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

Of course I’ve read and heard a lot about The Prisoner, the 1967 television series, but I never got a chance to see it. Now that AMC produced a remake, the original 17 episodes are available on demand. The good ones are great, the bad ones are terrible, but if you’re a fan of shows like Lost, Flash Forward or Fringe, you should take a look at their antecedent.

One episode, “The General,” takes a few swipes at education – both at rote learning, as evidenced by this clip:

… and more progressive forms of teaching, as displayed in this dialogue:

She looks around the garden and sees a man sitting in a deckchair. He is ripping pages out of a book and dropping them on the ground.

Teacher:     That gentleman over there. What do you think he’s doing?

Number 6:     Tearing up a book.

Teacher:     He’s creating a fresh concept. Construction arises out of the ashes of destruction. And that woman?

She indicates a woman who is leaning upside down against a wall by some steps.

Number 6:     Standing on her head.

Teacher:     She’s developing a new perspective.

Number 6:     Really?

He points to the man he was sketching.

Number 6:     Him?

Teacher:     He’s asleep. One learns only when the mind wants to, not at set times.

In Speedlearn fashion, here are a few rapid-fire clicks to carry you through the weekend:

* The latest installment in the Denise Farina hearings.

* The New York Times highlights a few provisions in the city teachers’ contract and gets compared to Fox News in the comments.

* Teacher shortage hysteria had led to a teacher glut in Australia.

Because during contract negotiations in Stamford, Connecticut, someone might notice that the average teacher salary is about $80,000.

Because in Brevard County, Florida, someone might notice that more than $5 million designated for the employee health care trust fund was spent on an 8.5 percent teacher pay raise.

Because in Hawaii, someone might wonder if getting rid of school on Fridays is really that great of an idea.

Because in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, someone might suggest that the union is filing multiple grievances to get negotiating leverage.

Because across America, someone might actually get to read the New Haven teacher contract before deciding how reformy it is. In the meantime, you can see that the New Haven Federation of Teachers didn’t emphasize the same areas as Randi Weingarten, Arne Duncan and the New York Times when discussing the contract internally.

First, from the September 15 minutes of the union’s executive board:

Dave updated the board on the highlights of the past meetings. The following are issues that have been agreed to:

• There will be no non-union charter schools. All teachers will be union members.
• Tenure laws will not be changed.
• “Turnaround Schools” may be chosen by the BOE and become charter schools. No teachers will be laid off as a result of a school being chartered. There will be an “election to work” agreement which will outline the general parameters of this position. The extended work day, added responsibilities, and compensations will all be clarified and teachers will be informed up front.
• There will be an Advisory council that will govern the school and provide teachers with many levels of involvement.
• There will be Peer Assistance and Review program, which would include a “peer review person”, chosen by the union to model, assist teachers, and provide support.
• The district will ultimately make the determination of tier schools. But still being discussed is the “ waiver of work rule” provision, which allows work rules to be changed if more than 75% of the staff agrees.

There will be committees formed this year to finalize issues so that this reform can be in place for the 2010 –2011 school year. One of the first agenda items is to survey teachers to assess their principals and the principals to assess their administrators as a way to impact change where needed.

Then, from the September 22 minutes of the union’s stewards’ meeting:

Contract negotiations:

The main points have been:

Minimum four year contract

Step movement for all

Minimal cost increase for medical benefits

No contract language change

Opelika-Auburn News columnist Jennifer Foster can’t fathom why the Alabama Education Association and its honcho, Paul Hubbert, both tweet secretly.

As someone who reads a lot of teacher union communications – external and internal – I can only say, count your blessings. AEA President Anita Gibson tweets openly, and her 26 followers are no doubt riveted by posts such as:

* “”Poli-tricks” in AL as usual – at least I am getting a clearer picture of those who are against “a great PUBLIC school for every child in AL”

* “AEA is not a bldg on Dexter Ave or an individual, it is the more than104,000 members across this state who value belonging to their prof org”

* “great to see AEA Bd m’bers signing on.”

I suppose it’s possible Hubbert’s tweets include his secret plot to overthrow Alabama’s government, but I suspect they contain similar pablum.

Major kudos to the Branford Eagle, which took advantage of a rare occurrence – a teacher termination hearing open to the public – to assign a reporter to cover the entire proceeding. Five articles later, you’ll be screaming for an overhaul of teacher evaluation and public school district labor policy.

It’s a lot of material to read, but you won’t be sorry you took the time. Here are some highlights:

* September 3 – “Contentious Teacher Termination Hearing Underway”

The teacher in question is Denise Farina, a 27-year veteran of the Branford school district in Connecticut. She is suspended with pay awaiting termination for poor performance. She received remedial help but, district officials say, she remained disorganized and unable or unwilling to change. For her part, Farina filed a federal lawsuit, claiming the district discriminated against her based on age and disability. For the first 25 years of her teaching career, she received satisfactory evaluations from her supervisors. In response to the suit, the district conducted an internal review, which resulted in a 740-page document.

* September 21 – “Teacher’s Legal Defense Team Faces Challenges”

The second day of hearings placed the district superintendent on the stand for six hours. Branford Eagle reporter Marcia Chambers tells us:

Farina describes her life in school as a living hell, a place where she was consistently monitored. At one point school authorities called the police and sent Farina to the Yale-New Haven Psychiatric Hospital after Farina, late again to school because her dog ran away, uttered the phrase “I could kill myself.” She was released that day, according to the lawsuit. Dr. Halligan said school officials take such spontaneous utterances seriously.

* September 29 – “Farina Accused Of Misappropriating Confidential Student Info”

Farina still had access to student records, despite her suspension, and used it to bolster her case that test scores were satisfactory. The district’s attorney freaked out.

“This is an absolute violation of federal law. You can’t go into a data bank and get other pupils’ scores by names. This is a very serious issue. And to use it for a due process hearing?” he said, shaking his head in disbelief.

Farina’s principal testified that ”she failed to do required assessments of her students, had failed to teach science and other key subjects and was consistently late to school.”

* October 22 – “Inside Denise Farina’s Classroom”

Farina’s former school colleagues testified against her.

Several witnesses disclosed at her termination hearing that Farina’s troubles were not recent—- as her legal team claims. They testified she was having trouble teaching even as a kindergarten teacher, a position she held for more than two decades.

Two paraprofessionals testified that the kindergarten parents knew Farina was struggling; her colleagues knew it; and her former school principal, Kathryn Sassu, knew it and tried but failed to get documentation from within.

…Most of them cast their eyes away from Farina as they described her disorganized classroom, her failure to hold a class together, her lack of teaching skills and her bleak attitude. They noted that she did not focus when they gave model lessons. They said she was not engaged. Instead of listening she would sit at her desk writing checks or filing her nails. Several witnesses commented on her nail filing.

October 26 – “Union Keeps Its Distance From Farina”

The Branford Education Association apparently washed its hands of Farina, but former union president Peter Anaclerio was called to the stand. It bears mentioning that Frank Carrano, the president of the school board who is presiding over the hearing, was the president of the New Haven Federation of Teachers for 25 years.

Farina had been placed on the district’s Teacher Improvement Plan (TIP) four times. Anaclerio said the union was opposed to this. “The union felt that extending the Teacher Improvement Plan more than one or two times was not a strong precedent to set. If the teacher could not pass after one or two times, then the teacher should be terminated,” he said.

This seemed to startle Carrano.

“Does this mean two strikes and you’re out?” he asked.   

Anaclerio responded that one or two TIPS “should be enough time to evaluate the teacher.”

…He said he and Farina “had many discussions over Denise’s future.”

At one point, Anaclerio said, “the union made a recommendation that she resign.”

“We did a risk analysis of Denise’s future. We advised her of what would happen if she were to be terminated rather than if she resigned or retired. We knew there were goals of the TIP process that were not being met…. Given what we have seen in this TIP, fighting this case would be difficult,” he said he told her.

Anaclerio did admit that the union filed a grievance on Farina’s behalf after she was docked a day’s pay because her classroom on the first day of school was in disarray.

Several parents testified positively about Farina’s skills as a a teacher, but good or bad, it’s the school district that’s on the hot seat. If she’s so incompetent, how did she last 27 years? This long, drawn-out procedure is taking place without the union’s active participation. How many Denise Farinas are out there protected by even more due process than is being exhibited here?

Click here to read:

1) NEA to “Revisit” Relationships with AFT, AFL-CIO and Change to Win
2) Are Teachers’ Unions Overrated?
3) See, Teachers’ Unions Can Be Sensible
4) Broward Teachers Union Wins the Captain Louis Renault Award
6) Contract Hits
6) Last Week’s Intercepts
7) Quotes of the Week

Many people are enamored with the new collective bargaining agreement for teachers in New Haven, Connecticut, but we shouldn’t be too optimistic about reforms in AFT districts spreading to other AFT districts (see Cincinnati performance pay, Toledo peer review, Rochester “living contract,” et al.).

Thomas W. Carroll, president of the Foundation for Education Reform & Accountability, goes one step further, saying the New Haven contract is “actually loaded with union giveaways that will hamper reform, not advance it.” Carroll is particularly upset with “a bizarre provision that allows the New Haven union to veto work-rule reforms even if 100 percent of the teachers in that school approve of them.”

No desire is quite so unrequited as that for “reform-minded” teachers’ unions. There have been hopeful headlines going back to at least 1985 (if you subscribe to Education Week, check out a letter to the editor I wrote in 2002). If something promising happens, all well and good. But don’t expect it to signal a trend elsewhere.

You don’t often see the Washington Post publish a post-mortem 10 days before an election, but it looks like the Democratic Party has come to bury Virginia gubernatorial nominee R. Creigh Deeds, not to praise him. Deeds trails by 8 points or so.

Deeds is the most union-friendly candidate Virginia has seen in a while, but you have to wonder how much attention he has actually paid to labor issues after reading this quote from a recent debate:

“Anecdotally — I know a guy who’s in the food service business who says he can save hundreds of millions of dollars or more in public education by privatizing food service and janitorial service,” Deeds said. “We have to think innovatively, we’ve got to be reinventing the process of government.”

That’s the way to get union supporters to the polls, Mr. Deeds. All you need now is a few kind words about vouchers and you’re all set.