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

“The 1964 Civil Rights Act was an unfunded mandate.”

– John C. Brittain, chief counsel for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, supporting the decision of the Connecticut NAACP to oppose the state’s lawsuit against the No Child Left Behind Act. The State of Connecticut, like the NEA, filed suit against the law on the grounds it was an unfunded mandate.

The State Council of the California Teachers Association voted to support Rob Reiner’s Preschool for All Initiative last weekend. Unlike Reiner’s previous initiative attempt, this measure has no concrete guarantees of mandatory unionism for preschool teachers. However, should the initiative pass, it’s all but certain such a provision would be on CTA’s future legislative agenda.

Click here to read:

1) NEA Steadily Becoming the Labor Movement
2) NEA Shoots for Two Percent Annual Growth
3) How’s That Portal Company Doing?
4) Take the Lead, and the Money
5) Last Week’s Intercepts
6) Quotes of the Week

Over the weekend, the California Teachers Association’s State Council voted overwhelmingly to recommend state Treasurer Phil Angelides in the Democratic primary for governor.

This minor news item follows what was an illuminating exchange at the end of last week. LA Weekly columnist and political insider Bill Bradley (not that one, this one) reported on his blog last Wednesday morning “Powerful Teachers Union Backs Angelides,” in which he noted the union would endorse Angelides on Saturday.

This prompted Julia Rosen, who blogs for the Alliance for a Better California, the labor coalition that defeated the governor’s initiatives in November, to call Bradley’s item a “False Rumor.”

“The CTA,” Rosen wrote, “like most unions, has a very democratic process for their endorsements. A committee has been interviewing the candidates. They have decided to recommend that Aneglides (sic) be endorsed by CTA. However, it is not a foregone conclusion that the larger CTA State Council will actually do that. That group, made up of about 800 teacher representatives (voted on by the rank and file) will be meeting this weekend. They will vote there on an endorsement.”

Bradley responded with an item headlined “Spin Patrol,” in which he wrote of his prediction “Bets are always accepted.”

Rosen returned with a post that noted, “His [Bradley's] post had lead to some conflagration within the CTA and had prompted at least one media call, wondering what was up.”

She then changed the subject by writing, “Let me take the time to point out how wonderful it is to have our journalistic class engaging in two-way communication with the public. After having grown up listening to my uncle rail on about civic journalism, it is heartening to be participating in a form of it.”

Translation: “Bradley’s not buying it, and I’m in a corner because, dammit, they WILL endorse Angelides on Saturday and everyone knows it.”

Bradley got the last word on Saturday evening with “Teachers Union Backs Angelides, He Wows Dems.”

Bradley had this nailed from the beginning and is to be commended for not equivocating in the face of union spin about “democracy” and “process.” As one blog commenter put it, “This is labor hack politics at its Orwellesque worst.”

Kenn Johnson, president of the Montgomery County Education Association in Kentucky, was given the opportunity to respond to an editorial that showed, when adjusted for the cost of living in the state, teacher salaries ranked rather high.

See the results here. Someone should install a pressure valve on this guy.

Here’s another NEA affiliate making the same cost of living argument, but, of course, from the opposite side. As long as it results in more money, who cares about consistency?

Here are a couple of published items with contrarian views concerning African-Americans and school choice.

Eddie Huff of Project 21 writes in the Chicago Defender about the Florida Supreme Court decision that the Florida Opportunity Scholarships violated the state constitution: “Right now, the Florida Supreme Court’s decision only affects the 700 children from poor homes who had been attending mostly Black schools that had been determined to be providing substandard teaching. These are the students who had received the FOS vouchers. These students now will be forced back onto the teachers’ union’s public education plantation.”

He continues: “The New Uncle Toms, the unrepentant Black liberal apologists, owe the rest of us an explanation. Why are our children seemingly condemned to substandard schools to mollify a special interest? The discussion at hand should be when – and not if – our community will rise up in anger, saying enough is enough and demanding change and a choice.”

The New York Times reports on the efforts of parents in Ladera Heights, California, an upscale African-American neighborhood, to secede from the predominantly minority Inglewood school district and join the more diverse Culver City school district.

“I don’t have an obligation to sacrifice my children to make the schools better,” said one parent.

Apparently unaffected by the negative publicity from The. Best. Union. Story. Ever., several industrial unions have taken to hiring the homeless to walk their picket lines.

“The fact that the people demonstrating were not members of the union doesn’t make much difference,” said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. “What matters is that the carpenters working on the building had no health care and no pension.”

Neither do the homeless. The union pays $8 an hour, but limits hours to 20 per week to avoid paying benefits. According to one homeless picketer, the union allows the homeless to take two-minute breaks, but docks their pay for the time off.

Is there any reason to take these guys seriously anymore? They’re intellectually bankrupt. Let’s hope actual bankruptcy soon follows.