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

Here are the relevant words and phrases from the 276-word response by the American Federation of Teachers to the The New Teacher Project (TNTP) report, “Unintended Consequences: The Case for Reforming the Staffing Rules in Urban Teachers Union Contracts“:

1) “outrage”
2) “meritless attacks”
3) “completely misses the mark”
4) “uninformed conclusions”
5) “vague”
6) “possibly outdated”
7) “wrongly implicates”
8) “short on constructive answers”
9) “lacks merit”
10) “flawed research”
11) “hazy reporting”
12) “glaring deficiencies”
13) “failures to provide specific examples”

Who had 13 in the office pool? I think it was Rotherham!

NEA is having a few problems picking corporate partners. First there was Atkins Nutritionals (see “Coincidence or Bad Karma?“), now there’s Volkswagen. Here’s the latest special offer to NEA members from the auto manufacturer.

But I’m thinking it might have been a bad week to roll this out. Maybe because of this story, but almost certainly because of this one (with further details here).

This new report by The New Teacher Project on staffing practices in urban schools has the usual suspects shrieking like banshees. Associated Press story here, and very soon, in a newspaper near you.

A thought-provoking piece in the New York Times highlights the burgeoning interest in entrepreneurial skills over management skills, and the increasing efforts of America’s colleges and universities to help teach those skills. We’ll always have huge corporations operating according to the tried-and-true, but modern communications and technology make it possible for young capitalists to become — in the words of a business professor at the University of Southern California — “a little like Columbus, thinking effectually how to go into the unknown.”

Dateline – Gallup, New Mexico:

“An unknown hacker who managed to get into the Web site of the local teachers’ union has forced the McKinley Federation of United School Employees to shut down that site. Brian Bernard, president of the union, said the FBI is now involved in the case, which centers on one or more hackers using the union’s Web site to send out thousands and possibly tens of thousands of e-mails in an effort to scam people out of money.”

Hmmmm… A teachers’ union web site that sends out tens of thousands of e-mails in an effort to scam people out of money is the work of a hacker? The feds better check this page. It looks suspicious.

Today’s Cleveland Plain Dealer provides a helpful Q-and-A to explain the city’s phony school attendance scandal (for background, see here). Here’s one little tidbit you won’t get from the district’s PR department:

“Do most Cleveland schools take attendance later in the day because so many kids are late getting to school?

“The official policy is that attendance must be taken within the first 10 minutes of the first class, then filed with the district’s computer system by noon each day. Some teachers and principals say that, in reality, students are counted as present if they are seen in the building at any time of day.”

United Teachers Los Angeles President A.J. Duffy is giving us a foreshadowing of the strategy the California Teachers Association is likely to use at the state level.