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

An unbroken line of succession to higher office is well established in NEA circles. The position of secretary-treasurer is the gateway office to move from the representative elected bodies to the executive ones. Incumbent secretary-treasurers move up to vice president. Incumbent vice presidents move up to president. It works the same way in most state affiliates, and the California Teachers Association has been no exception – until now.

Current CTA President David Sanchez held both the vice president and secretary-treasurer positions, as did his predecessor, Barbara Kerr. Current CTA Vice President Dean Vogel was secretary-treasurer. But Dan Vaughn, elected two years ago as secretary-treasurer when Vogel moved up, was defeated in his bid for reelection by an unlikely candidate, Gail Mendes, former president of the United Teachers of Richmond.

Mendes is a member of the union’s State Council, the body that elected her, but did not sit on the board of directors, making her jump to an executive position quite remarkable. I’m checking into what was behind the upset victory since, as usual, there is very little to distinguish the candidates on issues.

The CTA State Council also voted to support all six budget-related initiatives on the May 19 special election ballot, even though the California Nurses Association opposes all six, and the California Federation of Teachers opposes all but one.

Click here to read:

1) The New Know Nothings
2) Do DC and NY Really Matter That Much?
3) Kansas Local Boots NEA
4) Recommended Reading
5) Contract Hits
6) Last Week’s Intercepts
7) Quotes of the Week

Hat tip to Education Week for providing this transcript of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s remarks to the National Science Teachers Association in New Orleans last Friday. Here is the takeaway quote:

But we need to respond to the market by paying more to teachers in high-need subjects like science and math.

I’m a big believer in differential pay. I want to reward excellence by paying teachers and principals who do a great job in the classroom.

I want to reward them for going into struggling school districts. That’s where the challenge is. If you’re going to take on a tough job, you should be rewarded.

I want to incent schools to attract and support great talent in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects.

NSTA posted a video of the speech, but I can’t get it to work properly.

We haven’t heard any union spin on this speech yet, but before we do, I thought I should pull a couple of quotes from the February 2008 report of the NEA Professional Standards and Practice Committee on compensation systems:

…NEA is in opposition to three main concepts when it comes to compensation beyond the single salary schedule:

1) Pay based on student performance (such as pay based on student test scores);

2) Pay based on the evaluation of an education employee’s performance (such as a subjective evaluation by a principal); and

3) Additional pay for shortage areas (such as math and science).

The rationale for #3 is:

The NEA values all teachers and all other employees in the school district, and we value the need to create a school community. To pay “shortage area” teachers more than others will create a value system that is not conducive to strengthening our public schools. It will give the appearance that we value high school math and science more than reading in elementary school. It will cause divisions amongst the staff that lead to an unnecessary and unhealthy lack of collegiality. In addition, simply paying more for “shortage areas” alone does nothing to address the real issue of the low salaries that face the entire teaching profession.

Subject matter differential pay has the potential of causing more divisiveness between NEA and the Obama administration than does performance pay. A lot of school districts may talk about performance pay, but most will be happy to continue without the bother of creating a new system. Districts everywhere would like the freedom to pay more to hire teachers in shortage areas, which would require very little change.

Over at This Week in Education, Alexander Russo brings us a quote from United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten about teachers from two KIPP schools booting her union:

Given that we have represented KIPP Academy since 1995 without any issues that would remotely rise to the level of dissatisfaction, much less disaffiliation, today’s announcement is surprising. Regardless, I welcome the opportunity to meet with the staffs at both Academy and Infinity, and find out what is going on. What is interesting is this move comes after the KIPP AMP teachers started their organizing drive and on the eve of the PERB hearing on recognizing the union at KIPP AMP. KIPP management is obviously fighting hard because it doesn’t want their schools to be unionized.

Let’s see, a majority of employees (in fact, all of them) decided to alter the labor/management relationship without advance notification of what they were up to. They sent their intentions to the labor board accompanied by the signatures of the employees. Ms. Weingarten’s reaction to this news – of which she apparently was blissfully unaware until today – is to alert everyone that she plans to march down there and get to the bottom of it, and suggest that the employees were unduly pressured to sign.

What UFT won’t do is simply accept without dispute the petition of those employees as their freely expressed will. The union will not listen to requests that it remain neutral  and it will not fail to explore every avenue to maintain the status quo ante labor/management relationship at those two schools. Doing so, of course, makes UFT one of those ”interests determined to keep the balance of power tilted in their favor.”

We eagerly await another 4,000 word piece from UFT’s Leo Casey on “Who’s Afraid of Teacher Voice?“

Elizabeth Green at Gotham Schools has the scoop:

Teachers at two New York City KIPP charter schools today asked state labor officials to sever their ties from the city teachers union, in petitions signed by every single teacher at the two schools.

The KIPP Academy and KIPP Infinity staffs (totaling about 60 members) sent out a press release about their decision:

In recent months, the UFT has made clear its desire to play a more active part in the day-to-day operations of our schools.  Two examples illustrate this point.  In January, the UFT sent a letter to the KIPP: Infinity Board of Directors with the goal of beginning collective bargaining on teachers’ behalf; the UFT neither consulted nor informed the staff of this request.  In addition, a union-initiated grievance has been filed against KIPP Academy without solicitation or support of staff.  It is our belief that the active presence of an external negotiating representative could compromise the strong environment of communication and collaboration that is integral to the success of our schools.

When KIPP AMP teachers joined the union, we quickly got a slew of commentary about the greater implications of it. When Kashi Nelson, one of the early supporters of unionization at KIPP AMP, changed her mind, the only sound from the blogosphere was crickets chirping. Consistency dictates that this story should engender all sorts of speculation about a trend toward decertification of unionized charter schools.

But don’t hold your breath.

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn introduced his state budget yesterday and the Illinois Education Association was not pleased.

“Instead of offering a plan to fix the state’s broken school funding system, Gov. Quinn allows the current system to stand, even though children in every part of the state are being denied the opportunity for a high quality education due to inadequate funding. Instead of directing that the federal stimulus funds be used as President Obama intended, to preserve jobs and programs in public education, Gov. Quinn would use these one-time funds to balance the state budget,” said IEA President Ken Swanson in a press statement.

That’s a heck of a turnaround from one week ago, when Gov. Quinn addressed the IEA Representative Assembly:

“What a difference a real governor makes, huh?” Ken Swanson, president of the Illinois Education Association, yelled over the loud standing ovation Quinn received.

Yes, the crowd loved him:

Educators in the audience weren’t bothered by the fact that Quinn never once mentioned any dollar figures for education.

“I’m encouraged because I think that he has a vision for what good government should be about serving the people of Illinois, and that includes the kids,” said David Griffith, president of Naperville Unit Education Association.

Sarah Madsen, a preschool teacher in Elgin, said seeing Quinn do something as simple as jotting down notes as he listened to comments was significant.

“I’ve never seen someone actually taking out a note and being like, ‘I heard that, I heard what you said and I’m going to write it in a notebook and read it at a later date,”’ she said.

And like others there – including Swanson – she couldn’t help compare Quinn to Rod Blagojevich, Quinn’s predecessor who was recently impeached and removed from office.

“When Gov. Blagojevich would come you could tell … he didn’t understand the importance of what goes on in the classroom every day,” she said. “I think Gov. Quinn does.”

The union even posted a story about Gov. Quinn’s RA speech on its website headlined, “Gov. Quinn tells IEA he plans on revamping education funding.”

But if you click the link today, you get “We’re sorry. The page cannot be found.” Even the Google cache of the page won’t load.

IEA will have to be more thorough in its purging of its laudatory reception, though. They forgot to wipe the blog post of communications director Charlie McBarron on the Governor’s appearance. If you hurry, you might still get to read it before it’s flushed down the memory hole.

An article in the latest issue of New York Teacher, the organ of the New York State United Teachers, asks the question, “Does consolidation of small districts make sense?” I have been asking that question since 1999 (and if you count the Captain Obvious cartoons in the archives, a lot more times in the last couple of months), and the conclusion I reached coincides with that of just about everyone else who has studied the issue: It might make sense, but it probably won’t save any money.

NYSUT, to its credit, reached the same conclusion.

The bottom line in the consolidation discussion, says NYSUT’s [Executive Vice President Alan] Lubin, is the bottom line itself. 

“It’s been our experience that consolidations are rare because many times the savings just aren’t there,” he said.

According to a 2005 report from the National Rural Education Association, the educational and financial results of state-mandated school district consolidations “do not meet legislated expectations.” An association task force also determined that smaller districts have higher student achievement.

In a 2004 report, the Goldwater Institute in Phoenix, Ariz., found that consolidation increases administrative costs and class size and reduces student achievement.