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

This Alabama gubernatorial primary campaign ad has gotten a lot of attention.

The ad is the product of the True Republican PAC, and it won’t surprise most people to learn that evolution is still a contentious issue in Alabama, or that a politician can be successfully attacked for being insufficiently zealous on the topic.

It did surprise people that most of the True Republican PAC’s funding comes from the Alabama Education Association. As you can see from the story’s dateline, that news is almost a month old. AEA’s PAC donated money to five PACs, which then donated that money to the True Republican PAC, which then used it to make media buys using the same Denver-based firm that NEA uses.

It was strange enough that AEA would fund ads attacking a Republican candidate for being too liberal, but the evolution ad strikes some as being hypocritical for a union that objects to creationism being taught in the public schools.

I actually prefer seeing up front that AEA is willing to do whatever it takes, even if contrary to its stated policies and those of its parent affiliate, the NEA, in order to defeat a candidate it doesn’t like. It’s important for the public to see that side of the union, which certainly will have difficulty claiming an anti-evolution ad is “for the kids.”

My only objection is the ham-handed way AEA carried out its exercise in realpolitik. A scheme like this is only effective if your role goes undiscovered. The PAC-to-PAC maneuvering makes it clear that AEA wanted to remain hidden. But once the connection was uncovered last month, an ad like this loses any effectiveness. If everyone knows the union is paying for it, the charges lose their bite.

Even liberals are baffled by it. “The fact that the AEA thought that such a tactic might actually work is the most depressing part of this whole story,” wrote Meg White of BuzzFlash.

On a personal level, it’s gratifying to see articles and blog posts like these all in one week:

* “One set of numbers really jumped out – from 2000 to 2008, the number of school-age children in Ohio decreased 6.7% but the number of K-12 teachers increased 17.7%.”

* “Gov. Jim Douglas is lashing out at Vermont lawmakers over taxes and spending, saying they’ve done little to stop school property taxes from rising in an era of declining student populations.”

* “In the past decade, states and districts spent the windfall that inflated property tax rolls generated during the good times. Now that the bill’s come due, Harkin is calling for the feds to subsidize this inflated level of spending even as the economy clanks and grinds its way out of the bubble years.”

* “Teacher Layoffs May Be Linked to Hiring Spree”

* “Ed Week: ‘What Goes Up Must Come Down‘”

On a policy level, it’s too late to do anything about it the painless way. It’s only human nature to wait until it’s raining to think about fixing the leaky roof. It didn’t take any special insight to note in June 2008 that “If New York City’s school managers and labor representatives can’t sensibly address the growing disconnect between enrollment and hiring, a crisis of thousands of layoffs and labor unrest is inevitable,” or to say in December 2005 that “the reason so many states are having education funding problems — and why the average teacher salary is not higher — is not because of NCLB, cheapskate taxpayers, stingy administrators, or any of the other usual targets. It’s because as a percentage of the whole, we’re hiring more teachers — many more teachers — than we’re enrolling students to support them.”

On this issue, NEA President Dennis Van Roekel said, “I just can’t imagine any district bringing on more educators than they need.” Well, no one has ever accused NEA of excessive imagination, but it’s also human nature that when you come into some cash, you discover you “need” something that you previously couldn’t afford. Given one extra dollar, school districts will spend 80 cents of it on personnel. The mission of Van Roekel’s organization is to see that continues.

When NEA has good news to report, you never have a problem getting hold of it. I recall at one NEA convention I was handed membership figures that were about a week old. They showed substantial growth in all categories.

This year it hasn’t been so easy. NEA’s official numbers for 2009 seemed to contradict the internal reports delivered to the union’s board of directors. And while the latest numbers are much more realistic, they still leave some unanswered questions.

According to NEA sources, the union lost almost 25,000 active certificated members compared to last year at this time, but picked up an additional 4,000 education support employees as members. NEA also reported gains in students, retirees and higher education faculty. Unfortunately for NEA, the gains in those lower dues categories don’t offset the full dues paid by the teachers and other professionals.

My historical records are not comprehensive, but I don’t believe NEA has had membership losses like this since becoming a union and instituting unified dues in the mid-70s (a period when entire state affiliates in Missouri and Texas left NEA).

Nevertheless, the California Teachers Association alone reported membership losses of 16,000, which means something is still not right. Either NEA is fudging its membership numbers or there haven’t been quite as many actual teacher layoffs as we were led to believe.

The Brookings Institution has a webcast of its panel on its new report, Re-Imagining Education Journalism. It’s starting right now, and the report was embargoed until right now, so I’ll have to work fast.

While the 25-page report has some great insights on the substance of education journalism these days, it is mostly concerned with the business of education journalism – that is, how to get people to pay for it.

After discussing various models, the authors conclude, “Outlets that have a well-defined niche and offer content that is hard to get elsewhere have been successful at developing premium content and subscription web sites.”

There a couple of areas where I disagree with the report. The authors concur with a statement by the Washington Post‘s Jay Mathews that national education coverage is too focused on “ideology, politics and budget fights.”

We can all pray for the day when education decisions are made based on unbiased research and sound practices, but in the real world those decisions are made based on ideology, politics and budget fights. It only makes sense to cover that overarching dynamic.

The authors also state, “As the economy comes back, we need to figure out ways to raise the stature and prestige of online journalism.” Since the traditional media spent years badmouthing their online counterparts, this is a deeply ironic recommendation. Blogs have traditionally linked to the newspaper stories they reference. Newspapers linking to stories they got from blogs is a relatively new phenomenon.

Head over to the Brookings webcast for more.

UPDATE: Russo hates it.

Click here to read:

1) How Austerity Works Inside the Teachers’ Unions

2) NEA Names Diane Ravitch 2010 Friend of Education

3) Last Week’s Intercepts

4) Quote of the Week

The National Education Association Representative Assembly is in New Orleans this year, and that’s appropriate, because the union and other education employee groups are committed to keeping the hiring party of the last decade rolling.

Today’s question at the National Journal‘s education expert blog is whether the $23 billion in Sen. Tom Harkin’s Keep Our Educators Working Act should be tied to tenure reform. The teachers’ unions, unsurprisingly, are opposed to attaching any strings to the funds.

I think even this idea is a capitulation to the notion that education employees should never be laid off – that whatever level of hiring we have is the minimum required. That’s a luxury we can no longer afford. My response is here.

Alexander Russo has an interview with Pennsylvania Teacher of the Year Michelle Switala and it’s well worth your time. Maybe it’s because I’m always dealing with union press statements and talking points, but I find teachers of the year to be refreshing, even if I don’t agree with them. There are exceptions, of course, but teachers of the year tend to be “off the reservation” when it comes to education issues.

 I won’t attempt any amateur psychoanalysis to explain it, but national and state teachers of the year like Betsy Rogers, Nancy Flanagan, Beth Ekre, Jason Kamras, Michael Geisen, and many others have demonstrated they are not like their colleagues, and their differences extend beyond their teaching abilities.

Yesterday, six Indiana teachers were recognized for “outstanding service to Hoosier students” – an award presented by the state superintendent of public instruction. Two of the teachers, Gaylene Hayden and Jackie Macal, have already received layoff notices.

Both Hayden and Macal expressed mixed emotion upon getting their awards, saying they’d like to see teachers evaluated on more than just seniority. They are both in favor of gauging decisions based on some kind of teacher performance.

Teresa Meredith of the Indiana State Teachers Association countered:

“It’s just purely coincidental I think that the honorees this year are not as experienced as their veteran teachers. And though it is disappointing, we honor and value the experience of the folks who have been in the classroom for a while and we see that those veteran teachers are really experts in their field.”