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

This is what occupies school administrators at Battlefield High School in Haymarket, Virginia:

Erik Robelen of Education Week did a fine job adding meat to yesterday’s scoop about the retirement of NEA Executive Director John Wilson. First, he went out and got NEA to officially confirm it – something the union normally won’t do for me. Today he scored an interview from Wilson about his future plans. Wilson can’t complain about his financial security, having finished last year with about $300K in salary. But it seems he needs to rectify his relative anonymity. His solution? Blogging!

“I’m going to blog. I’m also going to write some Op-Eds. … I think it would be interesting for someone from the NEA and union work to kind of step back and give a perspective about what the union really is and what the union can do, and not in a hostile or intrusive way, but in service to public education, but I do think the unions have a big responsibility to step up and ensure that children are learning.”

Wilson made clear that as a blogger, he will not be speaking for the NEA. “I’ll be blogging independently. … I like the idea of being a free agent.”

Let me be the first to welcome you to the edu-labor blogosphere, Mr. Wilson. For your blog’s logo you could incorporate a movie reference, but I suggest you team up with Dennis Van Roekel and go with this theme.

Click here to read:

1) NEA Membership Down in 41 States

2) Scheduling Note

3) Last Week’s Intercepts

4) Quote of the Week

EIA has learned that John Wilson, NEA’s executive director for the past 10 years, will retire next August. NEA President Dennis Van Roekel named deputy executive director John Stocks as his replacement.

Wilson has had a long career within NEA, working his way through the hierarchy of the North Carolina Association of Educators and sitting on the NEA Executive Committee. He ran for the presidency of NEA in 1989, losing to Keith Geiger. Wilson then returned to North Carolina to serve as that affiliate’s executive director.

In 2000, Wilson was one of three finalists to replace outgoing NEA executive director Don Cameron – a group that included retired Rear Admiral John F. Sigler. Wilson was named to the post on September 8, 2000.

John Stocks was an assistant executive director for the Wisconsin Education Association Council before moving to NEA headquarters in 2003 to head up the national union’s Great Public Schools Action Plan (remember that?). He was named NEA deputy executive director in 2004.

In Minneapolis, the incoming school board members leave no doubt about who they think their constituents are.

I want California’s Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning to know how much I appreciate the Christmas present it sends to me each year. Every December 15 or so, I can count on CFTL to issue the same preposterous claims about a teacher shortage in the state despite all evidence to the contrary. They can usually rope in one or two breathless headlines or blog posts, and this year’s report was no exception. Louis Freedberg of California Watch headlines his story, “State’s teacher supply plummets,” and warns us of the “brewing crisis.”

There are multiple reasons for the declining appeal of teaching to Californians, said Patrick Shields, director of research for SRI International, which conducted the research for the report. Principle (sic) among them are horrendous “market forces” that have led to 30,000 teachers being laid off in California over the last two years alone – with novice teachers being the most likely to have gotten their walking papers.

I’m convinced the folks at CFTL are worried that I’m working too hard, and so give me this opportunity at Christmas to take a break. Why else would they write a report claiming there is a shortage of teachers because they can’t find jobs? So I’ll just rest up by pointing you to the EIA Communiqué of December 13, 2004, and reposting this Intercepts item from December 15 of last year:

The Yogi Berra Logic of California’s “Teacher Shortage”

Someone once asked baseball great Yogi Berra why he no longer went to Ruggeri’s, a St. Louis restaurant. He replied: “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”

The same reasoning is on display in the California public school system, where the state Department of Education, the California Teachers Association, and the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning continue to promote the notion of a “continuing” or “impending” teacher shortage.

CFTL is the Chicken Little of teacher shortages, and has been for many years. With thousands of teachers being laid off in the state, it’s getting harder and harder for the organization’s analysts to make that case. But they haven’t stopped trying, despite their own data showing a marked improvement in teacher qualifications and the undeniable evidence of few new teachers being able to find jobs, except in math and science.

Just like Yogi, CFTL president and executive director Margaret Gaston is afraid no one will enter teaching because it’s too crowded. “What we’re concerned about is when California begins to lift out of this economic crisis, is California going to have an adequate pool of teachers from which schools and districts can choose?” she said.

Gaston and the other California teacher shortage alarmists refuse to accept responsibility for their rhetoric. Because of seniority provisions in collective bargaining agreements, the teachers being laid off are the same ones who answered the clarion call for new teachers to fill the previous “shortage.” In the unlikely event that California ever finds itself without teachers to fill its classrooms, CDE, CTA and CFTL will have no one but themselves to blame.

Pass the egg nog, honey!

Remember those halcyon days of yesteryear – by which I mean October 2010 – when the California Teachers Association was spending $3.6 million to help elect Jerry Brown as governor of the state? The union said things about him like:

“Whitman’s plan calls for cutting the state budget by $15 billion, which could equate to another $7 billion in cuts to already beleaguered schools. Brown has made a commitment to protect schools.”

$15 billion! Shocking! Thanks heavens we elected Brown!

At least until this morning’s newspapers hit the stands.

San Francisco Chronicle – “Jerry Brown warns educators to brace for more cuts”

Bloomberg – “California Teachers Fear `Amputations’ as Brown Seeks to Cut $28 Billion”

Some think this is a ploy – describing cuts so drastic that the public will beg for a tax increase (on others, of course) in order to avoid them. Maybe. But I think CTA is going to learn that Jerry Brown is not Gray.