NEA's campaign against the right-wing seems to be picking up steam — an apparent trickle-down effect of its conspiracy report in October. The union, at the request of the Texas State Teachers Association, is sending reinforcements to the Edgewood School District, where CEO America operates the nation's only district-wide, privately funded voucher program. This has to be considered an escalation by NEA officials, who previously had downplayed their objections to voucher programs that did not involve public money. NEA, of course, has been very active in the campaign against taxpayer-funded vouchers in Milwaukee and Cleveland. NEA representatives tentatively scheduled a training session at Memorial High School for this Thursday night. The focus is expected to be on organizing "a grassroots campaign in favor of public schools," including a "good news" public relations program.
 

In Indiana and Wisconsin, NEA affiliates are releasing their own reports and essays on The Conservative Network. While NEA placed the Heritage Foundation and seven individuals at the head of the network, the Indiana State Teachers Association sees the American Legislative Exchange Council as the source of evil. ALEC acts as a clearinghouse and database of model legislation for conservative state legislators. The Wisconsin Education Association Council, on the other hand, thinks the Bradley Foundation is Public Enemy Number One. 

In "Anatomy of a Movement: Wisconsin Vouchers and the Bradley Foundation," WEAC Research Coordinator Jeffrey Leverich ironically writes "the public should be aware when a common link exists between seemingly autonomous voices." Leverich even crosses the boundary where NEA stopped, saying flatly that the efforts the Bradley Foundation supports have "an ideology with strong racial undertones."

Other affiliates have touted a recent conspiracy piece by Rob Boston in Church & State, the organ of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. In "The Public School Bashers," Boston takes on just about every individual and organization critical of public education, but naturally emphasizes the Religious Right and the "Roman Catholic hierarchy." (Careful, Rob. Throw the Pope in and you've come full circle to join with the right-wing purveyors of conspiracy.) Among Boston's scary revelations: "The Christian Coalition once devoted an entire training seminar on how to run for school board."

The reason for all this fascination with the right-wing may have been confessed last week by Katrina vanden Heuvel in the left-wing newspaper The Nation. In an essay entitled "Come Together: Building a Progressive Majority," vanden Heuvel discloses that envy may be driving the Left's obsession with right-wing plots. "With the different pieces in place (labor commitment, expertise, local coalitions), now is the time to build the progressive equivalent of the Christian Coalition," she writes, adding that such a group could train people to run for office, introduce ballot initiatives, "and build a network of talk-show guests and pundits with a coordinated message." Sounds conspiratorial to me.

Oh, those wacky teachers! Last week's newspapers contained an unusual number of unusual teacher stories:

• Christopher Mastro, a teacher for 25 years in Voorheesville, New York, resigned under pressure after some parents complained of his "unpredictable behavior." Mastro was noted for throwing chalk, slamming doors and tossing chairs to get his students' attention. The latest chair-throwing incident led the school board to initiate dismissal proceedings. Mastro resigned instead, cutting a deal in which he will receive his annual salary of $62,000 until January 2000 not to teach. Mastro remains very popular with a large segment of the Voorheesville community. "He'd bring out the shy people," one former student reminisced.

• Teachers at the Morris Elementary School in Carbon County, Pennsylvania filed a grievance against the Jim Thorpe Area School District for deprivation of an implied benefit — free coffee and doughnuts during a district in-service day. "On first light, it seems pretty superficial," said Bob Whitehead, the Pennsylvania State Education Association's UniServ director for the region. "But there's a constant erosion of what teachers have come to expect up there." Whitehead told the Allentown Morning Call that the district has provided coffee and doughnuts for 27 years. "It's not part of the contract, so therefore it's not a valid grievance," said School Director Harold Fredericks.

• New Jersey just enacted a law that requires swimming teachers to know how to swim. Education Week reported the new law stemmed from an incident in which a sixth-grader drowned in a Trenton middle school's pool because one teacher couldn't swim and the other refused to jump in.

 
• An unnamed high school science teacher in Newhall, California, is "under the gun" for an experiment that went horribly (if predictably) wrong. Two students were seriously injured, one requiring a tracheotomy, when the "cannon" they had built under the directions of the teacher exploded. The experiment consisted of taping hollowed-out apple juice cans together end-to-end, punching a small hole in the bottom of the tube, and lighting a small amount of wood alcohol through it to propel tennis balls a great distance.  In the Military Airlift Command we called this a "MAC cannon." Civilians may have heard it called a "spud gun" because potatoes are the projectile of choice. It is extremely dangerous even when it doesn't explode. I personally witnessed a 20-man tent brought down by a single potato.

• Madison Teachers Inc., a local NEA affiliate in Madison, Wisconsin, negotiated a unique contract provision. Teachers may pay their automobile insurance through payroll deduction. This convenience, however, is limited to teachers who insure with Horace Mann, a company with substantial teacher union connections. Why union officials should negotiate a provision that benefits only teachers who insure their cars with one particular private company (chosen by the MTI Board of Directors), then have the taxpayers pick up the cost of administering that deduction from paychecks, is a question deserving of a straight answer.

• The Illinois Education Association got its first benefit for taking the unusual step of backing Republican George Ryan in the governor's race. Ryan defeated Democrat Glenn Poshard, who had received the endorsement of the Illinois Federation of Teachers. IEA President Bob Haisman was named to head Ryan's Transition Committee on Education and Workforce Training. The committee will focus on implementing Ryan's education goals: class size reduction, literacy and dedicating 51 cents of every new tax dollar to education.

In the Nov. 16 Communiqué, EIA asked: "Is mandatory attendance the last taboo in the education debate?" Sixteen days later, the front page story in Investor's Business Daily was headlined: "Repeal Compulsory School Laws?" Introduce your friends and associates to the EIA Communiqué. It's free, its list is private, and it subscribes to the notion that today's oddball idea is tomorrow's cutting edge issue.

Quote of the Week: "Things are moving in that direction. We just all have to get together and charge the wall." — Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), in the Dec. 14th issue of The New Republic. Dana Millbank reported that Lieberman "sees the makings of a revolt against the unions and the rest of the education establishment" by Democrats.