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

I’ve been writing skeptically of teacher peer assistance and review (PAR) programs since I began EIA in 1997. The idea was big back when Bob Chase was touting new unionism as president of NEA, but fell off the radar about the same time he did.

Now we’ve got a couple of stories suggesting PAR programs aren’t what they’re cracked up to be. Stephen Sawchuk over at Teacher Beat revisits Toledo’s PAR numbers from a recent New Teacher Project report, and the program in Los Angeles is one of many things that gets lambasted in today’s must-read article, “LAUSD’s Dance of the Lemons” in LA Weekly.

United Teachers Los Angeles President A.J. Duffy promotes a conspiracy theory in the article, which suggests he’s trying to match the president of the only teacher union local in the nation larger than his.

Fox News has a story this morning about the elaborate web of funding behind TheTeaPartyIsOver.org, which includes most major American labor unions. In the 2008 election cycle, NEA dropped $260,000 on one of the many front groups operated by Craig Varoga and George Rakis, two men Fox News identifies as “Democratic Party strategists.”

Readers of this blog will not find such news surprising, but if you delve through the pertinent EIA list of NEA donations to advocacy groups, you won’t find this money. That’s because the expenditures are listed in NEA’s financial disclosure report as expenses for “media,” going to Independent Strategies, one of Rakis and Varoga’s groups, for “generalized message, program expenses,” or “membership communication development,” or “legislative policy development.” Without further information, it was difficult to justify classifying Independent Strategies as an advocacy group. This news, however, suggests NEA’s advocacy spending extends well beyond the easily identifiable groups.

One other thing: Fox News, like many media outlets before it, fails to mention anywhere in the story that the scoop came from the blogosphere, namely Lee Doren on January 29.

AFT is promoting a “Valentine’s Day of Action” to protest the use of child labor in cocoa production in West Africa:

For many American children—and their parents—chocolate is a delightful treat that adds to the joy of special occasions such as Valentine’s Day. But for children in West Africa, there will be nothing special about that day. It will simply be another desolate day of harvesting cocoa under inexcusable conditions. For that reason, the American Federation of Teachers is organizing a Valentine’s Day of Action to stop the importation of child-harvested cocoa beans or chocolate made from them.

AFT is savvy enough to avoid suggesting you shouldn’t buy chocolate for Valentine’s Day, but instead limits its recommended action to writing a letter to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture (and former NEA lobbyist) Tom Vilsack, demanding he take the bold action of… issuing guidelines.

But that’s not all. AFT also provides a “Fair Trade Curriculum Unit for Kids” and activity book, designed for grades 2-5. The activity book reads like a bad parody of liberal activism in the schools. Here are a few excerpts:

* Do you think the cocoa farmers get a lot of the money you pay for the chocolate?

Because they don’t get paid very much, many cocoa farmers and their families are poor!

How do you feel about that?

Do you think that is right?

* Sometimes people create plantations, or large farms, of cocoa trees. Instead of growing the cocoa right inside the forest, while keeping the trees and animals that live there safe, these farms cut down the forest so there is nothing left and then plant only cocoa trees. Many plants and animals lose their homes and cannot survive anymore. (Ed. note: Save the homeless plants!)

* These chemicals make the water and air dirty. Many of the people and animals who breathe the dirty air and drink the dirty water get very sick.

* Kids eat chocolate. When you buy chocolate, companies that sell chocolate make money. They want you to like their chocolate so you will buy it. That is why they care a lot about what you think. And, if thousands of kids tell chocolate companies and businesses that sell chocolate that they want Fair Trade chocolate, then they will change!!!

* One thing you can do is take a pledge to buy Fair Trade chocolate. Let’s take the pledge now together! Repeat after me!

I pledge to buy Fair Trade chocolate so cocoa farmers can build a future full of hope for their families!

The 63-page curriculum guide has a lot more in the same vein, and lets you finish a lesson with a large group activity – repeating the Chocolate Rhyme:

One, two, three, cho
One, two, three, co
One, two, three, late!
Chocolate, chocolate
Fair Trade chocolate!

As you might suspect, the “fair trade” issue is a little more nuanced than AFT suggests, but who needs a lecture on economics when you’ve got a roomful of second-graders chanting the Chocolate Rhyme?

Click here to read:

1) EIA Exclusive: AFT Gave Almost $5.3 Million to Advocacy Groups

2) Last Week’s Intercepts

3) Scheduling Note

4) Quote of the Week

We’re having financial problems.

We’re running a deficit.

It’s unfortunate we had to lay off people, but it was necessary.

Teachers’ unions across the country are complaining about hearing the above statements, but in St. Louis, the teachers’ union is spouting the same lines to its own employees.

The people who work for the St. Louis Teachers Union (AFT Local 420) are represented by the Local 13 of the Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU) and they claim union management is being unfair.

“Your decision to under-staff your office is a serious disservice to your membership. Also, your lack of cooperation and unwillingness to work to find an alternative to these layoffs is abysmal,” wrote OPEIU president Katie Fenlon to teacher union president Mary Armstrong.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Bill McClellan found the situation amusing, but even more amusing was this reader comment about his editorial:

As a member of Local 420, I have to say that Mr. McClellan needs to see the reps of local 13 in action. They are accusatory, and quite into personal attacks. Apparently, they also choose to supress some of the pertinant information they have been given with regard to the union financial situation. They were given copies of the audit just done by an outside firm which plainly shows that the money for these employees is just not there at this point in time. These same auditors also advised that the lay-off was necessary for Lcoal 420 to get back in good financial straits. I am privy to information concerning the group that made the decision to reject the Local 13 proposal, and believe me it was not an easy decision. The la-off of employees is not taken lightly. Also, let it be known that these same employees have been aware of this possibility for quite some time. Yes Local 420 had to make a tough decision, but this is not the only sacrifice that has had to be made. Please try to be fair and impartial in your comments in future and be sure that you have all the facts.

Springfield NEA comfortably won an election to represent district teachers, defeating the independent Missouri State Teachers Association 521 to 383.

Though it might not have changed the outcome, it’s difficult to understand why 876 teachers didn’t bother to vote. It will be a very long time before they get another chance to do so.

He is the man who submitted a proposed ballot initiative to change the seal of the state of Washington:

“An act relating to changing the seal of the state of Washington from a seal encircled with the words: ‘The Seal of the State of Washington,’ with the vignette of General George Washington as the central figure, and beneath the vignette the figures ’1889′ as referred to in a RCW 1.20.080 to a tapeworm dressed in a three piece suit attached to the taxpayer’s rectum as the central figure and encircling the vignette the words ‘Committed to sucking the life blood out of each and every tax payer.’”