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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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).

From a Philadelphia Inquirer article on the district's decision to cancel privatization contracts: "[I]n the last six years, the privately run schools have not proved to be a silver bullet. The schools failed to deliver higher test scores than district schools did, despite costly interventions."

So, the privatizers fought like hell to repudiate these reports. (See, for example, here, here, and here.) Then, what happened when the district moved to close some of the schools? You guessed it, the failures are a sign of success. Or as the Gadfly put it, "the revocation of several management contracts is an indication that the experiment is in fact working as intended."

Yes, it's a win for everyone, except the students who were in those schools.

From WGNO-TV in New Orleans, where the AFT has a large contingent of teachers, many from out of town, attending the National Charter School Conference.

Volunteers helped touch up a New Orleans charter school, and they know how much it helps kids when their school looks nice.

The group is made up of teachers from the United Teachers of New Orleans Union, as well as the American Federation of Teachers....

Video here. 

CEP’s report is good news for America’s students, parents and teachers. It confirms that the steady rise in student achievement, a trend that dates back to the beginning of the nationwide effort to raise academic standards, continues today.

We are very proud of our members, who work their hearts out every day to educate children. This report offers proof that teachers and students are succeeding. It is especially encouraging that the scores of disadvantaged students and minority students are rising, and that the achievement gap is closing. Congratulations to the students, their parents and all those who work in their schools.

We welcome today’s news and are confident that student achievement will continue to rise. However, we will not be satisfied until every child—in every school and in every community—has the opportunity to receive an excellent education and fulfill his or her potential.

After watching this cablicious babblefest, I know less about the subject than I did before.  (Hat tip Matthew Tabor.)

*Embedding video -- sometimes it works for me, sometimes, especially Monday mornings, it doesn't.

Today, Russo's "Around the Blogs" links to David Hoff's post on the markup of the FY 2009 appropriations bill for Labor-HHS-Ed, where I learned Reading First had been zeroed out. Big news, though probably not a surprise to the people who track this stuff closely.

In Rep. Obey's statement on the bill, he notes:

The bill does not continue funding for the Reading First program, which has been plagued with mismanagement, conflicts of interest, and cronyism as documented by the Department of Education Inspector General. Moreover, a scientifically rigorous study released by Department of Education in May 2008 found that the program has had no discernable impact on student reading performance.

Let the reading wars begin. Again.

….And even though their numbers are growing, women as a rule are still a significant minority in the uppermost reaches of the culinary world.

It used to be for lack of opportunity, but I don’t think that still applies today. None of the great American chefs (or at least not the ones I respect) have a glass ceiling in their restaurants. Quite the opposite: We like to hire women because they work hard without any of the competitive, macho bulls**t you often see among their male counterparts. The women I’ve hired help each other, don’t jockey for position, and work until they drop. So if the opportunities for advancement that make up the early part of a top chef’s career are there, why aren’t women availing themselves of them?

Because the perception of opportunity, on the part of women themselves, hasn’t kept pace. Women are reluctant to enter the culinary world because they believe (and this is not unjustified) that a cooking career is incompatible with raising children, which leaves those of us who want to hire, promote, and mentor women with a slimmer field to choose from than we’d like. And to an extent, they're right: The bottom line is our society does not yet provide women in the workplace with the type of social supports, like high-quality subsidized child care or extended parental leave, that allows them to fully go for it, and the impact this has on the scope and depth of a career is profound. Right or wrong, men plunge into their careers without much thought about how they’ll navigate the work/family balance. They assume someone -- spouse, parent, paid caregiver -- will materialize to take care of it (and usually someone does.)….

Couple this with a reading of Bill Buford’s Heat, where flu-ridden chefs show up for work because “there are no sick days in restaurants.” It’s an ugly picture of a workforce.

This dynamic may mean that schools simply attract a less able/healthy workforce.  And one solution would simply be to make it easier for people to have the time they need in the event of illness or family catastrophe.  The AFT has been working on that, supporting the successful effort to pass paid family leave legislation in New Jersey this year, for example.

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do better in education to deal with the consequences of absenteeism. The research might speak to the need to improve the professional development of substitute teachers and building ways to make subs part of the culture of the schools they work with. It shouldn’t lead to attacks on benefits or on those who use them.

Here's The Boss's formula for nation-building: "The first thing you want in a new country, is a patent office; then work up your school system; and after that, out with your paper."

Sounds about right to me. Now what would Clemens say about comparability?