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1) Compare and Contrast. Not to beat this to
death, but we already have a preview of how the dynamic between NEA, AFT and
the public will play out over at least the next six years.
New AFT President Randi Weingarten's acceptance speech
was
provided to the New York Times and excerpted before she delivered
it to convention delegates in Chicago. In it, Weingarten made an eye-opening
proposal for expanding schools into wide-ranging community centers, with
recreational activities, health clinics, cotton candy and clowns (OK, I made
up that last bit).
The speech received coverage in New York and Chicago,
was highlighted by the
American School Board Journal, and was the subject of an overheated
post on the popular conservative blog,
Stop the ACLU. Weingarten followed this up with an op-ed in
USA Today, and received additional notice – including a debate about
whether it should be noticed – on the popular liberal blog,
Democratic Underground.
New NEA President Dennis Van Roekel's acceptance speech
received no coverage, and his election made the top of "Phoenix
area briefs" in the Arizona Republic, just ahead of "15-acre land
parcel up for auction." He made no proposals, half-baked or otherwise, and
his remarks caused no blogosphere buzz in either direction.
The traditional difference in tone between AFT (union)
and NEA (association) is also evident. Take a look for yourself. The
transcript of
Weingarten's speech is posted here, while
Van Roekel's speech is posted here. For real enthusiasts, you can see
the
video of Weingarten's full 23-minute speech here and
Van Roekel's full 12-minute speech here.
2) California's School Funding Guru. Buried in
NEA convention debris for the last two weeks, I didn't get a chance to point
you towards an excellent piece by Joe Mathews of the New America Foundation
in the
July 13 Los Angeles Times. Mathews peels away the layers of
Proposition 98, the constitutional amendment that has dictated the levels of
education spending in California for 20 years, and discovers… well, I'll let
Mathews explain:
"No one -- not the
governor, not legislators and certainly not journalists -- has any clear
idea what Proposition 98's education guarantee will be in the new budget
year, what size the cuts will be or whether education spending will be cut
at all."
That's not exactly correct. Mathews
found one person who understands Prop 98: its author, education consultant
John Mockler, who wrote the initiative at the direction of the California
Teachers Association. He asked Mockler why the formulae were so complicated.
"You know, the
state is complicated. Life is complicated. The Ten Commandments are
complicated," he said. "Because people think Prop. 98 is so complicated, I
got to send two kids through Stanford."
I can't think of
anything less complicated than "Thou shalt not kill," "Thou shalt not
commit adultery," and "Thou shalt not steal," but Mathews explains the
method to the madness.
"The union likes the formula precisely because it walls
off education from some of the annual budget winds,” he writes. "And it is
Proposition 98's very complexity that helps education officials defend it.
How do you build a better mousetrap when you can't understand how the
current mousetrap works?"
3) Last Week's Intercepts. EIA's blog,
Intercepts, covered these topics from July 14-21:
*
Who Lost Arianna? First Jonathan Alter, then Arianna Huffington…
*
Who Lost Roland S. Martin? …then Roland S. Martin. Anyone for a paradigm
shift?
*
Time for a New Crusade? Even the Turks are piling on.
4)
Quote of the Week.
"The right to free association means an organization should be free to boot
any member they find hostile to their goals and operations. The problem is
that current labor law constitutes a massive maze of interferences with and
exceptions to the rights of free association and voluntary contract -- and
that the unions, having helped cobble together this convoluted legal rabbit
trap in ways designed to benefit them, usually like it that way. Which
perhaps justifies a brief smile when one of those self-righteous outfits,
always mewling about the 'right to organize,' finds itself hoist by its own
petard." – the editors of the
Las Vegas Review-Journal, commenting on the case of
teacher Ron Taylor. |
