IN THIS ISSUE

Republican Governors Take Office, Give Offense
Two new Republican governors begin their terms by attacking workers' rights. They're just following the president's lead. More ...
 
AFT President Sets the Record Straight in the Wall Street Journal
Don't expect to find a reality-based approach to education reform on the Wall Street Journal's editorial pages. But you can find uninformed attacks on teacher unions. More...

Education Department's 'Ad Campaign' Yields More Fake News Stories
USA Today's Greg Toppo broke the latest story about the U.S. Department of Education's production of fake news. More ...

Worth Reading
School finance, outsourcing and earmarks. More ...

Republican Governors Take Office, Give Offense
Shortly after being sworn in this month, two new Republican governors revealed their anti-worker agenda, taking the first steps to undermine protections for state employees. In Indiana, Gov. Mitch Daniels, President Bush's former OMB director, reversed 15 years of state policy, rescinding collective bargaining rights for state workers and voiding the contracts of 25,000 state workers. And in Missouri, Gov. Matt Blunt followed suit, preventing unions from collecting "fair share" fees from state workers who benefit from union contracts but choose not to join. The effect of the governors' actions was immediate, erasing the rights of tens of thousands of workers employed by the states.

Daniels defeated his opponent by fewer than 200,000 votes in a state President Bush carried by more than 500,000. Blunt's margin in Missouri was just 84,000, far behind President Bush's margin of 200,000. So it's difficult to see how Daniels and Blunt could construe their elections as mandates to undermine worker protections. Unless they looked to the White House.

Within days of taking office after the disputed 2000 election, George W. Bush signed several executive orders undermining workers' rights. With a few strokes of his pen, he turned back the clock on labor-management relations, rescinding decades-old statutes that had helped build effective labor-management relationships.

With the Republican governors following expansion of the president's attacks on workers' rights, the party seems to be drifting further and further from mainstream America. In Congress, Republican leaders have sought to marginalize moderate lawmakers like Sens. Chaffee, Collins, Snowe and Specter. By excluding moderates and rescinding collective bargaining rights—and by tolerating attacks on public education and promoting tax breaks for the wealthiest citizens—today's Republican Party likely will inflict long-lasting harm on hard-working Americans and their families.

More information

• AFT statement on Gov. Daniels' rescinding of collective bargaining
• AFL-CIO's statement on the loss of collective bargaining in Indiana and Missouri

AFT President Sets the Record Straight in the Wall Street Journal
On Jan. 24, the Wall Street Journal published a letter from AFT President Edward J. McElroy, as well as two other letters critical of a Journal commentary by Terry Moe calling for political and legislative actions to reduce the power of teacher unions. It was the least the paper could do after writing and publishing ad hominem attacks on teacher unions. The Journal's editors even saw fit to run a cutesy, pointless editorial chiding the AFT for urging members to respond to Moe.

But McElroy's response set the record straight:

"Teachers—and their unions—want what children need. Reasonable class sizes, safe and well-equipped schools, high standards for conduct and achievement, and well-prepared and adequately supported teachers are entirely appropriate goals for teacher unions to pursue. But in the face of these facts Terry M. Moe regurgitates several tired canards about teacher unions to bolster his view that unions act solely in their own interest and 'impede efforts to improve public schools.'"

The Journal would serve its readers better by acknowledging teacher unions' leadership in many education reforms, which McElroy described in a recent column for Teaching K-8 magazine.

Education Department's 'Ad Campaign' Yields More Fake News Stories
Greg Toppo of USA Today recently broke the news about a U.S. Department of Education (ED) public relations contract with Ketchum Inc. that called for conservative commentator Armstrong Williams to promote the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Toppo's article set off a slew of Freedom of Information Act requests, investigations (both formal and informal) and follow-up articles.

Toppo's is the second report of inappropriate use of tax dollars stemming from ED's contract with Ketchum. AP's Ben Feller reported in October that the $700,000 contract yielded fake TV news stories to promote NCLB and rated reporters' coverage of the law. Ketchum's contract is now valued at nearly $1.2 million, according to ED's Web site.

Taxpayers have had to rely on reporters like Toppo and Feller to reveal ED's questionable use of tax money, but with Republican lawmaker John Boehner recently joining leading Democrats in calling for an inspector general review, ED may begin to clean up its act.

If you can't wait weeks and months for the results of the investigation, don't worry. Just Google Armstrong Williams and Ketchum.

Worth Reading
•School finance When a Kansas judge ruled that the state constitution required a $1 billion annual increase in the state's education budget, that was only the beginning of the battle. Governing magazine's Dennis Farney uses Kansas as a case study of states' attempts to respond to education "adequacy" lawsuits.

•Outsourcing Based on state officials' belief that privatization would cut costs, they increasingly have turned to private firms to deliver public services. But Governing's Alan Greenblatt writes that those racing toward outsourcing have stumbled over scandals and sweetheart deals.

•Earmarking George Archibald of the Washington Times describes a huge increase in congressional earmarks (some call them pork-barrel projects) at the U.S. Department of Education. Given the way the department mishandles grant-making, perhaps the switch to earmarking is understandable. Still, it's hard to justify congressional mandates of about $400 million for more than a thousand local projects.

If you have a comment or suggestion for AFT's Closer Look, let us know.

AFT's Closer Look is a publication of the public affairs department of the American Federation of Teachers, 555 New Jersey Ave. N.W., Washington, DC 20001, 202/879-4458. Alexander Wohl, Executive Editor; John See, Editor;
Annette Licitra, Copy Editor.