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1) The Graying of the White House.
I don't have any special insight into what an Obama administration would
mean for public education in the United States, but I have seen what happens
when one political party achieves insurmountable power and is presided over
by a loyal, if less than zealous, chief executive. Barack Obama could become
the Gray Davis of the United States.
For those of you whose eyes glaze over
whenever California politics is mentioned, Gray Davis was elected governor
in 1998 and re-elected in 2002 before being recalled in October 2003 and
replaced by Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Obama, of course, will not suffer the
same fate as Davis. And the style of the two politicians could hardly be
more different. Davis was a career bureaucrat with a complete lack of spark.
He was a party-line liberal, but he wasn't wild-eyed. He might have had a
completely nondescript two terms as governor had he not been elected in a
Democratic tidal wave. The party achieved huge majorities in both houses of
the legislature, and swept its main opponents from office.
As I wrote the week after his 1998 landslide victory, "Davis' role will
be simply to not veto anything."
And for a while that's exactly the way
it went. Davis signed mandatory agency fee legislation and added billions
above California's school funding guarantee – once under threat of a CTA tax
hike initiative (see next item below, and also "California's
Politicians Throw Money at Teachers").
But the relationship between Davis and
the union soured over time. Davis announced his opposition to CTA's effort
to expand the scope of collective bargaining, and then-CTA President Wayne
Johnson told the press Davis tried to solicit a $1 million campaign
contribution from the union while talking to him in the governor's office.
The union also leaked a detrimental poll during the run-up to the recall (see
item #3).
I suspect a President Obama's instinct
and mandate will be to make the liberal wish list come true, particularly as
it relates to public education and organized labor. So we will have card
check, massive new funding for a greatly defanged NCLB, and assorted other
NEA/AFT-desired goodies. And their demands will multiply against limited
organized opposition.
But Obama doesn't strike me as someone
who will want to increasingly carry water for the teachers' unions
and the status quo. As we have seen with Gray Davis and various other
Democratic governors across the country, NEA and AFT may not react well when
the time comes for Obama to say "no," when they see his primary job as
saying "yes."
Ideological splits within political
parties are almost always overstated. It's not the direction that causes
devastating rifts, it's the speed. Do you enshrine as much as
possible into law before the inevitable swing of the pendulum against you,
or do you moderate those desires, in the hope that by so doing you can
maintain power indefinitely?
Legislators and special interest groups
subscribe to the former view. Executives tend to follow the latter. It's
important for all players to acknowledge that black-and-white choice. Or
they will end up with Gray.
2) CTA to Spend $5 Million to Revive
(Again) School Tax Initiative. Just like
Jason Voorhees, it keeps coming back but gets less and less scary each
time.
The California Teachers Association's
State Council authorized the expenditure of up to $5 million to create an
initiative that would raise taxes for school funding, possibly in time for
the 2009 ballot.
CTA has been threatening such an
initiative since the mid-1990s,
twice spending millions to gather signatures, only to drop the idea,
primarily due to lack of enthusiasm among voters.
There is no reason to believe it would
be any more successful in the midst of a recession, but the union has
learned from experience that proposed initiatives work well as threats to
get your way from
legislators and the business community.
3) Apocryphal Story So Great We Had
to Tell It Twice. The
November/December 2008 online issue of NEA Today has a feature called
"Leading
the Way" that begins with the following four paragraphs:
"When Lily Eskelsen flew to the Democratic National Convention in
Denver in August, the first person she met, while sliding into an airport
taxi, was a cab driver from Ethiopia. She talked to him, of course, because
she pretty much talks to everyone. Introducing herself, she said, 'I'm a
public school teacher!'
"The two of them chatted about the
convention. And they talked about the importance of this national election,
and Lily Eskelsen, public school teacher, explained to this cabbie why she
so fervently supports Barack Obama, the pro-public school candidate. And
then she stopped herself to say, 'Oh, but I'm so embarrassed! I don't know
anything about politics in Ethiopia!'
"'It doesn't matter,' the cabbie told
her. 'The President of Ethiopia cannot harm your children. But the President
of the United States? He can help—or harm—children all over the world.'
"Then Lily Eskelsen, who happens also to
be Vice-President of the NEA, slid out of that airport cab with another vote
for Barack Obama in her handbag."
Apparently the cab
driver was
Kenenisa Bekele, because he turned up a few weeks – and a few paragraphs
– later, this time driving a cab in Minneapolis.
"When Lily
Eskelsen flew to Minneapolis a few weeks ago, the first person she met,
while sliding into an airport taxi, was a cab driver from Ethiopia. She
talked to him, of course, because she pretty much talks to everyone.
Introducing herself, she said, 'I'm a public school teacher!'
"The two of
them chatted about the Republican National Convention, which was meeting in
St. Paul, Minnesota, that week. And they talked about the importance of this
national election and Lily Eskelsen - public school teacher - explained to
this cabbie why she so fervently supports Barack Obama, the pro-public
school candidate. And then she stopped herself to say, 'Oh, but I'm so
embarrassed! I don't know anything about politics in Ethiopia!'
"'It doesn't
matter," the cabbie told her. 'It doesn't matter! The President of Ethiopia
cannot harm your children. But the President of the United States? He can
help - or harm - children all over the world.'
"Then Lily
Eskelsen, who happens also to be Vice-President of the National Education
Association, slid out of that airport cab with another vote for Barack Obama
in her handbag."
Sounds like she has a
real future at ACORN.
4) Will I Need Photo ID to Vote?
In Wisconsin, no, unless you're voting on something really
important, like the
Wisconsin Education Association Council budget.
It's the same at the national level (see
item #4).
5) Last Week's Intercepts.
EIA's blog,
Intercepts, covered these topics from October 27-November 3:
*
North Dakota EA Snubs Teacher of the Year. A celebration of exclusion.
*
I Guess We're OK Then. Why you should reread your testimony before you
deliver it to Congress.
*
Other Than That, We Like Charter Schools. The prime directive.
6) Quote of
the Week.
"One moves up the Union food chain by being loyal to the leadership who then
pick people for the prized jobs. Competence is not necessarily a
requirement." – James Eterno, United Federation of Teachers chapter leader.
(October 27
ICEUFT Blog) |
