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

Click here to read:

1) CTA to Vote on Admitting Support Employees
2) Ohio Per-Pupil Spending Boosted by Charter Enrollment
3) Damned If You Do…
4) …And Damned If You Don’t
5) New York Merger Up for Vote This Weekend
6) How Spell Check Can Let You Down
7) School Repairs Fund Does Wonders… for Lawyers
8) Dues Going Up
9) Last Week’s Intercepts
10) Quote of the Week

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) did its best to mimic its friends at NEA and AFT by releasing a report on the average salaries of college and university faculty. AAUP bemoans increases that are “less than the inflation rate for the second consecutive year.”

But the sheer number of tables and categories for professors show why the “average salary” is a statistic with no meaning and no application. It combines the salaries of full, associate and assistant professors, teaching at public, private independent, private religious and community colleges, baccalaureate, graduate and post-doctoral programs, and all disciplines and subjects. The comments section accompanying the story about the report in Inside Higher Ed indicates that readers immediately grasped the limitations of such an approach.

Unlike K-12 public education, higher education operates under many and varied salary structures – from the strict step-and-ladder scale to (gasp!) merit pay to signing bonuses a la professional sports. Universities routinely pay more money to their law school faculty than to their remedial English undergraduate professors. What a concept.

Michigan AFL-CIO President Mark Gaffney scolds us this morning for noticing that people don’t join unions very much anymore. Gaffney writes:

* “[Non-union] workers “opt to go it alone out of an ideological affinity that is detrimental to their own interests.”

* “Union workers can negotiate and create respect on the job and have a democratic voice in the workplace. These are American values. Don’t complain because others have a union; complain because you don’t.”

* “There are also a lot of negative stereotypes about union workers being lazy or unwilling to sacrifice. Say the same thing about any other group and you will correctly be called a bigot.”

* “There is also a misconception that unions have wielded too much power. This is a myth…. Unions are a bulwark against unfettered corporate power. Without unions, who will speak for the middle class?”

* “Finally, rooting against your neighbors may give you short-term satisfaction, but it will inevitably lead to losses for you, your family, your community and your country. It’s high time to start acting like we’re all in this together.”

When fewer than 9% of American workers join your organization, there must be something wrong with them. Right, Mark? Keep up the good work recruiting.

Students at Dible Elementary School in Pennsylvania were treated to a production of “Rachel Carson Saves the Day!” The multimedia presentation is funded by the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute Center for Environmental Oncology and presented by actors in the Shakespeare-in-the-Schools program. (N.B. “They have been at a great feast of languages and stolen the scraps.”)

In the play, Rachel Carson – a hero of the environmental movement and author of Silent Spring, the best-selling 1962 polemic against the dangers of DDT – is opposed in her attempts to save wildlife by Chemical Man, whom she defeats “accompanied by cartoon balloons with ‘Pow’ and ‘Blam’ in them.”

Let’s leave aside for a moment the fact that many of Carson’s claims were debatable then, and remain so today.

I just wonder if it’s wise in an America where we’re starved for math and science teachers, and where we’re constantly decrying lack of student interest in these subjects, especially among girls, to drum into their heads at an early age that Chemical Man is evil.

Paul Hermann Müller was a “Chemical Man” who discovered the insecticide properties of DDT. His discovery saved the lives of countless human beings who would have otherwise died of typhus and malaria. He won the Nobel Prize for it in 1948.

For people who claim to champion critical thinking skills for our students, where is there room for Müller, or the idea that DDT could have been both a very good and a very bad thing?

New Jersey voters staged a little tax revolt yesterday, rejecting 47% of school budgets statewide.

The state has the highest property taxes in America, and many areas couldn’t stomach further increases, whether they were for school operating budgets, or targeted items like additional teacher hiring.

“We’ve got to save money,” said Gov. Jon Corzine. “We need to make sure that we start squeezing out corruption. We’re going to need a new school funding formula, because I think we have a broken system today where we’re more focused on districts than we are kids.”

Corzine supports a constitutional convention to rework the property tax, an idea long in the works, but opposed by many liberal groups – most prominently the New Jersey Education Association. The union has dropped millions of dollars (included some provided by NEA) in a campaign to stop a ConCon.

The latest Field Poll shows Proposition 82 – Rob Reiner’s preschool tax initiative – losing support, particularly among Democrats. The California Teachers Association has contributed $700,000 to the campaign.

This comes on the heels of a Field Poll showing CTA-endorsed candidate Phil Angelides trailing state Controller Steve Westly for the Democratic nomination for governor.

These results are indicative of the problems faced both by CTA and its opponents: great defense, no offense.

The teachers’ union won a clean sweep in the November 2005 general election, defending the status quo against the plans of the governor and his allies. Now the roles are reversed, and CTA appears no closer to enacting its own agenda.

This is nothing new. CTA twice aborted a property tax initiative after spending millions of dollars gathering signatures. A CTA bill to expand the scope of collective bargaining was rejected by Democratic legislators. CTA’s discontent with Gov. Gray Davis made his recall, and the election of Gov. Schwarzenegger, possible.

California is a state known for bold ballot initiatives, but at least in the realm of public education, the voters mostly want to be left alone.

Click here to read:

1) District Statistics Reveal Much About Size, Spending and the 65% Solution
2) Whatever’s Going On in Miami, It’s Not Peace and Quiet
3) Place Your Bets!
4) Charter School’s Vertical LEAP
5) Who Knew?
6) Last Week’s Intercepts
7) Quote of the Week