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The NEA Spells Out its Policies

by Phyllis Schlafly

NEA resolutions cover the waterfront of all sorts of political issues that have nothing to do with improving education for schoolchildren, such as supporting statehood for the District of Columbia, a "single-payer health care plan" (i.e., government-run), gun control, ratification of the International Criminal Court Treaty, and taking steps "to change activities that contribute to global climate change."

Chicago maintains secret files on teachers

SPRINGFIELD -- Imagine a place where the identity of educators convicted of sexually abusing children or stealing from taxpayers is kept secret.

That place is Illinois, Chicago to be more precise.

For at least a decade, the Chicago Board of Education has maintained secret files on some of the criminals who have slipped into the school district's teaching ranks.

Portions of the secret files were released to Small Newspaper Group in October after a contentious open records battle that involved the Illinois Attorney General's Office pressuring the state's largest school system to release the documents to the newspaper group.

Labor board says teacher can give union dues to charity

News Release from the Evergreen Freedom Foundation:

OLYMPIA, WA—A Public Employment Relations Commission (PERC) examiner has ruled that individuals who object to union membership for religious reasons are permitted to select the charity that will receive their dues. On January 22, 2008, Examiner Joel Greene ruled that Susan Wiggs, a Vancouver middle school teacher, may divert her union payments to the charity of her choice. The Vancouver Education Association (VEA) has appealed the ruling to the full Commission.

In August 2005 Susan Wiggs requested to resign from the VEA. State and federal law allow teachers and other workers leave their union on religious grounds and send their dues to a charitable organization. Wiggs indicated her dues would go to Shared Hope International, a 501(c)3 organization that works internationally to prevent and eradicate sex trafficking and slavery.

Editorial: Teachers unions can take steps to protect our kids

The Dispatch and The Rock Island Argus

Representatives of Illinois' two major teacher unions, the Illinois Education Association and the Illinois Federation of Teachers, declined to answers these two questions:

-- How confident should Illinois parents be that their child's teacher has been fully screened for past criminal convictions?

-- What, if anything, should the state do to further ensure that children are safe from being harmed by those entrusted to educate them?

Those are straightforward, important questions that deserve answers, especially in the wake of an eight-month investigation conducted by Small Newspaper Group.

Complete criminal histories of teachers can be hard to find

By Scott Reeder

SPRINGFIELD -- One of the most confounding aspects of checking a person's criminal history is the crimes that don't show up.

This is especially frustrating to those screening for positions involving enormous amounts of trust, such as teachers.

There are a number of ways in Illinois that a person can plead guilty to breaking a state law but avoid having it show up on their criminal history.

These legal tools are increasing being embraced by courts but often hide disturbing incidents that school districts and parents would want to know about those educating their children.

Two systems, one state: Chicago teachers don’t lose pension over job-related felony

By Scott Reeder

SPRINGFIELD -- Monticello High School teacher Larry Albaugh stared into a webcam sitting atop a classroom computer, dropped his pants and fondled himself.

He thought his 2004 lewd performance was being viewed over the Internet by a 15-year-old girl, but it was actually an undercover police officer, a Macon County search warrant affidavit said.

In January 2005, Mr. Albaugh was arrested and he later pleaded guilty to indecent solicitation of a child, which is a felony.

He quit his job, his teaching certificate was revoked and he is a registered sex offender.

Whether he will forfeit all of his pension benefits accrued over 29 years of teaching remains to be seen.

52,000 New K-8 Students, 42,500 New K-8 Teachers

From the Education Intelligence Agency:

The National Education Association today released its annual report, Rankings and Estimates: Rankings of the States 2006 and Estimates of School Statistics 2007. You can read the union spin, but you already know what it is.

The report will revive the usual back-and-forth about average teacher salaries, after which no one's mind will be changed. And no one will note the one astonishing statistic that greatly explains why all the revenue and expenditure numbers are where they are.

Teacher hiring is completely out of control.

Report: State falls short in screening of educators

Illinois ranks near the bottom in the nation when it comes to checking teacher backgrounds and yanking the credentials of problem educators, a newspaper analysis shows.

Illinois ranks 49th for the rate at which it suspends or revokes teaching certificates, according to an analysis by Small Newspaper Group. In 2004, it became the 46th state to require FBI background checks for incoming teachers - but most teachers hired before that are exempt. All this has some people worried that Illinois could be a haven for teachers with criminal pasts.

"The people we are entrusting with our children's well-being should have to go through the same battery of screening much like law enforcement officers undergo to deem them fit to serve," said Terri Miller, president of the national group Stop Educator Sexual Abuse, Misconduct and Exploitation. Read More

Teacher Unions and the New math: 20% is 10%

By Bill Zettler

Unbeknownst to me the CPI (Consumer Price Index) went up by over 20% the last 3 years. Although I checked the Bureau of Labor Statistics and they said 10% I read an ad in the Daily Herald on Sunday, November 4th from the teacher union at District 211 that said they were going on strike soon if they didn’t get big raises.

In fact the ad says the teachers had agreed previously to limit increases to less than the CPI for the last 3 years and that’s why the strike was justified.

So just to make sure I understood what the teacher union meant I decided to check what actually happened to District 211 teacher salaries over the 3 year period 2003-2006. What I found out was that the 554 teachers who worked at Dist. 211 for that 3 year period averaged 19.8% salary increases.

Dist 211 Teacher Salaries 2003 - 2006

Prepared by Bill Zettler

The D211 teachers are threatening to strike if they don't get big raises. They ran an ad in the Daily Herald on Sunday, November 4th, stating that the teachers had agreed previously to limit increases to less than the CPI for the last 3 years and that’s why the strike was justified.

What actually happened to District 211 teacher salaries over the 3 year period 2003-2006 is that the 554 teachers who worked there during that time period averaged 19.8% salary increases.

The "Average Salary" figure is used by the unions because it is unrepresentative of the real increases being received by the teachers every year. The Teacher Retirement System (TRS), which tracks all salaries, states that the average year over year is 6.5%, which according to my 3-year spreadsheet (see below) is just about right.