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

Out here in California, legislative leaders are in the midst of secret budget negotiations with the governor. The budget is late, and hanging over their heads is the state’s chronic deficit, which we’ve had since at least the Pete Wilson years.

Anyway, Republicans want to reduce education spending by about 0.8 percent. Naturally, this had led Democrats to claim the GOP wants to “eviscerate public education and public safety.”

All of this is standard politics and hardly worth bothering about. But nothing better illustrates how our state government operates than this little tidbit, buried in the Los Angeles Times story about the impasse.

Reporter Evan Halper asked the Democratic majority leaders what the Republicans wanted to cut, but they “declined to answer questions about what specifically the Republicans were proposing, saying that as a condition of the budget talks, they had assured Republicans they would not publicly disclose such details.”

The next paragraph reads:

“But education leaders who attended the private briefing said the cut being proposed would wipe out a good chunk of school districts’ discretionary spending.”

Who are these “education leaders” who receive private briefings about secret budget negotiations, while the rest of us peons wait for the white smoke from the chimney? The next paragraph tells us:

“I cannot tell you how extremely disappointed our members will be to hear this news,” said David Sanchez, the incoming president of the California Teachers Assn.

Lawmakers shouldn’t be having secret budget negotiations. Secret from whom? The rest of the legislature? The press? The taxpayers? But if they are secret, they should be secret from everyone. Californians didn’t elect David Sanchez. California’s teachers didn’t elect David Sanchez. He was elected without opposition by some 800 teacher union activists who meet four times a year over a weekend.

Union bashing? Replace “education leaders” with “HMO directors” or “big box store executives” or “defense industry interests” and see if you still think this is the way government should be run.

It’s a liberal interest group clash of the titans!

The trial lawyers of Keller Rohrback filed suit against NEA and its Member Benefits Corporation for failing its fiduciary duty to members by accepting endorsement money in exchange for promoting high-fee annuity plans.

The suit is similar to the one Keller Rohrback filed in April against New York State United Teachers after the union and investment giant ING agreed to a $30 million settlement with then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.

Keller Rohrback represents two teachers, but the firm is seeking class action status for the approximately 57,000 NEA members who participate in the program.

I can hardly wait to see the memos gathered during discovery.

Click here to read:

1) The Business of the Association
2) Running Second
3) Last Week’s Intercepts
4) Quote of the Week

I’m not sure what’s going on at NEA Research, but I was floored to visit this page and read:

“What percentage of teachers leave the profession within the first five years?”

and then read the answer:

34%!

It goes on to claim 50% for urban or high-poverty schools, which at least is more in keeping with the pedigree of the original statistic on teacher turnover.

And while I’m very excited that NEA is coming around to clarify this oft-misused statistic, my joy is tempered by the fact that other statistics on that page are so obviously wrong.

It lists the average public school teacher salary as $44,400, even though NEA’s own publication, Rankings & Estimates, lists the 2004-05 average salary at $47,674. It also claims the average length of a teaching career is 31 years.

“More than 9,000 delegates at the National Education Association’s Representative Assembly voted today in favor of an historic partnership agreement with the American Federation of Teachers.” – July 6, 2001 NEA press release

“The activities of the NEAFT Partnership shall be jointly funded and staffed by the AFT and NEA, and the council shall meet at least three times per year.” – from the text of the NEAFT Partnership agreement

“The Council met three times: October 23-25, 2001, January 29-31, 2002, and April 22-24, 2002.” – from the NEAFT Partnership Report for 2002-03

“The Joint Council, which consists of 15 members from each organization, was scheduled to meet three times this year. Unfortunately, due to schedule conflicts and illness, the Council met only once.” – from the NEAFT Partnership Report for 2003-04

“The Joint Council, which consists of 15 members from each organization, is scheduled to meet once a year. Unfortunately, due to schedule conflicts the Council did not meet.” – from the NEAFT Partnership Report for 2005-06

“The Joint Council, which consists of 15 members from each organization, is scheduled to meet once a year. Unfortunately, due to schedule conflicts, the Council did not meet.” – from the NEAFT Partnership Report for 2006-07

Dateline – Peru:

“About a dozen public school teachers tried to light a train station on fire in southern Peru amid nationwide protests against a new law that will require them to take periodic competency tests.”

“The teachers’ union, Sutep, called the strike to protest a law signed by President Alan Garcia on Wednesday that will fire teachers who fail a job competency test three times. February test results showed almost half of public school teachers cannot solve basic math problems and one-third are deficient in reading comprehension.”

The latter problem explains this incident. The law cites the teachers’ poor “training” and suggests they might be “fired,” and they simply misunderstood what they were reading.

I missed this story while at the NEA Representative Assembly last week, but the school funding initiative backed by the Ohio Education Association and other groups will not be on the November 2007 ballot.

The Campaign for Ohio’s Future collected only 150,000 of the required 402,276 valid signatures of registered voters. The coalition says it will attempt to place the measure on the 2008 ballot.

Not discussed was the fate of the one-year, $25 special assessment placed on each member of the Ohio Education Association to fund the initiative campaign. With roughly $3 million raised, the current tab is $20 per signature gathered.

Since a large proportion of those signatures must have come from the rank-and-file, it seems OEA members paid $25 for the privilege of signing a petition created by their own union.

UPDATE: A commenter says OEA will not assess the $25. This hasn’t been announced publicly, but I have no reason to doubt him.