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

Back on the road so blogging will be sparse this week.

Click here to read:

1) NEA Spent More Than $19.5 Million on State Politics in 2010-11

2) Links to Last Week’s NEA Convention Coverage

3) Quote of the Week

With a Democratic governor at odds with the teachers’ union in Hawaii, it brings to mind, well, the last time a Democratic governor was at odds with the teachers’ union in Hawaii.

Honolulu Civil Beat examined the three-week teacher strike in 2001, prompting then-Gov. Ben Cayetano to respond. He noted the strike didn’t turn out to be such a good deal for teachers.

That was obvious even at the time. Check out this EIA story headlined “Hawaii Teachers’ Strike Nets $148.”

I told you that the NEA theme song sounded like a truck commercial, and now I’m going to prove it:

But I don’t want to sell it short. It goes well with all sorts of things. It suits Laurel and Hardy…

…not to mention Phil Collins and Phillip Bailey.

I’m taking a long weekend. See you all on Monday.

If the press is going to give NEA credit for a shift in position on teacher evaluations, how is it everyone outside the convention hall failed to see a relatively larger “change of direction?”

Because, you see, the National Education Association is no longer opposed to the use of merit pay or performance pay compensation systems.

The union is far from embracing them. It left intact language in its resolutions that call such systems “inappropriate,” and NEA still opposes “providing additional compensation to attract and/or retain education employees in hard-to-recruit positions.”

But Resolution F-10 was completely overhauled, and it used to begin:

“The National Education Association is opposed to the use of merit pay or performance pay compensation systems.”

It now begins:

“The National Education Association believes that the single salary schedule is the most transparent and equitable system for compensating education employees.”

There is no mention of merit or performance pay in F-10 anymore. The original language had been added the last time the delegates met in Chicago, in 2000.

That was in the midst of the new unionism wave, and NEA sought to ride it by loosening its restrictions on negotiating performance pay. The effort backfired, as the delegates displayed an uncommon level of contrariness by actually toughening the language against merit and performance pay, adding the above sentence to F-10.

The new F-10 didn’t sneak by delegates this time, either. A motion was made to refer the new language back to committee for reworking, but it apparently failed. I confess I wasn’t in the hall for that debate, since it came soon after the Obama endorsement results were announced. And while I’ve scoured the Internet and social media, no one wrote about it after the fact.

The teacher evaluation policy statement and the performance pay language are not phony shifts. These are distinct changes from previous policy. But as a practical matter, they are meaningless outside of the union. NEA made a similar alteration in 2001, creating a policy statement that changed its “categorical opposition” to charters to a policy of toleration provided that charters meet a long list of requirements. You’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone who thinks this resulted in a boon for charter schools.

It’s simple. Categorical opposition to something on the fringe of education policy is practical, but as such things become more mainstream over time, this becomes less and less feasible and costs the union in public credibility. NEA’s solution is to stop saying, “No, you can’t,” and start saying, “Well, you can, as long as you can pass through the eye of the needle.”

As long as we keep the distinction between internal shifts and practical shifts in mind, we can view NEA’s changes as positive, without getting overly excited about their effects.

The 2011 National Education Association Representative Assembly adjourned this evening at 7:07 p.m.

I thought we were through with World War II references after Saturday, but in his farewell speech ousted executive committee member Len Paolillo compared NEA to the Royal Air Force in the Battle of Britain.

It made me think of General Anthony McAuliffe – “Nuts.”

Still, it was clear that NEA is preparing for war. In his goodbyes, executive director John Wilson sought to rally the troops by reminding them that “CEO salaries are obscene.”

We also have a pretty good definition of what is considered obscene – it must be something above the $357,870 Wilson made last year advocating for underpaid teachers.

But not advocating for all teachers. We’ve recorded time and again union ambivalence and sometimes outright hostility to charter school teachers – even ones who belong to NEA. Add to that list teachers who got their training from Teach for America.

Delegates directed their union to oppose TFA contracts “when they are used in districts with no teacher shortage.”

Boy, it’s funny how quickly that NEA-hyped teacher shortage crisis disappeared (but not from their web site).

Still, the important business of the union was accomplished. There was a successful vote for an additional $20 million for the union’s political issues fund, to be spread around the necessary states, and NEA raised over $1 million in PAC money during the convention (bringing its fundraising year total to more than $4.1 million) – earmarking $48,740 for NEA director Shelly Moore, who is running in one of the Wisconsin senate recall races.

The delegates sent 18,500 messages to Congress during the convention – coming in a distant second to spam for generic Viagra.

I think we have moved past the stage of a “battle of ideas” or even debates about the best public policy. This is a raw political struggle of weapons, ammunition and troops in the field. NEA has the factories going and can never be dismissed in a battle of brute strength.

But as history shows, the biggest armies and the largest bombs don’t guarantee victory.

I forgot to mention that the doubling of each each member’s contribution to NEA’s Ballot Measure/Legislative Crises Fund also passed easily 70-30%. No surprise.

Background here.