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

The Scripps Howard News Service and Ohio University released a poll of 1,010 adults on the No Child Left Behind Act. Twenty-three percent said they want the law renewed in its current form, 14 percent want it abolished and 49 percent want it amended. Fourteen percent were undecided.

I don’t have any objections to the results of the poll, which I think accurately reflects public opinion of the law. Where this poll (and others I have seen) falls short is here:

“About three-quarters of people who said they are ‘very familiar’ with the law also say they want it altered or abolished, compared to less than half of people who say they are ‘not familiar’ with the measure.”

Why would you even solicit the opinions of people who freely admit they are “not familiar” with something? We currently disaggregate polls by sex, race, ethnicity, age, income and many other factors. Are we reduced to checking the poll numbers of the dihydrogen monoxide banners?

The Missouri Supreme Court ruled that the state’s public employees, including public school teachers, have the right to bargain collectively, overturning a 60-year-old ruling.

We are not going to see an immediate revolution in Missouri public sector labor relations, however, as the justices’ decision “does not compel governments to reach agreements with workers. But when agreements are signed, governments must abide by them.”

So what’s the big deal? Well, in the private sector, management and labor have separate and distinct aims when it comes to negotiation. That’s often true in the public sector as well, but public sector employees have the unique ability to help elect, or defeat, the people sitting across from them at the bargaining table.

So the battles to come in Missouri will occur first at the local ballot box, as Missouri NEA tries to pack school boards with like-minded candidates who will reach agreements with them, which will then become inviolate.

The court decision also fires the opening salvo in an organizing war between Missouri NEA and the non-union Missouri State Teachers Association, which has more members. I suspect the first provision negotiated by any organization under these new collective bargaining rights will be exclusivity.

So keep an eye on Missouri, because it isn’t going to be pretty.

Click here to read:

1) NEA to Revisit Performance Pay
2) Staff Stalls Change to NEA Pension Plan
3) More Than Meets the Eye in Colorado Springs Scandal
4) Canadian Staff Union Strike Shuts Down Airline Reservations
5) Hawaii Faculty Union to Divert Dues to PAC
6) NEA Names Pelosi 2007 Friend of Education
7) Last Week’s Intercepts
8) Quote of the Week

Michigan Education Association President Iris Salters has a novel argument in favor of caps on the number of charter schools in the state. She says limiting the number of charter schools is “the main driver that has proven to spark charter school innovation.”

Ms. Salters also informs us, “In traditional public schools, accountability encourages change and promotes higher levels of achievement.”

Maybe we should try it!

While their union president makes a TV appearance to denounce the idea, and union officers from New York and Illinois hold a colloquy about whether what they will have can properly be called tenure, teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District are taking matters into their own hands and exploring the possibility of converting their schools to Green Dot charter schools.

The Los Angeles Times reports that teachers at two – and maybe as many as six – schools have contacted Green Dot to learn if charter conversion is for them. Some of them are union site representatives.

Green Dot’s teachers are unionized, but are not affiliated with the UTLA or AFT or NEA (Correction: Green Dot’s union is affiliated with NEA) structure. This complicates union opposition to the charters, as the anti-union barb won’t stick so well.

How this all shakes out will be interesting to watch, but I doubt if it will have an effect on the prevailing union attitude about charters, which is, as one New York City teacher put it, “If a school is non-union, we should seek to organize it. If a school is charter, we should seek to reconvert it.”

For the last five years, Hawaii Reporter has repeatedly shown what a few dedicated and talented people can do with hard work, a very few bucks, and a nose for news. The independent Internet publication covers every aspect of island life and politics, and its watchdog role is an absolute necessity in what is virtually a one-party state.

Now editor Malia Zimmerman is under subpoena for her confidential sources, e-mails, phone records, notes and photographs, for a story she reported about the failure of Ka Loko Dam on Kauai, which resulted in the deaths of seven people. The subpoena comes from lawyers for landowner James Pflueger, who owns much of the land around the dam, and whose responsibilty for the accident is under investigation.

More is at issue than the details of the case, as Pflueger’s lawyers are challenging Zimmerman’s status as a journalist and her entitlement to protect her sources, merely because no trees are killed to create her publication.

“It seems to me that if a blogger is a journalist, everyone can produce a blog and never be subject to a subpoena,” Pflueger’s attorney said. His position received support from University of Hawaii constitutional law professor Jon Van Dyke.

“How does she differentiate herself from the zillions of other people who use the Internet, posting things on MySpace or whatever?” he asked. “If we’re going to give special protection to the press, we should have some idea of who’s in it and who’s not.”

Internet reporting doesn’t fit neatly into the categories of the past. Case law, regulations and standards will take some time to catch up with the new reality. But anyone who visits HawaiiReporter.com will be hard-pressed to confuse it with a teenager’s diary on MySpace. If anything, Hawaii Reporter may be overloaded with news stories. Its breadth is breathtaking.

Spend some time (I often do) on the education page.

To its credit, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin is firmly in Zimmerman’s corner, writing, “Courts should be relied upon to use common sense in determining whether a person spreading news and opinions, whether door to door or across the Internet, needs certain rights in order to preserve the integrity of the First Amendment. Zimmerman clearly falls into that category.”

If Zimmerman were merely the proverbial “guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing,” it wouldn’t matter what she wrote. It’s because she had sources – just like a newsprint reporter – that she’s being singled out.

I’m sure Malia and the Hawaii Reporter would appreciate any expression of support, but as the journalists they are, I think they would like it even better if you would just read their stuff.