The Education Intelligence Agency

EIA's third quarterly report was sponsored by The Thomas B. Fordham
Foundation and is now available. Left at the Altar: The Teachers' Union Merger
and the Prospects for Education Reform tells the story of the proposed NEA/AFT
merger as it unfolded over the past year, culminating in the dramatic vote at
the NEA Representative Assembly on July 5. Single copies of the report are
free by calling The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation's toll-free number
1-888-TBF-7474. The report is also posted on the foundation's web page
www.edexcellence.net.

Peter Brimelow supplies an updated version of EIA's teacher/staff ratio
table in the November 2 issue of Forbes. The public education systems of seven
states (Vermont, New Mexico, Florida, Mississippi, Indiana, Oklahoma and
Michigan) employ more non-teachers than teachers. That is an encouraging
decline from 11 states in 1996.

The NEA Board of Directors voted 141-25 (one absent) to affiliate the merged
Education Minnesota with NEA. The board approved a 10-year loan to EM,
to help it pay the additional national dues required by current NEA by-laws.
The plan to put loan forgiveness before the Representative Assembly was shot
down by the board. Discussions concerning guidelines for future state mergers
will not begin until the December board meeting. The board would have to
approve guidelines by February 1999 in order to prepare the necessary
amendments for a vote of the Representative Assembly next July.
 
The fact that 25 directors would vote to keep Minnesota unaffiliated, even
though the final result was a foregone conclusion, indicates severe
displeasure in key states with NEA's direction on merger.
 
Meanwhile, NEA and AFT affiliates in Florida are planning a merger vote for
May 1999. "I want to assure our members that they will have ample time for
review of the document during this process," said FTP-NEA President Maureen
Dinnen. New Mexico and Montana are also very close to merging.  Whether other
states will make the move after guidelines are approved remains to be seen.

This weekend, the California Teachers Association State Council will vote
unanimously to authorize an additional $3.5 million in spending from the
union's Initiative Fund to pass a $9 billion statewide school construction and
maintenance bond and to defeat Gov. Wilson's education reform initiative. CTA
will also have almost $900,000 in additional PAC money available for state
candidates.

On Election Day, Hawaii residents will vote on a constitutional amendment
that will define marriage as being between one man and one woman. The Hawaii
State Teachers Association opposes the measure, but experienced some backlash
last week when a group of HSTA members on Kauai held a rally in support of it.
This issue, coupled with the Cayetano-Lingle gubernatorial race, may have a
significant effect on HSTA's internal politics in the near future.

The Banning Teachers Association (Calif.) continues to have its problems.
As reported here last month, union president Sonia Schroeder resigned after
members learned her trip on union business was actually a Mexican vacation.
Schroeder stepped down, but ran for a seat on the CTA State Council, winning
it by a five-vote margin. The results were disputed, however, after members
learned that all the ballots from the Banning local had mysteriously
disappeared. The last person to see the missing ballots? Why, none other than
Ms. Schroeder, who claims to have turned them over the day she resigned. NEA
Confidential, EIA's report on union operations, disclosed CTA's unusual
practice of allowing candidates to handle ballots. Thanks, Ms. Schroeder, for
making the point instantly relevant.

Staffers for NEA's Member Benefits subsidiary recently signed a contract
granting them a 34 percent salary increase over three years. Sources would not
confirm a rumor that the name of the subsidiary will be changed to NEA Member
Benefits But Not As Much As We Do.

At a recent forum at Dickinson College, EIA was described by a Pennsylvania
State Education Association representative as "one guy with a computer in his
basement." Actually, it's in the spare bedroom, but I was thinking about
adding a copier and, oh, maybe an $80 million bloated bureaucracy extracted
from the paychecks of hard-working teachers.

In July 1997, I wrote about MathLand, a controversial mathematics program
that does away with textbooks and computations in favor of encouraging
students to "think for themselves." As the MathLand teacher's guide explains:
"The only rules in MathLand are the ones students invent for themselves." The
curriculum tosses aside "slowly-paced" methods such as sequencing of problems
in favor of academically rigorous techniques, such as trial-and-error,
described as a "valid solution technique." The Santa Rosa (Calif.) school
board has had enough of such drivel.
 
After two years of MathLand, the board is about to make a change. "I'm read
to say enough is enough and let's get back to basics," said Jim Gray, a board
member who voted to implement MathLand in 1996. He was forced to enroll his
own daughter, a MathLand student, in an after-school math tutorial program. To
its credit, the Santa Rosa Teachers Association had asked the district last
year to provide supplemental math materials on computation methods. Only 15
percent of the district's sixth-graders could pass MathLand's own tests.

While it has nothing to do with education, I'd like to provide LONG-time
readers with an update on a series of stories I did in 1995 on voter fraud in
California. The reports described the tactics of the Assembly Statewide Voter
Registration Committee (ASVRC), which verified only about 10 percent of the
registrations brought in by freelance "bounty hunters," who are paid by the
name. One bounty hunter signed up 133 voters at a 129-unit apartment complex.
Upon further review, several non-citizens and children were among this number.
The committee registered 14 voters in one single-family home in Salinas. One
man was registered five times under a single name.
 
At the time, state and county investigations were promised but never
undertaken. Last week, the Los Angeles County Registrar announced an
investigation of ASVRC after discovering some 40 percent of the registration
cards the committee turned in had nonexistent addresses or fictitious names.

Endorsement of EIA? "If somebody is running an agenda, I think people
should know about it." — NEA Executive Director Don Cameron, at the press
conference to release the union's right-wing conspiracy report.
 
"Part of the problem is that people don't know us." — NEA research director
Ronald Henderson, at a Harvard University conference on teachers' unions.

Quote of the Week: "Education, like other major social movements, cries out
for interpretative journalism. Not just news. Not just fluffy features. Not
just editorials. But in-depth, analytical writing.... We are still tolerating
a public ed system that is run by adults for adults. Those charged with
responsibility are more interested in their own jobs, their own turf, and how
change affects them than the children the system is meant to serve.... I am
bemused by the fact that in the late 1700s, when most people had little if any
formal education, the citizenry was bombarded with broadsheets and pamphlets
that dealt with complex and revolutionary political ideas and philosophies.
And today, after decades of universal mass education, we have USA Today and
the world in 30 minutes (if you count commercials)." — Ron Wolk, founding
editor of Education Week, in a speech before the National Congress for Public
Education.