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

Chuck Essigs, director of government relations for the Arizona Association of School Business Officials, used the above term in reference to:

a) property taxes

b) local school levies

c) bake sales

d) children

Add the Denver Classroom Teachers Association to the list of teachers’ unions that dislike Teacher Rules, Roles and Rights, the collective bargaining database created by the National Council on Teacher Quality.

According to this story, DCTA “is upset because leaders say that what works in one state, doesn’t necessarily work in another state, and that parents might look at salary as the only factor.”

Wow. Better notify these guys.

Click here to read:

1) Education’s Only Limiting Factor: Intellectual Curiosity
2) Call Plea for Substitutes!
3) Last Week’s Intercepts
4) Quote of the Week

New Jersey legislators want mandatory jail time and forfeited pensions for public workers convicted of coercion, theft, bribery, threats, perjury, witness tampering, misconduct, tampering, or any of 11 other corruption offenses.

“There should be some flexibility in here,” New Jersey Education Association spokesman Steve Baker said. “It should be a very, very extreme circumstance, if ever, that would cause a pension to be forfeited.”

The tyranny of a daily blog and a single-man operation will rear its ugly head next month, as I will be away for a short time beginning in mid-February. Last year, I had stalwart unionists fill in and they did a bang-up job (see March 21-24, 2006 in the blog archives).

This time everyone gets a shot at being an Intercepts blogger for a day. I’m asking you, dear reader, to submit in advance an essay (no more than 250 words) on the education/labor topic of your choice. Keep it clean and legally defensible, but otherwise you’re free to pursue whatever floats your boat – pro-union, anti-union, I don’t care.

I’ll make arrangements to post one essay each day I’m gone. Send your “substitute” essays to mike@eiaonline.com. Thanks for your help.

EdNews.org tips us off to the cover story in the January issue of the American School Board Journal headlined “Crossing the Line.” It discusses the practice of parents lying about where they live in order to get their kids into better schools. ASBJ calls it boundary hopping, but in a host of articles on this phenomenon, I’ve dubbed it the black market in school choice.

As you might expect, ASBJ goes at this from the districts’ standpoint, but it’s well worth reading for some disturbing insight not only into the motivations of the parents and districts, but into the motivations they ascribe to each other.

Enjoy the obligatory swipe at NCLB and the mention of one school district’s “oath of residency.”