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

“Fractions have had their day, being useful for by-hand calculation,” says University of Pennsylvania math professor Dennis DeTurck. “But in this digital age, they’re as obsolete as Roman numerals are.”

DeTurck thinks we should stick to decimals and not teach fractions until after a student learns calculus.

“Part of that is our kids are remarkably sophisticated consumers. They want to know why they are forced to do complicated and difficult calculations. You can’t say, ‘Have faith and it will all become clear,’ ” DeTurck said. “Kids figuratively throw up their hands. It is no longer seen as relevant. By the time they see the relevance again they have missed the intermediary stuff.”

Kids don’t see the relevance of anything that isn’t related to their daily lives as kids. That’s why we send them to school. It’s thinking like Professor DeTurck’s that will lead us to a society where these kids will be prepared for nothing except a job in a pizzeria… and even then they will struggle to come up with a method for dividing a pie into equal portions of 0.125.

This time of year I like to send people to visit the web site of the Saint Nicholas Center to learn about Nicholas of Myra and the origins of many Christmas traditions. Apparently there are some folks who have been trying to get an independent movie about him off the ground for several years. They, too, have a web site, and I’ve posted one of their trailers here.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

When a government comes up with a ill-conceived plan for public education, is it a good or a bad thing when that government also doesn’t bother to fund it?

Campaign journalism often consists of too many reporters chasing too little news, so the question of where Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee stands on education is garnering more attention than it might otherwise.

As I noted last Monday, Huckabee is drawing support on education from ideological opposites, represented on one end by conservative home-schoolers and on the other by NEA New Hampshire. This is causing other ideological opposites to question his sincerity. Is this really so unusual a strategy for an Arkansas governor to use?

Huckabee’s education stance arose in two contexts this morning. The first was a smack from columnist George Will, who is appalled by NEANH’s endorsement of Huckabee.

“It likes, as public employees generally do, his record of tax increases, and it applauds his opposition to school choice,” wrote Will.

Huckabee’s campaign states unequivocally: “Governor Mike Huckabee is a supporter of school vouchers, and has always been a supporter of school vouchers; he supported them as far back as his first run for public office, as a U.S. Senate candidate, in 1992.”

Michele McNeil of Education Week isn’t buying that line. In a post headlined “Should Huckabee Be Wearing Flip-Flops?” she turns up a paper trail that depict Huckabee as not quite the voucher champion he now claims to be.

“Incidentally, Huckabee has not been out on the campaign trail, jumping up and down asserting that the NEA got it wrong,” McNeil wrote.

I’m inclined to take the Huckabee campaign at its word – that he supports vouchers. But so what? Has he instituted vouchers? No. Has he proposed a voucher initiative? No. Has he taken any action in any form on vouchers? No. Would he consider alienating some of his supporters by championing vouchers in a practical way? No.

If NEA New Hampshire has been deceived by Huckabee, it can only be because it wanted to be deceived. A teachers’ union can “endorse” someone – even a voucher supporter – while privately hoping he crashes and burns (ref. Joe Lieberman) if it serves a greater organizational purpose. Equally telling was the admission by NEANH President Rhonda Wesolowski that the union “didn’t ask Huckabee much about No Child Left Behind, since he wasn’t a member of the Congress that passed the law.”

Ha! He’s running for President of the United States. If it were a serious endorsement, wouldn’t they want complete details of his position on their biggest national issue? Barack Obama wasn’t a member of the Congress that passed NCLB. Did they let him blow it off, too?

Huckabee’s “support” for vouchers is no different from Obama’s “support” for merit pay. It’s rhetorical. So I don’t think it’s inconsistent for Huckabee to receive a rhetorical endorsement from NEA New Hampshire.

A firm in Michigan that provides substitute teachers in 26 counties reported that teacher absences spike 30 to 40 percent on Mondays and Fridays.

“It can tax the system,” said Scott VanLente, Professional Education Services Group sales and marketing director.

No kidding. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that “many substitute teachers prefer not to work on Fridays or Mondays, either.”

I don’t know anything about this incident except what is in this story from the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, but I thought it was an interesting conundrum. Here are the relevant excerpts:

“The president of the local teachers union slammed the School Committee last night for allowing what he described as slanderous comments to be made about a teacher during a public meeting two weeks ago.

“William R. Bourbeau, president of the Fitchburg Education Association, made his remarks at the start of an otherwise upbeat committee meeting, where departing members were saluted and a local physician’s generosity was celebrated.

“Two weeks ago, during the public forum that starts and closes each meeting, the committee heard from a parent who said he was unhappy with the district’s handling of an incident involving his 9-year-old daughter.”

The story then quotes Bourbeau:

“‘If this committee had followed its own policies, it would have discovered that the teacher who was named in the complaint had already been fully investigated and cleared by both the building and district administration,’ Mr. Bourbeau said. ‘Instead, this committee permitted this parent to slander one of its own employees before this committee at its last meeting on Dec. 3.’

“He quoted committee policies regarding complaints about staff that he said were not followed in this case.

“‘Neither policy states that when a complaint has been fully investigated and the teacher has been cleared of all charges that the unhappy parent has the right to present the unfounded allegations at an open meeting of this committee,’ Mr. Bourbeau said. ‘There certainly is no policy that compels the School Committee meeting to be utilized as a tool for harassing the employees of its district.’

“After Mr. Bourbeau’s remarks, committee member James F. Connors said the First Amendment would preclude anyone being muzzled during the open forum. He said the parent in this case did not use any names, so the remarks were not inappropriate.”

There’s a lot of fun stuff to talk about regarding Mr. Bourbeau’s legal theory (which would probably outlaw most O.J. jokes), but doesn’t it seem like he has done almost exactly what he accused the parent of doing?