It's Not What We Said Then, It's What We're Saying Now That Matters
The new issue of WE, the official magazine of the Washington Education Association, came in the mail yesterday. One highlight is the monthly address from president Charles Hasse where he says:
I’m glad that we took the time to rename our movement for school funding to Take the Lead. If you’ll remember, a year ago, we had a working title for it – Education Excellence. And we later found out that members didn’t like the name. It had a Dickensian ring to it; it sounded like some sort of stingy incentive program aimed at improving scores on high-stakes tests.
The humor in this is that at a union training I went to back in the fall they said they were changing the name because EdExcellence is the homepage of the conservative Fordham Foundation, home of Chester Finn and the famous Education Gadfly column.
The entire campaign does bring to mind a popular line from Dickens: “Please, sir, I want some more.”
There’s also a report from the recent Rep Assembly in Tacoma. I’m still waiting for the website to share the resolutions that were passed; it annoys me when we have a perfect tool for getting information to the members and they don’t use it well.
Perhaps the most useful thing in the magazine this month, and one that should be posted in every teacher’s lounge in the state, is the article on meeting the highly qualified provisions of NCLB. The seven scenarios and explanations that they give are highly readable, and it’s a really great piece. Good work, guys.
One area where I think they could improve is their coverage of retirement issues. It seems like they have a financial article every other month or so, but they could have talked a lot more this month about the vesting rule changes from the last legislative session (see here for an overview) or given a report on what’s new with the TRS plans (if you’re in a self-directed fund, you probably had a great quarter, and the TAP fund did fine too!). The WEA does a good enough job talking about the front end, getting more salary (it’s their number 1 priority, sez the cover), but they could be so much more useful if they would cover the back end, too.
I’m glad that we took the time to rename our movement for school funding to Take the Lead. If you’ll remember, a year ago, we had a working title for it – Education Excellence. And we later found out that members didn’t like the name. It had a Dickensian ring to it; it sounded like some sort of stingy incentive program aimed at improving scores on high-stakes tests.
The humor in this is that at a union training I went to back in the fall they said they were changing the name because EdExcellence is the homepage of the conservative Fordham Foundation, home of Chester Finn and the famous Education Gadfly column.
The entire campaign does bring to mind a popular line from Dickens: “Please, sir, I want some more.”
There’s also a report from the recent Rep Assembly in Tacoma. I’m still waiting for the website to share the resolutions that were passed; it annoys me when we have a perfect tool for getting information to the members and they don’t use it well.
Perhaps the most useful thing in the magazine this month, and one that should be posted in every teacher’s lounge in the state, is the article on meeting the highly qualified provisions of NCLB. The seven scenarios and explanations that they give are highly readable, and it’s a really great piece. Good work, guys.
One area where I think they could improve is their coverage of retirement issues. It seems like they have a financial article every other month or so, but they could have talked a lot more this month about the vesting rule changes from the last legislative session (see here for an overview) or given a report on what’s new with the TRS plans (if you’re in a self-directed fund, you probably had a great quarter, and the TAP fund did fine too!). The WEA does a good enough job talking about the front end, getting more salary (it’s their number 1 priority, sez the cover), but they could be so much more useful if they would cover the back end, too.
posted by Ryan at 4:51 PM
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