less change it all for the
better."
I, for one, think Morford is
overstating the problem, mostly because he is extrapolating from the Oakland
school system, which is the national poster child for education dysfunction.
But he touches on something I think is very relevant. We are not a society
of the haves and have nots, but one of the "knows" and "know nots."
Everyone has a horror story
of clerks who can't make change, job applicants who can't fill out a form,
and employees of all sorts who can't follow directions. But a new aspect of
American life is even more troubling. I call it the phenomenon of The Guy.
The Guy doesn't have to be
male. I only use it as shorthand for a phrase we use whenever we encounter
people who are clearly out of their intellectual depth. When your friends
complain about spending an hour on the phone with a dense tech support
operator, or a bureaucrat with a public agency, or an airline ticket agent,
you are likely to tell them, "You didn't talk to The Guy."
The Guy is one of the few
people (maybe the only one) in any specified location who can solve problems
that aren't in the technical manual, the agency guideline, or the computer
instructions. He or she may or may not be the manager. It's unrelated. The
Guy quickly corrects your double-billing, replaces a washer instead of
tearing out your bathroom sink, prescribes the perfect medication, or
immediately gets you a new desk after your principal says it will take three
months. You all know The Guy, even though it's getting harder and harder to
find him or her.
The gap between The Guy and everyone else is growing.
Morford blames it on lots of things. Kids lack intellectual acumen. They're
lazy slackers. They're overprotected and wussified. They're overexposed to
and overstimulated by television, video games and the Internet. And yes, he
even blames standardized tests.
At the same time, he admits, there are many, many
brilliant young minds out there. Were they lucky? Private-schooled?
Affluent? (I don't think so.
Affluent schools aren't immune.)
No. They're self-motivated. They're The Guy. They learn
even if the school is bad. They learn even if their teachers are bad. They
learn even if their textbooks are out-of-date. They are increasingly
becoming the linchpins of the American economy. And so, contrary to
Morford's fears, we are not doomed to a new Dark Age. But we are dooming an
entire generation to a world of cultural, social and economic upheaval where
a handful of people can do almost anything, and the rest can do almost
nothing. Maybe
H.G. Wells wasn't so far off, after all.
3) Ohio Union "Framed" Teacher Misconduct Series?
For some reason, it was a big week for a series of series on teacher
misconduct. In a matter of days we had "The
ABCs of Betrayal" from the Columbus Dispatch, "Hidden
Violations" from Small Newspaper Group, and of course, the results of a
seven-month
Associated Press investigation into teacher sexual misconduct.
After the appearance of the first installment of the
Columbus Dispatch series, EIA warned that the stories would
create a firestorm from the teachers' unions, along with accusations of
yellow journalism. Though there was some official reaction, the predicted
firestorm did not ignite, and perhaps there is an explanation.
Despite the hard-hitting nature of the articles, a view
of them in totality reveals the teachers' unions do not come under much
specific criticism at all, while the district and the state appear to be the
main targets. There are many possible reasons for reporters to take this
angle, but the Ohio Education Association seems to think it was the union's
own efforts that deflected criticism away from OEA.
OEA Executive Director Dennis Reardon told the union's
board of directors last week that union staffers tried to "frame the data"
revealed in the report. He stated that the reporters initially targeted OEA
as central to the cover-ups of teacher misconduct but "through our efforts"
that connection was dropped from the series.
If true, it's troubling to think that OEA could lobby
its way out of bad press, but EIA suspects OEA is simply trying to take
credit for a decision made independently by the Dispatch's reporters
and editors.
4) Invisible Hand Meets Heavy Hand of Food Police.
What did Los Altos High School (California) administrators do when students
(and teachers) refused to eat the public gruel and sought Julie Nguyen's
food-catering truck? Did they re-examine their "healthy foods initiative"
for the school cafeteria? Did they bow to the vox populi? Or did they use
the iron boot of the government to
try to ban Nguyen's truck from the neighborhood?
Yes, school administrators went to the city council to
seek a "mobile food vendor ordinance" to keep Nguyen's vehicle more than 500
feet away from the school and limit its parking time to 10 minutes. Nguyen
has a city permit to sell food to students.
Asked why students don't just eat the cafeteria food,
one succinctly explained, "It's kinda crappy."
5) Yet Another Blast from the Past. Remember
Diane Swaim? Swaim just retired after 35 years in the Middletown school
district in New Jersey, and is best known for being the architect of the
2001 teachers' illegal strike, in which 228 teachers were jailed for
refusing to return to work.
Teachers were jailed in alphabetical order. Swaim sent
the teachers back to work without a contract soon after the "Rs" were
imprisoned.
6) Last Week's Intercepts. EIA's blog,
Intercepts, covered these topics from October 22-29:
*
NEA's North Carolina Affiliate Endorses Edwards. So much for backing one
candidate.
*
Free Speech in Lebanon. Union president goes after anonymous blogger.
*
That Was Fast. Campaign in Maine wants to repeal district consolidation.
7) Quote of the Week #1. "Many charter school
operators have been aggressively anti-union and have tried to employ
teachers without providing them with any rights, career track or fairness."
– United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. (October 26
UFT press release)
Quote of the Week #2. "As we widen the purpose
of public schools, we weaken them…. Public schools must draw the line
somewhere. To be all things to all people is a recipe for being nothing to
anybody." – Liam Julian of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. (October 25
The Education Gadfly)
EIA agrees,
but we're not sure how this squares with Julian's last
Quote of the Week. |
