EIA's annual project will be released next week. Details will appear in the next communiqué. If you want a copy sight unseen and subject  unknown, send an e-mail response to EducIntel@aol.com with your snail mail address and you'll be at the top of the list. Single copies will be free.

NEA and AFT will hold a Joint Conference on Teacher Quality, September 25-27 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Washington, DC. More details as they become available.

The National School Boards Association will launch an anti-voucher campaign to coincide with the opening of the school year. The organization will call upon local school boards to pass anti-voucher resolutions and will run media ads to stem what polls indicate is growing public support for school choice.

Disputes between principals and teachers' union don't usually make the newspapers, but the battle between Marvin Avenue School Principal Anna McLinn and United Teachers-Los Angeles is anything but typical.  McLinn, who has been with the district for 35 years, has a giant stack of allegations against her. A series of audits of the schools' records found more than $325,000 in federal earthquake recovery funds unaccounted for. An additional $32,000 in outside donations (including $20,000 from the German government!?) also lack necessary records. 

Four big-screen TVs, purchased with the earthquake funds, are missing. Excessive student body funds were spent on party supplies.  For its part, UTLA claims McLinn uses profanity, racial slurs and abusive and threatening language with teachers and students. In a letter to Superintendent Ruben Zacarias, UTLA President Day Higuchi wrote that McLinn was "suffering from mental illness of such a degree as to render her incompetent." He expressed "extreme concern for the well-being and safety of the children, teachers and staff at Marvin." UTLA exacerbated the situation by calling a meeting of Latino parents in an attempt to oust McLinn, who is African American. McLinn supporters also attended the meeting and an ugly shouting match erupted. "This is beyond nuts," one parent told Louis Sahagun of the Los Angeles Times.

 "All I can see are problems caused by outside agitators," said McLinn of UTLA. "It would not make any difference it is was the Ku Klux Klan coming in." McLinn has her supporters. "The union has deliberately turned a monster loose in our community," said Barbara Boudreaux, a school board member and former principal at Marvin. "These instigators have to be stopped. They are pitting blacks against browns, and that is dangerous." 

Last week's item about the Florida seminar on disciplining African American male students brought a strong response. EIA has a standing pledge not to identify subscribers to the communiqué unless they are speaking as representatives of an agency or organization, so the writers are identified only by occupation:  

• "This is amazing." — syndicated columnist.

• "Although the comments about African American male students may seem 'shocking' or racist, it has been my experience that they are generally true, but that they apply more to those of a low socio-economic level (i.e. project students) than of the middle-class African Americans I teach. They also apply to low socio-economic level whites and African American females. I generally do not find Asian students of any economic level disrespectful to me as a male teacher, but female teachers are not held as high of regard by many Asians (Kurds, Laotians, etc.)." — teacher.

• "I do not find those behaviors unique to the black male student. Everything said about the black males can also be said about white males. Further, I think it applies to females as well, except for the yelling at the teacher part." — teacher and elected union official. 

• "[The story] reminds me of something I recently read, in preparation for an upcoming trip to Poland: 'Poles love to disagree with one another. What would be an argument by American standards is a friendly exchange in Poland. This is reflected in the generally raised voices which may sound too loud to an unaccustomed ear, but no offense is meant.' (From Language/30 Polish, Education Services Corporation, Washington, DC.)" — teacher.

• "Any self-respecting black parent would be disgusted at such dribble, which in part accounts for the continuing lack of success of this group, further alienating these kids from society.... School officials need to go toe-to-toe with those parents (of any color) that fail to prepare their children to behave and to profit from the advantages of a good education. To continue to offer such seminars only serves to offer racial ways to divide communities of people. Such programs are divisive and zero-productive." — public high school administrator.

In Communiqué (hey!), the newsletter of the National Association of School Psychologists, Perry A. Zirkel, professor of education at Lehigh
University, presented a list of "disabilities" that both students and education employees have claimed under federal law. In each of the following cases, the appropriate court or federal agency found these conditions unqualified to rank as disabilities: impulse control disorder; intermittent explosive disorder; school phobia; breast feeding; chronic diarrhea; infertility; knots in the stomach; lactose intolerance; missing teeth; sick building syndrome; and tendinitis.

Quote of the Week: "What [students] really require is instruction in learning, in sitting still, in private concentration, in reading for enlightenment, in listening, in presuming that teachers possess knowledge to impart. And teachers, for their part, must function as professionals if that is how they choose to advertise themselves. Schools of education do not prepare teachers to explain the world; they serve as training institutions to join the union shop, transforming scholars into minor bureaucrats.... If teachers wish to be regarded as professionals, they cannot be seen by the public as Teamsters." — Philip Terzian, associate editor of the Providence Journal-Bulletin.