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

It’s going to be tough for NEA to organize this Minnesota charter school.

Click here to read:

1) Utah Anti-Voucher Phone Calls May Be from Out-of-State
2) Utah’s $3 Million Question
3) CTA Dealing with Some Internal Unrest
4) Three Quick Questions
5) Another Blast from the Past
6) NCLB May Leave You Limp
7) Last Week’s Intercepts
8) Quotes of the Week

Before being swamped by the Associated Press series on teacher sex abuse (click the related stories links for other episodes in the series), Scott Reeder of Small Newspaper Group had his own devastating series on teacher misconduct.

Although parents will find the numbers alarming, I think they are relatively small considering the incredible number of people working in public education. I suspect there are far fewer criminals working in our public schools than in most other professions. The real outrage lies in the cursory investigations, cover-ups, and failures to punish and decertify admitted offenders that often accompany these cases.

The fear of false accusations would be less of a problem if educators had confidence that the system would conduct a fair and thorough investigation and uncover the truth. Too often, both administration and union are more concerned with their own reputations and liability than with the facts of the case.

It would be unfortunate if these series left the impression that sexual predators are running rampant through our nation’s schools. That is clearly not the case. But parents need assurance that the few existing predators are not being shuffled off to another district in the name of legal and public relations expediency.

Not.

There’s an awful lot of excitment about the performance pay agreement reached in New York City between Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the United Federation of Teachers. Democrats for Education Reform calls it “a huge breakthrough.” Eduwonk says it is “good plan all things considered.” The New York Sun believes it is “a breakthrough likely to shift a fierce national debate over how teachers should be paid.”

I can’t blame people for celebrating what is clearly a political victory for advocates of performance pay, but lost in the champagne and confetti is whether this plan actually gives them what they want – higher pay for high-performing teachers.

Bonus money will be awarded to high-performing schools, where “compensation committees” – made up of two UFT members, the principal and a principal’s appointee – will decide who gets the money. “They could choose to distribute it evenly among union members or single out exceptional teachers. They cannot distribute the money by seniority,” according to the New York Times.

The compensation committees were obviously the wedge used to get the union buy-in. Two UFT members can block any attempt by principals to award bonus money based on cronyism or favoritism. It is less apparent whether principals will block attempts to award bonus money based on union cronyism or favoritism.

Next is the question of how much support there is for this among the rank-and-file. UFT statements are already taking on a defensive tone. “This shuts the door on the individual merit pay plans that I abhor,” said UFT President Randi Weingarten, a sentiment that was echoed by UFT mouthpiece Leo Casey, who wrote yesterday that “we have transformed a negative into a positive, and ‘shut the door’ on individual merit pay programs.”

Others, like the commenters over at NYC Educator, think UFT shut the door after the annoying neighbor was already inside.

This perfectly illustrates the dilemma for unions on this issue, which I discussed last month in the context of the NCLB debates: “A union officer would much rather tell the members, ‘We oppose this bill because it contains merit pay’ than tell them ‘We support this bill because it contains many good things for us, despite the merit pay.’”

Finally, the idea that the New York performance pay plan means we’ll see them spread like wildfire across the country is naïve at best. A dose of reality came this morning from Iowa, where the state offered grants to its 364 school districts to test a performance pay system.

Three applied.

This is an excellent article about the statewide consolidation of school districts in Maine. Advocates always talk about economies of scale and how consolidation will reduce district expenditures. As this story points out, most of a district’s expenditures are personnel costs, and since labor agreements won’t allow downsizing after districts merge, the consolidation saves no money at all.

In fact (surprise!) large districts may actually spend more money than several small ones.

So the question to ask in Maine is why wasn’t this excellent article written before the consolidation law was passed.

There’s an effort to redistrict seven schools from Kansas City into the Independence school district in Missouri. As you might expect, there are parents, teachers, administrators and politicians on both sides of the issue. There are debates over funding and racial balance. This morning, there are numerous stories about a group organized by the Kansas City Federation of Teachers to halt the redistricting.

“The truth has to come out about this disingenuous scheme that, at its core, has nothing to do with education,” said KCFT President Judy Morgan. “It won’t be hard for voters to figure out who’s for kids and who’s just kidding.”

If the redistricting plan has nothing to do with education, neither does the union’s opposition to it. KCFT is an AFT affiliate. Independence teachers are represented by an NEA affiliate. No union in its right mind will simply hand over members to its rival.