The Education Intelligence Agency COMMUNIQUÉ

1) Dam Begins to Burst in DC Union Investigation. The December 23 EIA Communiqué included this comment about the Washington Teachers Union (WTU) scandal, in which former President Barbara Bullock and other union officials allegedly used member dues to support a lavish personal lifestyle: "Even if Bullock and Company's spending was partially financed by the dues overcharge, that still leaves more than $1.5 million that was diverted from regular operations over the past three or four years. The question, of course, is how could such activities go undetected?" Since then, the Washington Post has published nine additional articles on the scandal, the union's executive board issued a statement in response to members' questions, and the web-site DC Watch posted the entire FBI affidavit that lists the merchandise Bullock and friends are alleged to have purchased with union funds (http://www.dcwatch.com/schools/ps021218.htm). This flood of new information is beginning to answer that question, telling a story that will have ramifications for union operations far beyond the environs of the District of Columbia.

The Sunday Post headline said it all: "Apathy and Secrecy Filled Teachers Union, Many Say." The paper quoted union activist George Parker about the atmosphere at WTU headquarters. "It's a culture that is just unbelievable - of financial secrecy, of manipulation of information," he said. "The problem is that everybody just let it happen."

While everyone, from the AFT to the WTU vice president to the executive board and staff, all claim to have had no knowledge of the outlandish spending, there must have been a cognitive dissonance occurring with at least some of them. Health care premiums on behalf of retirees went unpaid. Staff pension fund contributions went unpaid. Rent and utilities went unpaid. Dues reimbursements to site reps never happened. Payroll taxes were paid late. And, most telling of all, WTU failed to pay its national dues to AFT for more than a year. AFT now claims that it threatened to disaffiliate WTU in February 2002 if it did not pay its national dues. Why weren't the members told anything about this at the time?

The FBI reviewed scores of union documents, and discovered that meetings minutes, tax returns and Labor Department disclosure forms contained no mention of the profligate spending. The WTU treasurer and the outside accountant falsified the IRS and Labor Department reports they prepared.

Officers and staff might plead ignorance, but didn't anyone ask who was paying for a chauffeur for Bullock and why wasn't he listed as a WTU employee? Did no one at WTU eat off of the $57,000 Tiffany silverware? Or use the $6,800 silver ice bucket with swan head handles? Didn't anybody watch the game on the $13,000 50-inch plasma TV? Didn't anyone read their pension fund statements and notice their balances were not increasing?

WTU hasn't answered these questions, nor has it answered a simple question put to it by a member: "What is the total balance in each WTU bank account as of November 25, 2002?" The union's response? "The WTU officers have determined that the services of an auditor are needed to access this information."

One member has already filed suit to dissolve the executive board. AFT is making noises about establishing a trusteeship. Meanwhile, in the age of NEA-AFT partnership, the members cannot even seek representation from the other major teachers' union.

The DC union scandal may be a rare event, but given that WTU's culture of secrecy is not unique, can other locals say unequivocally that it couldn't happen to them?

2) Wisconsin Is Latest Union to Spin New Unionism Wheels. The Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC) is poised to create a new strategic plan that is designed to make the union more relevant to its members in the years ahead. "Our Union 2010" is the latest evidence that the new unionism movement is out of gas.

Nearly three years in the making, WEAC's blueprint comes to the conclusion that what today's new teachers really want is more release time for union officials, a more centralized UniServ, merger with the Wisconsin Federation of Teachers, more organizing of private sector employees, progressive tax reform, high-speed Internet connections for union officers and board members, a new executive committee, extended terms for elected officers, and consolidation of school districts.

The document contains the words all teachers and union members have been longing to hear: "In addition to the Mission Statement and Strategic Operating Principles and consistent with the Strategic Planning Model Outline, we are also presenting a statement of WEAC beliefs. The beliefs may be found immediately after the Mission Statement Triangle and strategic operating principles. Thus, each recommendation and consideration was assessed as to its viability with the WEAC Belief Statement." (I'm glad they cleared that up.)

WEAC has an unusually high number of dissidents among its officials, and the "vision document" is already being battered on all sides, but most robustly by those who think the union should return to its bread and butter issues: collective bargaining and compensation. The WEAC board of directors is scheduled to take action on the document next month.

3) No Data? Just "Input" Your Own! If you are going to spend many months generating "the largest study ever on the issue" of high-stakes testing, why would you take the curious step of releasing it during the Christmas holiday? Could it be because people will be all the less likely to dig through hundreds of pages of tables and technical appendices, only to discover that the study lacks the data to support its conclusions?

Audrey Amrein and David Berliner of Arizona State University presented The Impact of High-Stakes Tests on Student Academic Performance: An Analysis of NAEP Results in States with High-Stakes Tests and ACT, SAT, and AP Test Results in States with High School Graduation Exams, funded by a consortium of National Education Association state affiliates, to a generally positive front-page review in the New York Times.

"Some call it ideological; I call it honest. Either way, the data speaks for itself," Berliner told the Times. Indeed, they do. For while Amrein and Berliner desperately want to prove that high-stakes tests are bad for children and other living things, they can't resist the temptation to hopelessly stack the deck, and then present their five aces as an honest hand.

First, let it be said that neither is there evidence to offer contrary conclusions: that high-stakes tests are in fact improving achievement in states that have them. But Amrein and Berliner's effort was doomed from the start, because it takes 27 states, 18 tests, instituted at different times over a 12-year period, and compared them to totally different national samples of students taking no-stakes tests, given once every two to four years over a 10-year period. Some states instituted tests before the NAEP data begins in 1990. Other states instituted tests in-between NAEP tests. Others instituted tests after the last available NAEP tests in 2000. From this hodgepodge of scores, Amrein and Berliner still manage to generate their pre-ordained conclusions.

How? You have to wade your way through to the last footnote in the technical appendix to find out. It reads: "Because the NAEP math and reading tests are administered once every two to four years and some states implemented high-stakes tests between NAEP administrations, we inputted scores for the years for which data were not available. Imbedded in this is an assumption that growth in academic achievement from one year to the next is continuous which might not be the case for all states." (emphasis added)

Yep, a number of Amrein and Berliner's conclusions are based on scores that do not actually exist, but were interpolated from other scores. This method is reminiscent of a study NEA Research did on school construction and technology in May 2000, in which the union extrapolated Hawaii's technology needs from South Carolina's data.

Many of Amrein and Berliner's conclusions are arguable, and better suited for the op-ed pages than in what purports to be an academic study, including the perplexing thesis that high-stakes testing leads to "higher numbers of teachers who leave their public school positions to teach in private schools, free of state testing mandates because state rules make them feel compromised as professionals." No evidence is offered for this curious statement, probably because no evidence exists of an exodus of teachers from public to private schools - for any reason.

Nevertheless, Amrein and Berliner do reach one major conclusion that is probably true. "The data suggest that after the implementation of high stakes tests, not much happens," they say. Insert the name of any major education reform in the place of "high stakes tests," and that statement will usually remain true.

Meanwhile, EIA continues to search fruitlessly for any similar major media coverage of a comprehensive study done by the Ohio-based research service SchoolMatch. SchoolMatch analyzed the SAT and ACT scores of 12,916 high schools, or 86 percent of the nation's total, and discovered that "there simply appears to be no positive relationship between small classes and student success on college entrance examinations."

4) Anti-War Resolution Meets Stiff Resistance in San Francisco. A proposal to hold a district-wide anti-war rally in San Francisco and create an anti-war curriculum for grades as low as kindergarten is meeting opposition from unexpected quarters. The San Francisco PTA took the unusual step of publicly opposing the resolution, stating that "public schools should not promote a political agenda or teach only one side of an issue." The San Francisco Chronicle editorial page called the resolution "propaganda" and "groupthink."

The resolution is the brainchild of board members Eric Mar and Mark Sanchez, whose previous claim to fame was their quixotic public support of the California Teachers Association bill to expand the scope of collective bargaining. Indeed, Mar and Sanchez's resolution comes on the heels of a "Resolution Calling for a Day of Public Education on War Against Iraq," passed by the United Educators of San Francisco (UESF) on November 20. That resolution calls on the district school board "to decree that there shall be citywide public education at the school level" on war with Iraq, and that the district work with UESF to develop a list of resources on the issue.

The proposed resolution is set to go before the board at its regular meeting tomorrow night.

5) Accountability Lite. Congratulations to the California Teachers Association for its ability to sum up in one phrase its attitude toward education reform. The December issue of the California Educator contains a table listing CTA-sponsored legislation for the 2003 legislative session. The first bill listed "would amend the Public School Accountability Act to remove sanctions and rewards." No word on whether the name of the law will be correspondingly changed to the "Public School Act."

6) Quote of the Week #1. "I hear more and more from our faculty members that students simply do not turn in assignments, do not attend class with any regularity, do not respect others in their demeanor or behaviors, and do not see any value in learning as a process. These students, they tell me, are convinced that the final product is the goal, whether that is a grade, a certificate, or a degree. All of this, they say, is in much greater frequency now than in the past. I hear it so often now, from so many disciplines and demographics, that I believe it is the most important barrier to good learning in our classrooms, both for these students and for those who are more responsible." - Minnesota State College Faculty Co-President Larry Oveson. (December 2002 The Green Sheet)

Quote of the Week #2. "We need to honor the contract. It's not a money issue, it's a principle issue." - Candia (New Hampshire) Education Association President Judith Lindsey, explaining her union's refusal to allow volunteers to coach a baseball and softball program at Moore School. (January 7 Manchester Union Leader)

The Education Intelligence Agency conducts public education research, analysis and investigations. Director: Mike Antonucci. PO Box 580007, Elk Grove, CA 95758. Ph: 916-422-4373. Fax: 916-392-1482. E-Mail: EducationIntel@aol.com

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