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

Some Florida schoolchildren get a free bus tour.

Thanks to all of you who sent in suggestions for solving my real world math word problem (see 100% – 50% = 76%, or Something in yesterday’s communiqué). Each had a unique approach to it, and I had to adjust as necessary to get what I was after, namely, an example of a situation in which both half of all new teachers leave within the first five years, and 24% of all teachers have five years of experience or less.

In order to keep things simple, I’ve assumed zero total growth in the teacher force, and zero retirements or loss of teachers with more than five years of experience. Also, the rolling population makes it necessary to start somewhere, so I crafted it this way:

Let’s say I’ve opened a new school district and at the start of Year 1, I’m handed 1,000 teachers, 760 of whom have more than five years of experience. My calculations, therefore, deal entirely with the 240 teachers I receive who, fortunately enough for my math problem, have zero experience.

In order for the first statement to be true, I have to lose half (120) of these 240 teachers by the start of Year 6, and hire enough new teachers to offset that loss, plus the attrition from each new year, so that at the start of Year 6 I still have 240 teachers with five years of experience or less, thus fulfilling the needs of the second statement. I’ve tried to use a constant rate of attrition, but it would still work with a fluctuating rate.

Start Year 1: 240 with zero experience

Start Year 2: 209 with 1 year’s experience; 31 with zero.

Start Year 3: 182 with 2; 27 with 1; 31 with zero.

Start Year 4: 158 with 3; 23 with 2; 27 with 1; 32 with zero.

Start Year 5: 137 with 4; 20 with 3; 23 with 2; 28 with 1; 32 with zero.

Start Year 6: 120 with 5; 17 with 4; 20 with 3; 24 with 2; 28 with 1; 31 with zero.

You’ll see if we keep the pattern going that the 31 teachers we hired to start Year 2 will be down to 15 at the start of Year 7, affirming the first statement. Starting with this as a base, I’m sure we can construct a model that accounts for changes in the veteran teacher force, and growth in the total force.

OK. No problem is solved until it is independently evaluated and checked. So did I miss anything? I’m pretty sure my math is correct, but if I’ve messed up my assumptions, let me know.

Click here to read:

1) Searching for the Real Union Candidate
2) NEA Slated to Send $3 Million to Utah for Anti-Voucher Campaign
3) Minority Rules
4) Austin City Limits
5) 100% – 50% = 76%, or Something
6) A Whiter Shade of Pale
7) NEA Affiliate Personnel Moves
8) Last Week’s Intercepts
9) Quote of the Week

Utah is short of teachers.

Ohio has too many.

The story of Canadian teacher Jean-Alix Miguel stopped me in my tracks.

Miguel was hired by the Montreal school board in 1998 and fired in 2004 when it was discovered that Miguel failed to mention on his original employment application that he had just completed a seven-year prison term after pleading guilty to killing his wife.

Miguel’s union took the dismissal to arbitration, where the arbitrator ruled it “violated Quebec’s charter of rights, because his crime did not in any way relate to his work.” The board appealed the decision to superior court where, this week, it was upheld.

A columnist for the National Post thinks this is all to the good:

“Under Quebec’s civil rights laws, his criminal conviction for murdering his wife has no relation to his job teaching electronics. If he had robbed a bank and applied for a job as a bank teller, then the conviction would be relevant. Whatever we may think of a person capable of murdering his wife, we also live in a society that does promote the principle that having served one’s time for a crime, a person has the right to re-enter society, which includes seeking and winning gainful employment. This is one case where principle has rightly trumped the populist sentiment that at first blush would lead one to think Miguel should not have the chance to teach at all.”

By this logic, as long as Miguel didn’t murder a teacher, student, principal or other education employee (presumably on school grounds), the fact that he’s a confessed and convicted killer is irrelevant. I wonder what Mrs. Miguel would have thought of this reasoning. Alas, we cannot ask her.

Some of you may have come across a number of stories this week about the Wikipedia Scanner tool that identifies the Internet domain from which various Wikipedia edits originated. It has proven to be an embarrassment for a number of folks who have – shall we say – “massaged” Wikipedia entries that involve them in some way. You can see a list of the more entertaining ones here.

You can try to access the scanner at http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr but good luck trying to get through. Fortunately, most people are interested in determining the origin of the editors, while I’m interested in the edits to particular pages. So after some experimentation I was able to find the direct links to the edits made to the Wikipedia pages for the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=National_Education_Association&diff=previous

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=American_Federation_of_Teachers&diff=previous

These links will give you the latest revision first, and you can work your way back through time by clicking the “older edit” link. If your prefer to start at the beginning and work your way forward, replace the word “previous” with the word “next” in the above links.

For the record, I have never made a Wikipedia edit.

There appears to be no serious monkey business around the NEA Wikipedia page. If any of the editors before May 2007 had any links to the union, they are tenuous. Of particular interest to me was the addition of an external link to Intercepts, added in February 2006 by an unknown California editor, likely in the San Jose area. It was removed by a Pittsburgh attorney 90 minutes later, restored 30 minutes after that by the San Jose person, removed again by someone near Reston, Virginia, on March 1, 2006, restored 30 minutes later by the San Jose person, deleted on August 15 by some guy from Maine, restored by the San Jose editor on September 8, who then changed the link to the Communiqué page on September 9.

It was deleted again by “Wvutrombone” on May 1, 2007, and restored by a New Jersey editor 30 minutes later. This is also where we see the first appearance of “NEAEditor,” who is someone clearly affiliated directly with the union. Over the next few months, NEAEditor added a great deal of specific information, most of which expanded on NEA’s history and structure. While delivered through NEA’s point of view, the edits are not unreasonable.

Though NEAEditor hasn’t touched the EIA Communiqué link, editor Tim1965 deleted it on June 15, 2007, which my San Jose fan restored on June 18. That same day a number of edits were made from NEA’s IP address, supporting the union’s point of view, but not deleting any of the listed criticisms.

The NEA Wikipedia page has been struck by vandals a few times, with one New York editor adding the sentence, “So they are very partisan Libby lib libs.”

As for AFT, well, my San Jose fan added a link to Intercepts on April 9, 2006, which Tim1965 deleted on June 18, 2006.

I see no evidence of AFT involvement in editing its own pages, though NEAEditor added a link to the NEA website on AFT’s Wikipedia page.

The back-and-forth over my link on the unions’ pages is a microcosm of the kind of stuff that is endlessly going on with most of Wikipedia’s pages. Let’s simply remind everyone to always check your sources. If your research begins and ends with Wikipedia, you’re wasting your time.