It felt like a very validating week for EIA. After most of this week’s items I have included a quote from an EIA Communiqué or report relevant to that issue.
+ Detroit teachers went back to work. Labor activist Rich Gibson, whose updates on the strike were invaluable, sent out a report describing events on the floor of the Cobo Center the morning of the back-to-work vote:
* “The DFT leadership, having learned something from the last meeting when everything went awry, held a fairly firm grip this time around.”
* “Less than twelve people spoke in a brief question and answer period. The initial four questioners addressed trivial matters in the contract. This was puzzling until a leader of what most people see as the more moderate of the dissident caucuses came to the microphone and complained that members of (DFT President John) Elliott’s caucus had been allowed into the building early and had taken up positions to speak — first in line.”
* “Steve Conn, leader of what most teachers view as the more radical of the caucuses opposing Elliott, the caucus which gave impetus to the initiation of the strike in the last meeting, was so roundly booed by the audience that it was impossible for three of my colleagues located in different sections of the huge arena to hear him. Elliott cut Conn off well before his allotted time, which Conn noted, apparently for the record. There was no question where the vote was headed at that point.”
{“But the smart money says that Elliott, caught off-guard last week, will have his supporters ready to out-shout his opposition tomorrow.” — EIA Communiqué, September 7, 1999}
+ If you read a newspaper at all this weekend, you know that the Denver Classroom Teachers Association approved a contract that included a merit pay pilot program. EIA expects it to be successful, but questions how much it will tell us about merit pay in general. The plan is voluntary, and each teacher who volunteers will need the support of 85 percent of the teachers in the school to participate in the program. This virtually guarantees that only the high-quality, highly motivated teachers will be in the pilot program.
The incentives are small. Teachers will get $500 for participating, and another $1,000 if the test scores of a majority of their students improve. After two years, the union membership will vote whether to make the system permanent for everyone. From that point on, merit pay would replace step increases for longevity. And, since it is a three-year contract, the following year DCTA will have another opportunity to decide whether to continue the “permanent” program.
There is no question that the Denver contract has stirred things up within the teachers’ unions. The official line has been to applaud DCTA for trying something new, and then adopt a wait-and-see attitude. EIA suggests all observers take the same stance. The official position of the Colorado Education Association is this:
“The single salary schedule continues to be the major way in which school employees, both teachers and educational support personnel, are paid because it is fair, objective, and reasonably simple to administer. The salary schedule is based on two criteria: experience and training. There is no differentiation among employees who teach different subjects or grade levels.”
{“Soon, I expect to see unions endorse some forms of merit pay for teachers. What forms? Those that do not threaten collective bargaining and union control of the teaching profession.” — from an unpublished EIA analysis of May 1999}
+ The staff of Vermont NEA ended a five-day strike after reaching agreement on a new contract. During negotiations, the staff union accused Vermont NEA President Angelo Dorta of trying to institute an alternative salary schedule that reportedly included merit pay. Dorta was also criticized by the staff for highlighting the difference between the average teacher salary and the average staff salary. “The average Vermont teacher makes about $36,000; salaries for the 10 professional union staff representing them range from $55,000 to $79,000,” said staff union president Suzanne Dirmaier. Dirmaier neglected to mention that at least eight of those staffers — including herself — are at the top of the scale.
{“Vermont NEA is another union that experienced a decline in its amount of dues revenue, but a substantial increase in spending on compensation — all of it in salaries and benefits. It now spends nearly 95 percent of its dues revenues on compensation.” — from Piles of Wealth: Teacher Union Staff Compensation, an EIA report of June 1998}
+ Education Week published an editorial by union activists Bob Peterson and Michael Charney that called on teachers’ unions to build yet another “new vision of teacher unionism,” which they describe as “social-justice unionism.” Under their model, not only would teachers’ unions bargain for teachers and employ the “new unionism” facets of peer review and teacher quality, but they would also take on a “class-conscious perspective” and “forthrightly address the issues of race that dominate both our schools and our social and political institutions.” (This from a profession that’s 90 percent white.)
Still, Peterson and Charney say a couple of things that seemed vaguely familiar:
“Also integral to social-justice unionism is the question of union democracy and increased rank-and-file participation. Too often, teachers don’t view themselves as an essential part of their union, seeing ‘the union’ as only the small group in leadership or the paid staff. Certain practices in some locals — ranging from questionable election procedures to boring, top-down meetings — discourages teachers from full participation. In addition, there has been a historic divide between those who commit themselves to union activities and those who commit themselves to improving teaching practices by starting innovative schools, leading district curriculum committees, being active in the community, or participating in state and national professional organizations.”
{“Local union officials constantly complain about the lack of grassroots participation. The same people show up for the same events, duties and political activities every time. Why? Three perceptions seem to hold true: 1) The more union, the less teacher; 2) The more union, the less dissent; and 3) The more union, the less flexibility.” — from NEA Confidential: A Practical Guide to the Operations of the Nation’s Largest Teachers’ Union, an EIA annual report from 1998.}
+ Stefan Gleason of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation had an editorial published in several newspapers around the country, but the Greensboro (North Carolina) News & Record did something extraordinary with it. In the middle of Gleason’s editorial, the editors inserted, well, an editorial of their own:
“(Editor’s note: North Carolina has a right-to-work law. North Carolina’s teachers are represented by three organizations, the Professional Educators of North Carolina, the N.C. Association of Educators and the American Federation of Teachers. None of those organizations is considered a union either by the General Assembly or by organization members themselves.)”
Leaving aside the dubious practice of interrupting a newspaper editorial with this sort of comment, it makes one wonder how delusional some people can be. While right-to-work laws exist in 21 states, it doesn’t change the nature of the affiliates of national teachers’ unions in those states. How can a non-union be an affiliate of a union? Every NCAE member pays dues to NEA — an organization deemed to be a union by both the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Labor Department. NCAE representatives vote in NEA elections and have seats on the NEA Board of Directors. Eddie Davis of North Carolina sits on the NEA Executive Committee. No matter where you live, if you belong to NEA or AFT, you belong to a union. Get used to it.
{“If AEA members are representative of teacher union members elsewhere, in that they either don’t know or don’t believe that their union is part of organized labor and the labor movement, it has significant implications for public education reform as well as for union merger.” — EIA Communiqué, May 24, 1999, after an Alabama Education Association survey revealed that only 2 percent of its members described AEA as a labor union, and only 5 percent described NEA as a labor union}
+ Eileen McNamara of the Boston Globe wrote a column on September 8 entitled “Two sides to school violence.” She described the exceptional measures being used to combat school violence these days, then noted the case of Terrance Boylan, a 27-year principal who allegedly attacked a teacher. Boylan is still drawing his $65,000 salary during an investigation McNamara described as “plodding.” She then added:
“For all our talk about ‘zero tolerance’ toward violence in our schools, those policies apparently apply only to children, whose appeals for due process are dismissed as so much coddling of juvenile offenders.”
{“The fact that school safety is a universal concern, transcending political parties, ideological differences, race, gender and ethnicity makes it difficult to question measures taken in its name. So why are these extraordinary measures only targeted at students? The U.S. Departments of Education and Justice can bury you in statistics about school crime — provided the crime is committed by a student. At the national level, no agency keeps track of crimes committed by school employees.” — from Rotten Apples: School Crime from a Different Angle, an EIA report of January 1999}
+ The Region 16 Board of Education in Connecticut filed a complaint against teacher Karen Renna. Renna resigned from her sixth-grade reading position one day before school was to start in order to accept another teaching job in Waterbury. The contract requires 45 days’ notice to resign. Minor stuff, but the interesting part was the comment by an official of the Region 16 Teachers Association that there are presently no sanctions for breaking provisions of a teacher’s contract. If that’s true, maybe the board should summarily fire a few people and see what happens.
+ The Nevada State Education Association has approved a special assessment on its members for signature gathering to put a corporate income tax initiative on the state ballot. In explaining its rationale, NSEA told its members “Additional funding for public education strongly increases the likelihood but does not guarantee raises. We’ll still have to lobby for and bargain money to go for salaries and benefits.”
