Intercepts
A listening post monitoring public education and teachers’ unions.

That’s the headline of a Rocky Mountain News editorial on the dismissal of NEA’s NCLB lawsuit. It includes the trenchant comment, “If the deal is bad, don’t take it.”

No, it’s not true, but a Japanese computer programmer received 66,000 hits on his phony Yahoo Japan web site when he published a fabricated story with that headline. I just wanted to see if I could benefit from the multiplier effect.

* The New York Times editorial board calls the dismissal of NEA’s No Child Left Behind Act lawsuit “A Victory for Education.” The lawsuits will continue because states, districts and unions won’t consider the one option that would free them from all NCLB mandates: Turning down Title I money.

If the mandates are so intrusive AND costing states and local districts billions of dollars, then they should just opt out. Three states had no qualms about doing so when the issue was abstinence education.

* The Los Angeles Daily News wallops the Los Angeles Unified School District for planning a PR campaign while the mayor plans to take over the district (see yesterday’s Quote of the Week).

* Something to watch closely in Michigan: school districts forming a regional insurance pool to lower health care costs. More than half of the state’s districts are currently covered by MESSA, which is the insurance arm of the Michigan Education Association, which negotiates the contracts that get MESSA selected as the insurance provider (neat, huh?).

Republican lawmakers want to break up this cozy little nest and they have some unusual allies: other unions. They evidently want more choice in the marketplace!

“If MESSA provides a quality product at a competitive price, MESSA will be alive and well,” said David Hecker, president of AFT Michigan.

These businesses think so, too. The concept works with a lot of things.

Click here to read:

1) NEA NCLB Lawsuit Dismissed
2) Parental Involvement: What Might Work
3) District Size an Issue Again
4) Pennsylvania Local Placed in Trusteeship
5) New York Union Merger Moves Along
6) Forspent With Toil, As Runners With a Race
7) Quote of the Week

The Albuquerque Tribune reports:

“The online poll done by HarrisInteractive found that 51 percent of 1,350 kindergarten-through-12th grade teachers from around the country reported being drowsy or falling asleep while at work, and 43 percent said they’ve been so tired that they changed their lesson plan to show a movie or had the class do ‘busy work’ because they didn’t feel they could handle the day’s instruction.”

Before you get too worked up about this one way or the other, the poll was sponsored by Sepracor, the company that manufactures Lunesta, a prescription sleeping aid.

“In point of fact, however, neither the parental notice requirement – nor, indeed, any of the other requirements in NCLB – are ‘imposed’ on the states in a legal sense. NCLB has been enacted on the basis of Congress’ Spending Power, and states can avoid this and other statutory requirements simply by declining to accept federal Title I funds. If the states decide to accept such funds, however, then they must also accept the conditions that Congress has attached to them. To be sure, a legal argument can be made that this choice is not really ‘voluntary’ – states have no option but to comply inasmuch as they cannot adequately fund public education without the federal contribution – but the courts uniformly have rejected such an argument in the education context, as well as in connection with other federal aid programs.” — National Education Association General Counsel Robert Chanin, in a May 7, 2003 memo to NEA state affiliate officers and staff on the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), reported exclusively by the Education Intelligence Agency — first on December 8, 2003, and again on April 25, 2005.

“In short, 20 U.S.C. § 7907(a) cannot reasonably be interpreted to prohibit Congress itself from offering federal funds on the condition that States and school districts comply with the many statutory requirements, such as devising and administering tests, improving test scores, and training teachers.” — Chief U.S. District Judge Bernard A. Friedman (U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Michigan, Southern Division), in his ruling to dismiss Pontiac v. Spellings, the NEA-engineered lawsuit against the No Child Left Behind Act.

NEA announced it would appeal the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

A coalition of mayors, community activists, school adminstrators and teachers’ unions filed a school funding lawsuit against the state of Connecticut on behalf of a group of 15 students and their parents. The suit claims that the state’s funding formula puts too heavy a burden on local governments to finance education.

The Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding is led by three mayors and John Yrchik, the executive director of the Connecticut Education Association (CEA). Sharon Palmer, president of AFT Connecticut, also sits on the coalition’s board of directors.

In a press statement, CEA said the lawsuit “has greater potential to transform teachers’ classrooms than any finance litigation in Connecticut in the past 30 years.”

The New York Times noted: “Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who recently filed a lawsuit against the federal government in which he claimed the No Child Left Behind education policy amounts to an unfunded mandate, is now in the position of having to defend the state against a claim that it, too, is providing inadequate money for education.”