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

The great thing about blogging is when you ask questions, you get answers. Yesterday I asked “How Would Card Check Work with Someone Like Kashi Nelson?” and William Messenger, staff attorney at the National Right to Work Foundation, provided a welcome and detailed answer.

Also, in yesterday’s communiqué, I wrote:

NEA’s talking points also insist the union advocates enhanced compensation for those teachers who “agree to teach in ‘hard to staff” schools.” This point seems to fly in the face of a sentence in NEA Resolution F-9, which reads, “The Association opposes providing additional compensation to attract and/or retain education employees in hard-to-recruit positions.” If there is a provision somewhere that distinguishes between “hard to staff schools” and “hard to recruit positions” I’ll stand corrected.

A lot of readers, mostly NEA folks, wrote to tell me that hard-to-recruit positions are those related to subject matter, like math, science and special ed, while hard to staff schools are those with crime, drug, or other problems that make it difficult to find teachers.

That’s a reasonable explanation, and I have no doubt that it is the proper distinction. But the distinction is being made based on the common sense of my readers, and has no source in NEA policy that I can find. As I told those who wrote in, I’m not trying to argue against the position, I’m trying to find a basis for the position in NEA’s governing documents. I’m also having difficulty finding support for the notion that school-wide performance bonuses are OK, while the resolutions are very clear that individual performance bonuses are not.

One last thought on the “hard to staff” vs. “hard to recruit” distinction: If I’m a superintendent in a high-crime area who desperately needs math and science teachers, but not English or kindergarten teachers, will NEA support my paying more money to the teachers who take those jobs?

I just wrote yesterday under “California Pink Slips Slips” about how the deadline for teacher layoff notices had unintended consequences. Extra notice for a certain layoff is good. Extra notice for a possible layoff only causes needless consternation and distraction for everyone involved.

This morning, the Associated Press reports in Arizona the legislature has a bill to push the layoff notice deadline back to June 15. It’s currently April 15 for probationary teachers and May 15 for senior teachers.

This is education research. I don’t have to show cause and effect. I only have to show coincidence.

Click here to read:

1) Panic in the Streets: President Obama Holds the Same Views on Education as Candidate Obama
2) Staff Pension Costs Bedevil NEA State Affiliates
3) California Pink Slips Slips
4) Eating Your Young
5) United Teachers of Dade Irony Alert Update
6) Right on the Left
7) Contract Hits
8) Last Week’s Intercepts
9) Quote of the Week

From the editors of the Burlington Free Press in yesterday’s paper:

For once, I’m not trying to be provocative, this is a legitimate question.

Alexander Russo at This Week in Education wanted to find out more about the much-ballyhooed union drive of teachers at a KIPP school in New York City. The United Federation of Teachers put him in touch with Kashi Nelson, who didn’t start the organizing drive, but was an early supporter.

This morning, Russo reports that Nelson changed her mind about supporting a union at KIPP and has notified UFT of her decision.

Those who will write about this will focus on whether Nelson was unduly influenced to change her mind, or whether she was unduly influenced to support the union in the first place. But I think her actions bring up a procedural question about card check.

Card check would only apply to the private sector, but suppose a union got a bare majority of workers to sign authorization cards, and applied for recognition (the stage at which the KIPP union currently resides). What happens if one or more who signed cards changed their minds and reduced the signatories to less than a majority? Are they out of luck? Remember, there is no “reverse” card check. You can’t use it to get rid of a union. Would they then be required to go through the normal secret ballot decertification election process?

My guess is that the card replaces your vote and cannot be rescinded, whatever your second thoughts afterwards. If someone knows for certain, respond in the comments.

While President Obama was putting the finishing touches on his education speech last week, Rep. Brian Bolduc was introducing a simple bill to the Maine Legislature. It adds a single sentence to state law, and reads:

“A salary of a teacher may not be based upon the measurable performance or productivity of the teacher or a student of the teacher.”

Rep. Bolduc is a recent graduate of the Graduate Teacher Certification Program at the University of New England in Biddeford, and his bio says he “looks forward to beginning a career in public education.”

I’ve computed the standard career path numbers and conclude Rep. Bolduc could be president of the National Education Association in the year 2047.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Association of Educators staged a rally after the school board approved a plan that could lead to laying off 456 teachers and 83 assistant principals.

Ken Gjertsen, a school board member who voted against the plan, told teachers attending the rally that the board should “compose a budget that cuts spending without laying off teachers.”

That will be a neat trick, since 83% of the district budget goes toward salaries and benefits for employees, most of whom are teachers.

The district has seen booming growth in the last few years, adding a total of 20,453 students between 2001 and 2006, an increase of 19.8%. During the same period, however, the district hired an additional 2,054 teachers, an increase of 31.3%.

If you hire one new teacher for every 10 new students, you don’t need to be an economist, financial analyst or demographic prognosticator to see that when enrollment slows, or the economy tanks, or funds dry up, you are most probably going to have to let many of those teachers go. Since Charlotte-Mecklenburg was far from the only school district in the country that went on a hiring binge during the fat years, we will see similar measures taken in most districts, and similar labor actions to forestall those measures.

Because of the nature of tenure and seniority rules, virtually all of the dismissed teachers will come from that group of young people who were drawn into the profession by dire warnings of teacher shortages and pending massive retirements of veteran teachers. If all these layoffs occur (remember, all that’s happening now is notice of possible layoffs; no one has lost a job yet), what will happen when the Baby Boomer teachers all do retire? Who will heed the call then?