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

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1) Coverage of NEA Representative Assembly Begins July 2
2) Vox Populi, Vox Nihili
3) Court Rules Teaching Seventh-Grade English Is Not a Civil Rights Violation
4) Pigeon-Holed
5) Contract Hits
6) Last Week’s Intercepts
7) Quote of the Week

I try not to wax philosophical too often, but sometimes events prompt what passes for Deep Thought around here. Two unrelated blog posts were the catalyst this time, one by Jay P. Greene and the other by Stephen Sawchuk.

Jay is upset that NEA steadfastly refuses to acknowledge any positive impact related to the DC voucher program:

The only news is that people, including the news media, public intellectuals, and policymakers, continue to treat the teacher unions as if they were credible actors in education policy discussions.  It is a mystery to me why they are ever contacted for comment by reporters or invited to serve on panels.  People who feel obliged to lie should be shunned and their opinions should never be solicited because their opinion can never be trusted as serving the truth.

I understand that the teacher unions have a right to exist, to represent their members in negotiations, and to attempt to influence policy.  But I don’t know why anyone should help them influence policy since they have shown such a callous disregard for truth and obsessive concern with self-interest.

Jay’s anger is misplaced, mainly because he perceives teacher unions are being treated as “credible actors in education policy discussions.” I read virtually every article and column written every day in newspapers that mention teachers’ unions, and it’s clear to me that they are treated as a powerful special-interest group who can generally get what they want from politicians and school boards. THAT’S why they are contacted for comment. They have proven time and again that what they want is likely to become public policy, so it’s incumbent upon reporters to find out what that is.

Any lawmaker who believes what he reads in an NEA press release or e-mail blast is too dense for public service. Such people may exist, but if they do, spend your emotion on getting them voted out of office. What comes out of the press office of a teachers’ union should be treated no more seriously than an announcement from Dunkin’ Donuts about its plans to make “hard-working Americans stay slightly more productive.”

Meanwhile, we have a post from Teacher Beat, in which Stephen Sawchuk tells us, “Five EdWeek reporters sat down with American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten earlier this week over coffee for a wide-ranging conversation.”

I love Education Week. I’ve known, met and respected reporters and editors who have worked there since 1997. Stephen Sawchuk is a fine writer and an experienced journalist. But at least four of those Ed Week reporters wasted their time with Weingarten.

They got nothing from her that they couldn’t have culled from the AFT web site, but we did learn…

…that Weingarten has a SWEET office, with a seriously fab view of the Capitol. I imagine that’s a good reminder to have when you’re trying to push a tough bill through Congress. Second, one of my female co-workers reports (admiringly) that Weingarten has sculpted “yoga arms.” Which, in addition to making her fierce, also makes her superhuman, since who has time for yoga when you’re running a national and a local union?

Third, in demeanor, Randi is charming and engaging and likes to tell humorous anecdotes. She isn’t above teasing Serious Education Journalists (ahem).

We also learn that Weingarten “has a tendency, like Henry James in his late novels, to insert multiple parenthetical thoughts into sentences. Her answers tend to be fairly philosophical—an effective tactic with the media since it’s much harder to pin her down.”

An apt analogy made even more appropriate when one reads H.G. Wells’s description of that Henry James tendency:

His vast paragraphs sweat and struggle; they could not sweat and elbow and struggle more if God Himself was the processional meaning to which they sought to come. And all for tales of nothingness…. It is leviathan retrieving pebbles. It is a magnificent but painful hippopotamus resolved at any cost, even at the cost of its dignity, upon picking up a pea which has got into a corner of its den.

Weingarten’s tales of nothingness are a tactic she employs with her own members, but you would think five reporters would be able to twist her arm until they came up with some news – even if they are yoga arms.

Teachers at three Civitas charter schools in Chicago voted to join the Illinois Federation of Teachers, after a short delay because of a dispute about whether Civitas is a public or private employer.

Meanwhile, teachers at the KIPP Infinity Charter School in New York succeeded in leaving the union when the United Federation of Teachers agreed to voluntarily withdraw as their bargaining agent.

…goes to the Wall Street Journal, for James K. Glassman’s review of Liberating Learning, a book by Terry M. Moe and John E. Chubb. Glassman discusses the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School’s performance, and notes:

Messrs. Moe and Chubb report that there are 190 cyber charter schools today in 25 states, up from 57 such schools in 13 states in 2002-03. Many of the new cyber charters are managed by two for-profit companies, K12 and Connections Academy. Meanwhile, some students in traditional schools are taking individual courses online, and companies such as Educomp, based in India, are tutoring U.S. students after school hours.

Teachers unions, of course, are appalled. They know that “the new computer-based approaches to learning simply require far fewer teachers per student — perhaps half as many, and possibly fewer than that,” Messrs. Moe and Chubb write. Online charter schools employ two or three teachers per 100 students; the average public school employs 6.8 per 100. Technology also disperses teachers geographically (making them elusive for union organizers); lets in private-sector players who aren’t members of the guild; and enables outsourcing to foreign countries. For unions, technology is poison.

Accurate in theory, but unfortunately the review appears the same day as the news that teachers at a smaller Pennsylvania cyber charter school, PA Learners Online, just voted to unionize.

Indeed, the Pennsylvania State Education Association deserves some applause. PSEA has been trying to organize charter schools for almost nine years, and this is its second one (the other was absorbed into an existing local).

The big picture for charter schools is still very bright, however. It’s going to take a major change in attitude for other NEA state affiliates to start organizing virtual charters, and despite recent successes, the union’s market share of charter schools continues to fall. In yet another twist, this morning’s headlines bear that out.

From Newsday:

Influential teachers’ union leader Randi Weingarten is due to make it official next Wednesday that she will depart as head of the United Federation of Teachers on Aug. 1 to head only the national affiliate American Federation of Teachers, the traditional retirement route for that union’s past presidents, according to reliable sources.

That’s good news for whichever apparatchik is next in line at UFT, and even better news for Weingarten, who won’t have to read stories like this one anymore.

Ken Decaria has served in the Wyoming state senate for nine years, but he is stepping down at the end of the month. He’ll be out of work for a grand total of two weeks, as he begins his position as government relations director of the Wyoming Education Association on July 13.

That’s a pretty quick turnaround from legislator to lobbyist, but at least Decaria resigned his seat. In some places, people think they can do both jobs at once.

Click here to read:

1) EIA Exclusive: Proposed Budget Shows No Recession at NEA Headquarters
2) PR Firm Solicitation of the Week
3) Contract Hits
4) Last Week’s Intercepts
5) Quote of the Week