We spent some time blogging about Richard Berman’s idiotic attack on teachers and their unions early this year. We talked about how Berman works to create front groups that attack labor, environmental and consumer activists. One point we didn’t stress is that part of Berman’s schtick is that he doesn’t like to reveal who is actually paying him to do their dirty work.

But something happened a few weeks ago that gave us a really good look at who Berman works for, and what he really does. The largest union organizing drive in the nation right now is at Smithfield Food’s pork processing plant in North Carolina. The United Food and Commercial Workers has been working with employees there to bring a union for more than a decade, and the National Labor Relations Board has ruled numerous times against Smithfield for its actions during this organizing drive. The story is featured in a Human Rights Watch report, “Blood, Sweat and Fear: Worker’s Rights in US Meat and Poultry Plants.” Simple fact: People get fired at Smithfield for wanting to exercise their rights under federal law. That’s according to a former executive who did some of the firing. It’s union busting at its most blatant. UFCW’s response includes a public education campaign: Justice at Smithfield.

Smithfield has filed a RICO suit against UFCW. My reading of it is that Smithfield is charging that the union has engaged in a conspiracy to force Smithfield to abide by the letter and spirit of the National Labor Relations Act. It’s kind of silly. In the course of that suit, Smithfield made one of its filings public and it was placed on the Internet. Not a big deal, as many court documents become public records on the net. This filing concerned Richard Berman.

American Rights at Work picked up on it last week, writing about how the documents indicated Richard Berman’s role in working for Smithfield. I’d link to the documents, but apparently they were disclosed inadvertently (bet that’s one union busting lawyer who’d feel better with a union right now). The judge has ordered them sealed. For more see AFL-CIO and American Rights at Work. Wackenhut and Cintas are engaged in similar RICO suits against unions. I wonder what inadvertent release of public documents might say about Richard Berman in those instances.

Every once in a while the veil slips and you get to see people or companies for what they really are.  Smithfield just had one of those moments. As for Berman – people should start calling him what he is. A simple union buster. His nonprofits are spending money attacking senate candidates who support the Employee Free Choice Act? What do you expect from a professional union buster. He’s attacking teachers and their unions? What do you expect from a professional union buster? It’s all in a day's work.

Posted by Ed at AFT | Permalink | Comments (0)

AFT president Randi Weingarten was among the participants in a lively and substantive online discussion about the future of No Child Left Behind held recently on the NewTalk Web site. Read Randi's contributions, and those of other educators and policy experts--along with comments from readers--in the NewTalk archives.

Posted by John | Permalink | Comments (0)

I started teaching back in the dinosaur era before NCLB, as an alternatively certified teacher.  Heck, I had an emergency credential in social studies. Which meant I had a degree, had passed a drug test, a content test and had breathed on a mirror.  Frankly, I was a bit disturbed at how easy it was to get that certificate. The next thing I know, I was teaching algebra to special ed kids.  Which is why Michele’s post on alternative certification made me laugh.

One of the raps on traditional certification is that it freezes out people like Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey and whoever else you might want to see teaching your kid. It's true the fact that Bill Gates’ lack of BA would be an issue. So perhaps he was that grumply looking guy I saw outside the old 110 Livingston Street building. Otherwise, I can note for the record that I didn’t see any other famous people taking advantage of the low entry standards to get in on the ground floor of  teaching algebra to Modified Instructional Setting I and II students in Queens.  

The other lesson I learned is that a focus on pedagogy is really useful in alternative certification systems. My dad is a teacher, but as a concerned parent he focused his discussions with me on classroom management and dealing with assistant principals. I found the discussions useful and they helped put his mind at ease that I wasn't going to injure myself or others. But they didn't get to helping me deliver lessons. Nor was that the focus of my experience as a mentee. Which leads me to my other alternative certification pet peeve: the idea held by many that content alone will carry you through. I love content. I'm a frequent user of content. But there is more to teaching than that.

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State AYP results have been coming out for a while now, revealing that an increasing number of schools are missing the NCLB benchmark.  Here's a random selection of a few recent ones: 

In Oregon, more than 1 in 3 schools failed to make AYP. (Via Education Daily.)

In Minnesota, nearly half of the schools failed to make AYP, including two-thirds of middle schools/junior highs and 58% of charter schools. (Via ECS clips.)

In Hawaii, 60% of the state's schools failed to make AYP, including 37 of the state's 42 public high schools missed AYP. Aloha. (Via Education Daily.)

In some states, we're well on our way to branding nearly every school a failure. Wait a minmute -- did I say, "nearly every school"? It must be time to tighten up some of those loopholes and start gunning for districts and states that are soft on accountability.

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That is, does it pay to pay kids for grades?

Princeton and Harvard researchers, written up recently in the New York Times and the Washington Post, respectively, seem to have different answers -- or at least different hypotheses. And their answers may depend on whether we're looking for payments to students to pay off in the long run or just the short run.

Today's WaPo reports that Princeton professor Roland Benabou's research has made him skeptical about whether paying kids for academic achievements actually works:

"If I pay my kids to do their homework, I am saying, 'You will get this if you do your homework,' but I am also saying, 'Homework is not likely to have intrinsic rewards,' " Benabou said. To the extent that a child is doing homework because he or she enjoys the challenge, or wants to demonstrate intelligence and diligence, the homework has meaning beyond the task itself, and Benabou predicts that offering a reward will backfire [emphasis added].

By "backfire," Benabou means that students would be less motivated to do homework in the long run. Or, as he put it in this article, which appeared in the Review of Economic Studies:

Consistently, individuals in "reward" treatments showed better compliance at the beginning, but worse compliance in the long run than those in the “no-reward” or "untreated controls" groups. Taken together, these many findings indicate a limited impact of rewards on "engagement" (current activity) and a negative one on "re-engagement" (persistence).

Paying students for grades, then, may turn out to make students less motivated, less inquisitive, and ultimately less knowledgeable.

That possibility helps to explain why the Times last week wrote that an experiment to pay students to do well on tests is "controversial." (Hat tip Alexander Russo.) If the experiment, conducted by by Harvard researcher Roland G. Fryer Jr., produces smarter, wiser, better, more productive citizens in the long run, then he's on to something. If it produces a long-term decrease in motivation and lifelong achievement, then he owes the students a lot more than money. 

Posted by John | Permalink | Comments (2)

Skoolboy has an interesting post on testing this week.  He draws on Dan Koresh’s latest work to highlight the problems in tests that draw on a narrow number of domains, and thus have a set of items that can be anticipated in test prep.  There’s a nice explanation of why NAEP really is different from state tests (and why it's thus totally useless for individual level accountability).  JD 2718 responds by wondering why it's wrong for kids to know the math test questions beforehand. I’m curious about this myself. 

When I was an itinerant college professor, I gave final exams that were a single essay. I used to put a form of the exam question on the syllabus, so you could see it on the first day of class. I’d keep a few things up my sleeve, like the actual readings from the course that students would have to reference in writing those essays. But what you saw was what you got.

I thought this was the best way of turning the exam process into an aid for the instructional process and of keeping students focused on bigger themes in the study of American politics (my area). I thought that this worked well when coupled with a long-form term paper that allowed me to see how students applied the themes of the course outside the structure created by class discussion or the exam format.

The question is, does the structure and form of learning for a test, in and of itself, really affect retention and understanding over the long term when compared to learning that is structured in other ways?  And if so, how do these conclusions apply to extreme cases of drill and kill test prep? Or to “softer” approaches like the one I took? I’m curious about any insight from those who have studied this.

Posted by Ed at AFT | Permalink | Comments (0)

Slate and the New York Times have reported that the scheduled startup in August of the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland could end the world. Really.

Such an event likely would create additional problems for reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in both the House and the Senate.

REM's explainer is here (with video).

Posted by John | Permalink | Comments (1)