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

Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times informs us that both the AFL-CIO and Change to Win federation like all the Democratic candidates for president and are unlikely to endorse anyone before the primaries.

“The field is much better from a worker’s standpoint than it was four years ago,” said UNITE HERE President Bruce Raynor. Funny, we didn’t hear any complaints four years ago.

In another earthshaking scoop, Greenhouse tells us the AFT is “leaning toward Mrs. Clinton.” Ya think?

Click here to read:

1) The NEA Paper Trail
2) Summer Doldrums for Teacher Union Membership
3) South Carolina: The Incredible Shrinking NEA Affiliate
4) Last Week’s Intercepts
5) Quote of the Week

I admit to deep ignorance on the topic, but I’ve always been suspicious of the notion that children have separate and distinct “learning styles,” based purely on the fact that when I was a kid, no one bothered asking us what our learning styles were, and somehow we all managed to learn how to read.

This is certain to stir up the pot. Baroness Susan Greenfield, a professor of synaptic pharmacology at Oxford, calls the idea of learning styles “nonsense.”

“Humans have evolved to build a picture of the world through our senses working in unison, exploiting the immense interconnectivity that exists in the brain,” she told the Sunday Telegraph of London. “It is when the senses are activated together – the sound of a voice is synchronisation with the movement of a person’s lips – that brain cells fire more strongly than when stimuli are received apart.”

Greenfield added that after more than 30 years of research there is no independent evidence that any learning style inventory “has any direct educational benefits.”

Apparently there are academics in Britain who support Greenfield’s opinion, though I’m unaware of any outspoken critics of learning styles in the United States, where the theory originated.

The state of New Jersey just learned that its liability for the health care costs of retired state workers and school employees is $58 billion. This year’s state budget is $34 billion.

Gov. Jon Corzine called the news “a pretty heavy body blow.”

But not to worry. Rae Roeder, president of Communication Workers of America Local 1033, says workers and taxpayers shouldn’t panic about the cost because “the state isn’t going out of business.”

And therein lies the problem.

The Washington City Paper has a pretty long profile of the Washington Teachers Union and its president, George Parker. Is Parker progressive or a sellout? That’s the angle.

Key quote from the former head of WTU’s political action committee, who’s a Parker opponent, on how district administrators and Parker should interact:

“They should get nauseated when they hear his name because he should be fighting on behalf of the teachers.”