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

Doug Gablinske is a member of the Rhode Island House of Representatives. A Democrat, Gablinske lost in the primaries to a challenger supported by organized labor, then launched an unsuccessful write-in campaign to retain his seat.

“Doug Gablinski” is someone pretending to be Doug Gablinske. He sent e-mails during the campaign that made misrepresentations about Gablinske’s political stances.

A police investigation determined “Doug Gablinski” was really NEA Rhode Island assistant executive director John Leidecker. He was arrested and charged with “use of false information” under the state computer crimes act.

“The NEA is really organized crime and [to] resort to these types of tactics during campaigns – they should be embarrassed, ashamed,” Gablinske said. “People on the outside have no idea the types of tactics used by unions during the campaigns and I don’t think the membership does either. They should be asking questions.”

“We have no firsthand knowledge of the charges,” said NEA Rhode Island executive director Robert Walsh. “However, given the involvement of Rep. Doug Gablinske in this matter, we are suspicious about the motivation for this action. At this point, we are waiting until our attorneys sort things out.”

Click here to read:

1) Turkey Week

2) Last Week’s Intercepts

3) Quote of the Week

In an indication of just how far the education debate has shifted in the last 15 years or so, prominent people are actually questioning the widespread practice of paying teachers more money for getting a master’s degree. The question set off California Teachers Association President David Sanchez:

 ”It is not easy for a teacher to go back and get a master’s degree,” he said. “You do it for a reason, not just to get higher pay,” including getting information about new teaching techniques. When he earned his master’s degree, he recalled, “I learned so much more about teaching.”

Maybe it’s because Sanchez got his master’s from the University of La Verne, which is one of the top colleges in the country. But there are a lot of degree mills out there, and prominent university programs that are no better than degree mills.

When I looked at this issue way back in 1999, I discovered that student NAEP scores did increase if the teacher had a master’s degree, but the effect varied widely from state to state. I concluded:

While students who had teachers with master’s degrees did outscore those who did not, the difference in more than half the states was insignificant. Indeed, in two states, South Carolina and Wyoming, students of teachers with bachelor’s degrees outperformed those with better educated teachers. This leaves us with a lot of question, mostly concerning the relationship of those degrees to classroom practices. And on the opposite end, we must ask why Maryland’s teachers with master’s got so much more from their students than did their less educated counterparts.

A worthy subject for additional research would be to survey those teachers with graduate degrees in the extraordinary states – Maryland, South Carolina and Wyoming for starters – and find out as much as possible about their master’s programs. What did they major in? From where did they get their degree? How much of the coursework was related to the subject matter they teach in school?

Perhaps we should not be encouraging elementary level teachers to get master’s degrees. Pay scales tied to other professional development or academic programs might be more beneficial to both teachers and students. It certainly would be worthwhile to find which graduate programs are producing the best results in the classroom, and then promote those among teachers in various ways.

This debate is long overdue, but let’s be circumspect about ditching additional master’s pay entirely. A little quality control over what training we pay for can go a long way.

People’s World reported on last week’s International Labor Communication Association’s annual awards ceremony.  The organization recognizes achievement in union journalism – by which they primarily mean journalism as it is practiced by the unions themselves. Nevertheless, People’s World provided this tidbit:

The communications director for the American Federation of Teachers, which hosted the conference, detailed how her union was able to counter the anti-teacher message of Waiting for Superman, the pro-charter school film.

Though Superman had a much higher marketing budget than An Inconvenient Truth, which was made by the same people and employed a similar public relations strategy, it “bombed,” as AFT representative described it, at the box office. This was due to the online work of AFT, notably more through Facebook than the AFT’s own site.

The meme that Waiting for Superman was a box office bomb seems to rely entirely on this Marc Ambinder column for The Atlantic. The film ranks 20th on the list of highest grossing documentaries since 1982 – certainly not as financially successful as Fahrenheit 9/11 and An Inconvenient Truth, but its per-theater average take exceeds that of films much higher on the list, including Roger (yikes) Michael Moore’s 9th-ranked Capitalism: A Love Story – which was an actual bomb – and the 3rd-ranked Earth.

Still, the idea that Superman bombed isn’t nearly as objectionable as the notion that AFT caused it to bomb. Maybe one of those labor journalists in the audience could have asked for the source evidence for that claim.

Remember the Buffalo teachers and their taxpayer-funded cosmetic surgery? Now a member of the Buffalo school board claims the FBI contacted him regarding an investigation of fraud.

“They’re looking at issues of the significant increase in revenues generated by certain doctors and the increase in the unit cost, but I also think the increase in usage is an area they’re probably going to look into,” said board member Christopher Jacobs.

So far, Jacobs seems to be the only one contacted by the FBI, and no one from the local field office will comment.

Click here to read:

1) Pension Tsunami Could Flood NEA State Affiliates

2) All You Need to Know About Agency Fees

3) Last Week’s Intercepts

4) Quote of the Week

The American Association of School Administrators declared today “Day of National Blogging for Real Education Reform.”

The narrative of public education today reflects the spin of mainstream and talk show media, political figures, and business celebrities. But there is another narrative: a narrative of student-centered systemic change that captures the spirit and voice of invention, passion, and abiding commitment found within America’s public educational community–among the people who serve young people in the least and most challenged of our public schools.

I know many of you were waiting patiently for several paragraphs of snark to follow this announcement, but I’ve decided to play along and give the experts free rein to explain how to reform the status quo they helped create.

To pass the time, I’ll continue to check out the latest education movie lines, The Onion‘s education tour de force (language warning), and the science of Godzilla.