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• Will Content Testing Come to Iowa?
• The Sorry State of Teachers' Contract Negotiations
• Do As I Say, Not As I Do
• A Few Teachers Are Very Well Paid
• The Union Versus Bonus Pay
• Weingarten Advocates Streamlining Firing Process
• Top-Down Management Ticks Off NYC Teachers
• Alabama Panel Recommends Drastic Cuts

For the past few decades, most states have been requiring new teachers to pass subject matter tests as part of their certification requirements though there are still a handful of straggler states (not to mention North Carolina's mystifying decision last week to dump its requirement). Iowa has been one of those stragglers. That looked like it might have been about to change last Friday when the 11-member state Board of Educational Examiners was debating whether or not to start requiring subject testing for teachers, but the board decided to delay the decision until next year. Their decision is disappointing, especially given the hard facts they had before them. A study commissioned by Iowa lawmakers in 2001 had Iowa teachers take no- stakes Praxis tests. The study revealed that a significant number of Hawkeye state teachers for example, 34% of mathematics teachers would not have been able to obtain a license to teach in neighboring Missouri.

The latest issue of AFT's excellent journal American Teacher takes a hard look at the current state of teacher's contract negotiations in large cities around the country. Their verdict is that the outlook is dark and getting darker. The article presents a careful, useful analysis of recent negotiations in New York City, Chicago, and Minneapolis, finding that teachers are getting the short end of the stick at the negotiating table largely due to the explosion in the cost of benefit costs, especially relating to health care. Administrators across the nation were able to claim inability to raise teachers' salaries due to the fact that non-salary compensation for public sector workers is rising annually at a record 8% clip; 55% of that increase is in health care and defined benefit costs alone.

That increase explains why Chicago teachers overwhelmingly rejected a generous 5- year, 4%-per-year pay raises in the last round of negotiations. Teachers were persuaded that their increases in salaries would be entirely consumed by their increased prescription drug costs and higher co-payments.

In addition to the outside pressures of healthcare costs, the AFT also attributes a lot of the tough climate to plain old bad faith on the part of negotiators and political opportunism. For instance, the Minneapolis school administration is accused of having repeatedly, knowingly breached its contractual obligations on the expectation that they could get a better ruling from binding arbitration. In New York City, the administration first fired and then rehired 485 paraprofessionals in an attempt to "breathe a little fear into the & ranks before talks begin." In Carson City, Nevada, funds that the state legislature had allocated for salary increases for teachers were reallocated by local officials for the school general fund.

Reluctantly, Anne Arundel County (MD) Executive Janet S. Owens has submitted a proposal to her County Council that would give teachers, in her own words, an "unfair" and "fiscally unwise" 1 percent pay raise. How can a relatively modest $4.3 million expenditure merit such a harsh description? Executive Owens claims that, in the face of a $7 million deficit, it is wrong to raise the salaries of some county employees teachers without raising all wages. Despite her stated opposition, Owens herself submitted the bill to the Council after having been heavily lobbied by the school administration.

Three sister teachers in the Chicago Public Schools system used a math curriculum-writing project to bilk the Chicago school system out of $450,000 in less than 3 years. The ringleader of the group, Judith Branch-Boyd, earned $164,400 in 2001-2002, while using her position to employ her two sisters, Toni Branch and Brenda Hambright. An uncertified teacher, Ms. Branch had attempted to pass the certification exam seven times. Unsurprisingly, the math curriculum contained "numerous errors, including basic computation errors and word problems where the solution given was the wrong answer."

And then there are those curious cases in which a teachers union turns down extra money for teachers. Don't think that it happens? Witness the situation in the Sherwood-Cass School District outside Kansas City, Missouri. After the district gave so-called "commitment bonuses" to seven teachers but not to 70 others the local union took them to court. The awards, which were $1,000 and $2,000, were designed to help attract and retain teachers in the school district. The NEA affiliate claimed that they were in violation of the Missouri Teacher Tenure Act's requirement for a single salary schedule and last Thursday, circuit court judge Joseph Dandurand agreed.

In an overture to the schools chancellor and the mayor, New York City teachers' union president Randi Weingarten is proposing an expedited system for terminating failing teachers. Currently, teachers who are accused of malfeasance spend long stretches in "rubber rooms" where they teach no students but are still paid in full. Weingarten's plan would put these teachers into a peer intervention program for up to 90 days. If the teacher showed no signs of improvement, the union would counsel them to leave the school system. Teachers who resisted might end up in a 90-day grievance and arbitration process that could result in the termination of the teacher. It currently takes two years to dismiss a teacher.

We've reported before on the uniformity being imposed by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein on the city's public schools. Klein's micromanagement extends from curriculum to furniture placement, with the district issuing "guidance" for arranging classroom bulletin boards. Whether good or bad (and clearly some are quite bad), some teachers are charging that the new policies are being implemented at an untenable, breakneck pace.

UFT head Randi Weingarten, who has been engaged in out-and-out warfare with Klein over a myriad of issues, resents the district's tight control and is rallying teachers and parents to speak up. Says Weingarten, "This administration doesn't&even want to know what teachers think about what works for kids." Weingarten has set a goal of 50,000 e-mails from members to Klein and Bloomberg during the month of January, to make it clear that teachers are fed up with the micromanagement and mismanagement issues.

How much controversy can you fit in a five-page report? Plenty. An Alabama panel charged with making recommendations to control state education spending has proposed cutting the number of teachers in the state and freezing state expenditures on teachers' health care costs. The cap on health care spending could save the state $123 million but it would lead to large increases in the premiums that teachers would have to pay out of their own pockets. Similarly, cutting the number of teachers could save $158 million but would mean larger class sizes. The head of the Alabama Education Association has called the proposals in the report "disastrous" but offered no solutions of her own.