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1) The World of Linda
Darling-Hammond. It would be impossible to cram
everything I learned in the past two weeks into a single communiqué, so I am
going to have to parcel it out over the summer. Bear with me, because the
information is stacked high at the EIA command center.
The National Education Association
bestowed its Friend of Education award this year on researcher and education
policy expert Linda Darling-Hammond. Her acceptance speech had the delegates
cheering, mainly because she painted a picture of a U.S. school system that
neglects students and fails to support teachers. By way of comparison, she
extolled the virtues of high-achieving nations, which seemed like a
teacher's paradise.
From the moment Dr. Darling-Hammond
said, "California has literally starved its schools" - by which she meant,
of course, figuratively - assertion after assertion issued from her lips
that were far less than the complete picture. NEA posted the
full text of her speech. You can follow along if you are so inclined.
Perhaps you can find even more questionable claims, but here are just a few
that can use a little context:
"[California is] 48th in the nation
in spending…"
This is the favorite statistic of the
California Teachers Association, and its single source is Education Week's
Quality Counts report. The
relevant table is posted here. This might confuse you since the National
Education Association's own rankings show California either 24th or 32nd,
depending on whether you use enrollment or average daily attendance. So why
the discrepancy?
As this article explains, Education Week uses "a 1990 federal
geographic cost of education index" to adjust the numbers. That's their
choice, but it does place states like North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana,
West Virginia and Nebraska in the top 20 in spending.
"We have 5 percent of the world's
population and 25 percent of the world's inmates…because we wouldn't spend
$10,000 a year to offer them high-quality schools in Oakland and Compton and
East Palo Alto."
I went to the California Department of
Education's
Ed-Data web site and ran a report to check the per-pupil spending
figures for those three districts. It won't allow a hot link, but you can
repeat the search yourself. In 2007-08 Compton fell short of the magic
$10,000 figure, spending only $9,128 per-pupil (its average teacher salary,
however, was $61,789). Oakland spent $11,943 per-pupil, while Ravenswood
City Elementary school district, which covers the city of East Palo Alto,
spent $13,216 per-pupil. By Darling-Hammond's reasoning, there should be no
crime in Oakland or East Palo Alto.
"You know, when you go to
high-achieving nations around the world, they don't have children who are
homeless. They don't have children without health care."
"The highest achieving countries in
the world not only provide high-quality preschool and health care for
children, they also fund their schools centrally and equally with additional
funds to the neediest schools."
"If you were entering teaching today
in Finland, in Singapore, in Korea, you would have full government support
for three or four years of teacher preparation in a high-quality program
with a stipend or a salary while you trained to teach."
"…in all of these countries, you
would have 15 to 25 hours a week for collaborative planning, for observing
other teachers teach, for engaging in research and lesson study, for
developing and scoring assessments because teachers manage and control the
curriculum and assessment system in high-achieving nations."
I could spend the rest of the summer
deconstructing these four paragraphs, but our time would be better spent by
simply stating there is a lot more to such international comparisons than
meets the eye. Here are a few links to provide some much-needed perspective:
* The
executive summary of the results of the Programme for International
Student Assessment (PISA), the student achievement survey conducted through
the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
* "What
Makes Finnish Kids So Smart?" from the February 29, 2008 Wall Street
Journal.
* An even-handed discussion from the
October 18, 2007 issue of The Economist, headlined "How
to be top."
"It is sad for me to see how little
things have changed since I entered teaching in 1973."
I hear this sort of formulation from
union officers all the time, and I always have the same reaction. In this
case, Darling-Hammond is speaking about California, which in 1973 did not
have collective bargaining for teachers. Therefore, some 35 years of
unionization and collective bargaining have led to little change, and the
state's teachers are overworked, underpaid and disrespected. There's a
selling point for you. Maybe you need a different union.
"If you entered [teaching] in
Singapore, you would earn more than a beginning doctor in your first days on
the job."
I have heard this repeated over and
over, from reputable sources, so I assume it's true, though I can't find
anything definitive to back it up. The advantage can't last very long,
because PayScale.com shows secondary school teachers with less than a year's
experience earn
32,400 Singapore dollars, while doctors with 1-4 years' experience earn
108,000 Singapore dollars.
"We need a Marshall Plan for
teaching."
The Marshall Plan spent $13 billion over
four years, approximately $115 billion in today's dollars. The United States
currently spends more than $187 billion each year in school employee
salaries alone.
International comparisons are always
problematic, and we should all avoid the temptation to choose the practices
of high-achieving nations that coincide with our own philosophies, while
discarding those that don't.
2) AFT Running the Puerto Rico
Playbook in Oregon. The officers and board of the
Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals made the fatal mistake
of planning to hold a meeting in July – something contrary to the union's
bylaws. On the agenda was whether to ask the rank-and-file about remaining
affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers.
A few former officers found out about
the plan and went to AFT national headquarters with the news. AFT proceeded
to
remove the duly elected officers and the entire board, and establish a
trusteeship. AFT tried this once before in
Puerto Rico under similar cicumstances, but it didn't work so well.
Now we learn that the Oregon local
officers haven't even seen the formal charges against them, and they claim
the alleged unauthorized use of union dues has to do with the money spent to
set up the meeting.
Supporters of the ousted officers have
created a web site called
Take Back Local 5017. My advice? First, get a good labor attorney.
Second, contact the
Association for Union Democracy. Third, get the members in the streets.
3) Why Are We Cheering Again?
I'm reliably informed that at the NEA board of directors meeting immediately
preceding the representative assembly in San Diego, the Indiana contingent
was given a standing ovation.
Let's see: They've driven the union into
a multi-million dollar debt, failed to notice their insurance trust was
being bled dry, fell under national trusteeship, threatened to kick 650
disabled teachers into the street, laid off one-quarter of the staff, put
their headquarters building up for sale, watched charter school caps lifted,
and failed to block a tuition tax credit for private school students.
Way to go! If only California and New
Jersey would follow your lead.
4) Contract Hits.
Wherein we highlight a contract provision from the current agreement between
the National Education Association and its largest staff union. This is from
Article 18, Section 9:
"An employee who receives a notice of
layoff shall have the right to displace any less senior employee in his/her
Job Category or in any other Job Category in which he/she previously has
been employed by NEA whose work he/she is qualified to perform, provided
that a part-time employee shall not have the right to displace a regular
employee regardless of seniority. Notice of intent to exercise this right
must be given to NEA not later than five days after the employee received a
notice of layoff. NEA will immediately notify the displaced employee who
shall have the same rights as the employee who initiated the "bump." An
employee who is displaced by the second "bump" shall have the right to be
transferred to the position of the least senior employee in his/her Job
Category whose work he/she is qualified to perform."
5) Last Week's Intercepts. If this is your
first communication from me in the last three weeks, you missed a lot! EIA's
blog,
Intercepts, covered these topics from June 22-July 13 (in
chronological order):
*
Separatism. Teacher voice.
*
More Than Half-Full. Which side would you rather be on?
*
Time for a Name Change? The American Federation of Dues-Payers.
*
Panic in Detroit. Where everyone is losing money.
*
National Journal Launches Education Expert
Blog. I have arrived.
*
EIA Exclusive: Indiana State Teachers
Association Approves $40 Dues Increase. What? You didn't
know?
*
What a Union Is All About. Thanks for clearing that up.
*
Another Year, Another NEA Convention. Indiana? Never heard of it.
*
Arne Duncan Addresses NEA. The shoe is on the other foot.
*
If Sincerity Were Only Enough. Keep the good and get rid of the bad. Why
didn't we think of that?
*
Rip Van Roekel. Zzzzzz…
*
Same Old New Business. Darling, will you join me in a legally recognized
equal treatment relationship?
*
The Affiliate That Shall Not Be Named. If we don't mention it, it never
happened.
*
The Secret Ballot Illustrated. The power of the curtain.
*
Penultimate Day Wrap-Up. Rewriting Teach for America's mission
statement.
*
NEA Discovers It Is a Labor Union. I told you so.
*
Video of Bob Chanin's Farewell Speech. Money, it's a gas.
*
AFT Stages Coup (or Counter-Coup?) in Oregon. Just when I thought I was
out, they pull me back in.
*
Hey Bob! The Left Wing Isn't Too Crazy About NEA Either. One thing we
can all agree on.
*
Bad News, Bob; Even the Center Cannot Hold. Damn those conservative
right-wing b@$#&ds, like Eleanor Holmes Norton and Bill Bradley.
*
Moleman Peers Inside the NEA Hole. There's a dichotomy, but it isn't
between professional association and labor union.
6)
Quote of the Week.
"Hope spelled backwards is 'epoh,' which means
nothing." – Dr. Joseph Webb, delegate to the National Education
Association Representative Assembly from Florida. |
