How Dave Reichert’s C Grade Voting Record Turned Into an NEA Endorsement
By Josh Feit
Apparently the National Education Association grades Republicans on a curve. Consider: Suburban Washington state Democratic U.S. Reps. Jay Inslee (D-1, WA) and Adam Smith (D-9, WA) earned A’s for their 2007 voting records. Makes sense. Inslee voted the union’s way over 90 percent of the time and Smith voted the union’s way 100 percent of the time. Suburban Republican Rep. Dave Richter (R-8, WA) got an A for the session too. But he only voted the union’s way 69 percent of the time. (According to the NEA’s official grading scale, you need to vote with the union at least 85 percent of the time to get an A. Reichert’s score, between 55 and 70, should have actually rated a C.)
Perhaps Reichert came into the session with some extra credit. In the previous term, he joined the Democratic majority by voting against a “merit pay” pilot program. Merit pay—tying raises to student performance—is anathema to the teachers union.
Randall Moody, the NEA’s chief lobbyist, told me: “It’s not fair to link pay to things like test scores. It’s unrealistic. There are a lot of other factors. Did the child have breakfast that morning? Do they come from a dysfunctional home?” Elaborating on the NEA’s opposition to merit pay, Moody also asks, “Who judges? What’s the criteria?”
Along with Reichert’s “A” grade, his opposition to merit pay, which he reiterated in his endorsement interview, was one of the factors leading the NEA to endorse Reichert over Democratic challenger, Darcy Burner, earlier this year, according to Lisa Brackin Johnson, the head of the Kent Education Association and one of the members on the Washington Education Association (WEA) endorsement board. Brackin Johnson also reports that Burner told the union she wasn’t against merit pay. “Burner didn’t understand the issue,” Brackin Johnson says.
The endorsement was atypical for the teachers union, which usually backs Democrats. Like John McCain, Reichert, who votes with the Republican majority position 88 percent of the time according to an analysis done in 2006 by the Democratic blog “On the Road to 2008,” has been trying to portray himself as a more independent Republican this election season. He has wisely been hyping the NEA’s stamp of approval on the campaign trail.
If the press had taken a closer look at the curious NEA endorsement, they would have found that in addition to Reichert’s inflated grade, it’s Burner who’s behaving independently. Burner is bucking A-student, WEA Washington Democrats like Inslee and Smith, and the rest of the local Democratic roster—Reps. Rick Larsen, Brian Baird, Norm Dicks, and Jim McDermott. Washington’s Democratic House members consistently voted with the monolithic, union-friendly Democratic House caucus to defeat the merit pay bills repeatedly sponsored by Republican Rep. Tom Price (R-GA, 6).
“During her interviews she didn’t rule out the possibility of paying good teachers well if there’s evidence that it could provide a better education for kids in the district,” Burner spokesman Sandeep Kaushik says. “She was honest with the teachers when she met with them. Like Sen. Obama she believes we should not rule out reform options.”
Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has also bucked the traditional Democratic line. He supports merit pay programs.
Isn’t Reichert bucking his caucus too by telling the union he’s against merit pay? Hard to say. While he did vote against the merit pay measure in 2005, and while he did tell the WEA he didn’t support merit pay during his endorsement interview, he actually voted for a separate merit pay bill in 2007.
Despite several requests, Reichert would not comment for this article.
According to Brackin Johnson, Reichert believes it’s unfair to gauge a teacher’s year-to-year performance on the success of his or her students because groups of kids differ from year to year in ways that are beyond the teacher’s control. For example, social issues outside the classroom may impact students’ ability to do well in the classroom. Brackin Johnson suggested that Reichert, as a former Sheriff, has a keen sense of the issues that affect kids outside the classroom.
There were certainly other factors in the WEA’s decision to endorse Reichert over Burner. Reichert told the endorsement board that No Child Left Behind is an “unfunded mandate” that needs to be reformed. And the WEA “contact team” says he’s become newly accessible to WEA lobbyists. This is an encouraging turnabout from his first term, they say. The change, the union says, was reflected in his improved voting record. “He listens to us,” Brackin reports. (This is a reference to Reichert’s recent “A” grade—again, 69 percent—an improvement over his 35 percent score from his first term in Congress.)
WEA spokesperson Rich Wood also cited Reichert’s “A” as the reason the union endorsed him, highlighting Reichert’s vote to override President Bush’s children’s health care veto; Reichert’s vote to lower student loan interest rates; and a vote for Head Start, the $6.8 billion program for low-income school children.
However, while Reichert did vote to reauthorize the Head Start program late last year, he also voted for an earlier amendment (it failed) which the NEA opposed because they believed it would have limited access to the program. And in 2005, Reichert voted for a successful amendment to the Head Start reauthorization bill that allowed religious groups participating in the federally funded program to hire and fire based on religious grounds. The NEA (and the ACLU for that matter) opposed the amendment.
The chief lobbyist for the NEA, Randall Moody, did explain Reichert’s “A,” telling me that in addition to voting records (which can often be complicated by partisan traps) they add things like how accessible a Rep. is to NEA lobbyists.” It’s a fairer evaluation of a member’s support for public education,” Moody says.
This is a big step up from the utter crap and drivel you wrote at the Stranger. See what you can do if you take some time?
My own mother, a public-school teacher at the high school (and later middle-school) levels, was against merit pay schemes. Because she was a better teacher than average (and Dept. head), she tended to end up with the “problem” classes. She pointed out that under the merit pay system, the teachers who taught students who (for whatever reason) were more inclined to learn without being constantly pushed by the teacher would be rewarded over those who had to work much harder to get incrimental improvements.
But after having my own kids in public schools, I’ve seen some very good teachers and some very bad ones. I expect it’s that way everywhere. I would like to find a way to financially reward the good ones and get the bad ones out of the system, and if paying them poorly accomplishes that, so be it.
I suspect that’s what Burner was thinking when she didn’t give a ringing condemnation of merit pay. As a former Microsoft program manager, I’m sure she had lots of contact with some highly educated people from around the world, and is aware that we need to do some hard work to make our education system competative. Some of that the teachers unions would heartedly endorse, some of it they wouldn’t. But we can’t always make everyone happy, and some candidates aren’t willing to say anything just to win an election (as McCain seems to be doing this year).
Is Ditzy, I mean Darcy still around? Last I heard she was still lost in that house of mirrors, unable to find her way out.
By the way, one of my colleagues (a Korean immigrant and now a U.S. Citizen) checks the Korean news websites each morning.
The big news in Korea earlier this week was that a Korean school had higher average scores on the U.S. SAT tests than ALL HIGH SCHOOL IN THE U.S.
Okay, let me make sure you understand what that means. The Korean students didn’t take a Korean equivilent of the SAT test. They took the regular U.S. SAT test – in English – and the average of their scores was higher than those posted by any U.S. High School.
Of course, detractors will claim that this was an elite high school, and the U.S. high schools have to educate everybody. Sure, this was an elite high school in Korea. But in scoring higher than all U.S. high schools, they scored higher than all ELITE U.S. HIGH SCHOOLS, both public and private, urban or suburban, wealthy or poor, college prep & tech ed.
And before you say that the Korean high school only selected their top students to take the test – ALL of the 11th grade students took the test, unlike most U.S. high schools where only the college-bound bother to take the test.
The result wasn’t that surprising to my Korean colleague. When she came to the U.S. she took the SAT’s and scored in the top 5%, even after only living in this country for less than a year. She said that it was MUCH easier than the annual test she had to take each year to prove she could move on to the next grade in high school. She thought it was the equivilent of tests she took in Korea TO GET INTO IN THE NINTH GRADE.
Here in the U.S., we are still arguing about merit pay for teachers, public vs. private vs. homeshooling, charter schools, school vouchers, etc., when overseas the students are OUTPERFORMING ALL OF THOSE OPTIONS.
We are like a Div. III college team that thinks it’s pretty hot stuff, until they realize that next year they are playing all Div. I teams. We are about to get our asses handed to us on a stretcher in the world economy, if we don’t fix this quick.
Josh, rhp
I second all this!
I have been an Obama supporter for three years …in large part because of a number of issue like this where he has shown the ability and take the time to think his way through to something the politically correct establishment, in this case the NEA, refuses to see.
This offers Darcy a fascinating opportunity to one up Reichert while supporting Obama. She should come out for REAL school reform, following Barack’s lead on three issues:
1. Merit Pay. The NEA attitude is inane. There is no comparably complex job in our society that does not have a mechanism for rewarding effort and promoting talent.
2. Charter Schools. Again the arguments by the NEA against charter schools amount to the educational establishment with its dismal record claiming to have better judgment than parents and as free market over what comprises succeess in a school. Kids belong to parents first. If Parents like the ida of a special sort of school .. e.g.an ethnic school or an academic academy or trades school and if that school is open to all kids in the District, what earthly reason is their for NOT letting such a school exist?
3.Scholarships for Service. This is a brilliant idea of Obama’s that could go a long way further. Why not advocate a National Merit Award Program, subsidized by the Ded, restricted to the top students with awards to the student? These kids would be heavily sought after by schools, adding competitive pressure for our colleges to improve as well.
@4
While I applaud the Koreans, I would be willing to bet your colleague flunked stat 101. The idea that the mean score for all of Korea exceeded the op scores of all US secondary schools seems hard to believe.
Just to pick on our local scene .. did the Koreans exceed the scores at the UW transition school? These are usually well into the 700s or even 800. What about Lakeside, Northwest, Boston Latin, Bronx Science, Mann, etc.
Tell you what, if the Koreans exceeded the mean of Andover, Boston Latin, Bronks Science and Lakeside I will buy you a beer.
Just out of curiosity – what is McCain’s education plan?
SeattleJew @ 6: I doubt she flunked statistics – she has a B.S. degree from the U.W. (I forget the actual field – bio-something or other). Her own SAT score was perfect in the math and science portion, she didn’t do quite as well on the other portion, with English being a second language and having only lived in the U.S. for a year, but she was mad she didn’t have a perfect score there, also.
Yes, I agree that the results are pretty amazing, when compared to top U.S. prep schools. But she didn’t see the study itself, she was reading the news story to me (translating it from Korean as she read it). I’d ask her for the link, but I doubt any of us could read it either.
Just a note to say that I think you got the whole story right about this endorsment.
Darcy, who I support, botched her interview, left the interview team with the sense that she had not taken the time to understand their key issues or that she did not support them.
David, on the other hand has been kissing up ever since his narrow loss and doing a good job of it. For me Darcy would still be the easy choice, but David has defined himself as the states best R member on their issues. He has done the same thing for the environmental endorsments. If he finds himself in the majority the WEA and the enviro folks will see his true colors. Till then he will get the political lift that playing his cards well has generated.
Wow we are in agreement for a change. Toast the bad worthless marching in time doing nothing teachers!
SeattleJew: The NEA attitude is insane. They don’t care about the students.
So Barack Obama has to reject their endorsement. We know that won’t happen! His school proposals are as we say DOA.
Darcy botched her interview? Did she equivocate? She didn’t understand the issues? How can that be? Oh yeah that’s right she’s against Bush and the Iraq War. She got her talking points from the DNC web site but didn’t study them. She’s an empty ________ I’ll leave the blank to everyone here.
Was she missing a teleprompter? Have her call Barack. He may have one or two.
re 12: Yes, I see your point. Confusion over merit pay for teachers is exactly the same as being unaware of the Bush Doctrine or wanting to go to war against Russia.
Thanks for clearing that up!
How the hell can someone who doesn’t hug rabbits get a C? Just askin’ …
Headless@13. WTF? Huh? Darcy messed up in the wrong setting. Not my fault.
Puddy buddy
Has the NEA endorsed BHO? They have even recently published ads vs, his ideas.
Instead of playing curmudgeon, whyn not PUSH for reform?
Or are you still living in some psudoecapitalist foggy place?
@8
WADR .. that is supposed to be impressive???
Usually when I have seen these data they do not make comparisons with the top US schools so I rather doubt her stats were working that night.
What, no mention of some wing-nut hacking palin’s email account.
17: Like I said, not her stats, she was reading a news article. And we all know how badly news articles can be when discussing statistics, so I’m willing to conceed that there may be a problem with the study.
But on the other hand, it is pretty consistent with my own experience in working with people from other countries. They think the U.S. education system is a joke. Japanese professionals here routinely send their kids to a “Saturday School” subsidized by the Japanese consolute, and even then send their kids home after a year or so in order to make sure they don’t fall too far behind. A fellow from India was laughing about how easy college in the U.S. was for him – far easier than his High School in India – and he was complaining that “how stupid it is that in India, they consider a U.S. education to be so highly sought, but those of us who have a degree from a U.S. college actually know better!”
We’ve got a lot of work to do. And school vouchers aren’t the answer.
@6
Tell you what, if the Koreans exceeded the mean of Andover, Boston Latin, Bronks Science and Lakeside I will buy you a beer.
You owe rhp6033 a beer.
How is that a fair standard when only one of the candidates can be a “Rep.”?
rhp
Yes, I hear the same things from my friends and have seen it myself as I travel.
The comparisons, nonetheless, are hard to make because we have such different class structures. The US is a lot more like England of 1910 than it is like Germany or Japan of today. Foreign kids coming to Seattle to study at the Northwest School, I am told, feel a LOT of challenge. Unfortunately, the NW School and its ilk are private.
I also think the elite public schools in the US .. Latin, Bronx Science, etc. will stand up to anything anywhere.
There are, however, two big .. non PC issues to consider.
American schools stand by something that rest of the world rejects … “all kids can learn” is true but it is not true that all kids are equal. The result of the latter stupidity is that we literally dumb down our public schools, hobbling the best kids, rather than motivating all kids to do their best. When I hear educators talk about closing gaps, they NEVER suggest that we should do so while enhancing the performance of top students.
The second issue is cultural blindness. Read the “Bell Shaped Curve” without bias and compare the propaganda against it to reality. The main these is that AA students do badly, very badly in schools and this can not eb accounted for simply by socioeconomic status or money spent. The fact that something is wrong in the AA community is clear. The evidence for why that is true aside (it is not genetics) no progress can be made by pretending the issue away. Part of Obamas promise is the ability to replace do gooder ideas with a real effort to change this mess.
I am sketical of magic. New curricula, new buildings, more teacher pay, are all nice but I do not see them as working.
Vouchers will not work either. All they do is set floor so private school tuitions can rise. Moreover, in the US we can see what damage private schools can do by insisting on mis education in history, social studies and esp science. Schools need standards and politically n one is going to tell the Christian Academy of East Sultan that oil did not come from God placing it there 6000 years ago.
W
So, here is why I like charter schools and Obama. His ideas about charter schools and master teacher may seem modest but I will say that one good Seattle Central Charter High School is likely to do more good than the waves of superintendents and school board we have had.
His plan has other good features. The use of non-certified staff to augment small class sizes is a great. Finally, how can anyone argue that teaching should be paid on a piece work basis, like plimbing of assembly of widgets?
For the record, I’m not the WEA president, merely a humble spokesperson.
@29 Lee
I am happy to share a beer but your post is incorrect.
The original post
implied that the two schools in the study had outscored all elite schools. There is no data in the article that shows that.
The article does not BTW, give Exeter’s scores at all. Did you look them up? In any case, as a grad of Boston Latin, I am happy to dispute the claim that Exeter is the gold standard. Exeter is, of course, a good school. However, in addition to excellent students, Exeter (and St. Paul’s, Lakeside, etc) all have affirmative action programs for alums. Having met some of those alum kids I am confident that they would never graduate from BLS or other elite schools that serve only the academically elite.
But back to Korea, I actually think this is a meaningless statistic even if it were true. It si good news that Korea has elite schools that do well. Since we no nothing of the admission criteria or the portion of the population served, any comparison would be meaningless.
I am far more upset by the difference in typical American upper class schools than I am in these extremes. WADR, I am not thrilled but what I hear baout Mercer Island and other super wealthy districts, though it is clear kids can do well there. I am more concerned about Seattle.
FWIW, I did a study not too dis-similar to the one you cited years ago comparing socio-economically and admission criteria similar kids at Garfield to their peers at Lakeside. The good news was that the Garfield kids walloped the lakeside kids on AP tests!
I tried to get the Disrict to take pride in this but SPS is never willing to admit to any success that is not racial or football (or jazz).
I think these old data are liekly still true and they show that Seattle can easily k=compete toe to toe with Exeter or itsd ilk when we compare similar kids, even taking into account the vast differences in reloyrces the Priavte schools have.
I really should have its own version of BLS/Bronx Science, etc. The major reason we do not is racism and PCism. Not racism in the sense that someone is trying to keep the AA community down but racism in the liberal community that is unable to see that depriving all Seattle kids of such an opportunity is a bad thing.
Merit Pay is one of those ideas that sound reasonable but in practice suck. It’s all about how well it’s implemented, and since we’re talking school districts here, the money usually never makes it to the teachers. It’s just too easy to say sorry folks, no more money this year, but thanks for the great job you did!
Remember, you fools paid for this drivel.
That is the closest thing to ‘justice’ that ever lived.
@25
The problem with your comment is this … Merit pay DOES work and is widely used in every other professional sector, including private schools.
What may not work is merit pay under labor union (as opposed to professional association) “work” rules. The NEA, for example, always erects the idea that merit will be determined by some computer program that works with kids scores.
Of course, computerized assessment of merit is BS. Merit is almost always a subjective measure. One can document how the decisions are made and even have some for of professional association over sight, but someone needs to make a subjective judgment.
If you want examples of how this works everywhere BUT in the public schools you can look at any university. Or, look at the military. For example, McCain was passed over for Admiral ..resulting in his political career. Having been in the USN about the same time, I can tell you that the decision to pass Cdr. McCain over was not made lightly and is well documented.
Huh, probably one of the best discussions I’ve heard so far on the topic of merit pay, even from those of you I wouldn’t have expected this from. And on HorsesAss, of all places!
Rhp, your mother’s teaching experiences mirror what I’ve observed, in that the biggest pains in the butt are given to the teacher who has the skills to handle them. So, as many here have noted, using a number-based assessment of merit is completely useless in schools.
Uptown: yeah, I know how that goes. California school districts get a big chunk of money from lottery ticket sales. We’d see the millions of dollars being dumped into our district and wonder where the hell it all went (we did notice that the superintendent had 3 secretaries and got a raise every year).
SeattleJew: @27, were universities an example of a good or poor merit pay system? Some of the worst teachers I’ve ever met in my life worked in universities. Miserable teaching strategies and whose base of knowledge were decades old and never updated.
WADR, it seems to me that Bananaphone did not attend a very good university. I can tell you that at the UW the assessment process is rigorous.
OTOH, I not in oyu comment the magic words “teaching strategies.” Depending on the course you took, teaching strategies maybe very different at a University than at a secondary school. Often at the university level the student is expected to have enough learning skills that the “teacher” may relaly be more of an information source, an expert, than an active instructor.
Some students find this experience frustrating because they are not up to this level of learning. In one case I partipated in a Nobel level lecturer was dissed by his class as not making his material exciting. Unfortunately for those students more able to learn, the UW removed the faculty member and replaced him with a “better teacher” .. thus depriving the students of a chance to learn from a real expert.
Two of my own best teachers were horrible in terms of their “skills.” Both mumbled. One often came to class with alcohal on his breath, This alcoholic was one of the teachers I value most because his ideas (the theory of religious conversion) were wonderful. So those of us willing to literally sit on the stage so we could figure ADN out, had a real opportunity to learn.
The second mumbler was utterly aware of his speaking style. He felt that students learn better if they have to work to hear or better yet showed the pride to demand that he explain himself (these were very small classrooms). This teacher is widely seen in his field as one of the greatest teacher of the century.
All of this is more reason that Union work rules are bull shit if applied to teachers.
As for your dig at Universities, I could make an equal meaningless dig at any other service industry. Are you really thrilled with your mailman? How about them Mariners?
The bottom line is that without incentives people can nto measure their own growth. One of the reasons I am an Obamite as opposed to a Clintonista is her idea that we should reward tems rather than individuals! Wanna bet she never hires a lawyer who is paid that way?
Banana
I agree with a lot of the rest of what you say. Next time there is an effort to raise $$ for teachers kook at how little goes into differential pay and how much to paying the entry level, high turnover Union members more. A huge advantage of a charter school is that the expenditure of funds is reviewed by the parents!
Let me give you more fuel for your fire? Several years ago the great Admiral Rickover had to make his Navy smaller. This meant literally laying off some of the brightest people in the world, nuke sub skippers. one of these guys applied to teach in Seattle! This fellow with huige skill, great experience as a teacher (Rickover was the strictest evaluator you can imagine) could not get a johb in the District! In the meantime, we had well trained phys ed teachers trying to teach math to our kids and .. in one case a n illiterate was appointed to teach reading. (She could barely read).
I do not think it would be hard at all to add some estimate of merit to this fd up system.
I have been a dead chicken around the union’s neck ever since I found out about this. Every time they send me an email about elections, I write back about how STUPID they are to be endorsing him. Merit pay is a stupid issue upon which to base their endorsement because it is not a federal issue!!!
SJ, how is it that someone who does not read was hired? Was this a case of Teach America sending in a person? You can’t get a Washington State teaching certificate if you cant read.
Teachers are not automatically against ANY kind of merit system…just that kind that rewards test scores. There is already in place the National Boards, a rigorous year of instruction and self evaluation, as well as evaluation by peers and professionals. If a teacher could complete a series of professional development courses and projects aimed at improving their teaching, which also resulted in a raise, most teachers I know would take that opportunity.
It would also assure teachers who teach subjects that are not tested at the state level to earn a raise as well. PE teachers, Foreign Language, Industrial Arts, Librarians and Computer specialists, Art teachers, Drama teachers, Music teachers, Kindergarten teachers, Special Education teachers, Home and family Life teachers, Business teachers, etc. would all be left out if merit pay was determined by a test score.
Also, Sj, I know of several school districts in Oregon who have charter schools as part of the choice of where to send your kids. Not sure why Seattle would be against it.
hey josh good luck on geeting your money out of goldy hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Reichert is too dumb to be a congressman! He wouldn’t know what to do with a cute furry bunny if one jumped into his lap. He’d probably eat it or something. RABBITS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE HUGGED, DUMMY!!!
Good points sparky. Teachers may or may not be individually against merit pay. But if it is based on test scores, you can bet that shop, ag, art, PE, and other “non-core” curricula will be against it. Most kids don’t go to college, and most kids don’t excel, or even like, school. But they still need to be educated, and educated in more than college prep studies (as to do college bound kids).
These areas, of course, are the very departments that students, college or non-college bound often find the best teachers, and most to learn.
I do not like knee-jerk reactions to merit pay. I also do not like the idea that test-based results are the measure, as so many teachers are doing things that are at least if not more important to a real education, but not test scores.
@31 sparky
I did not say she could not read at all … what I said was that she could barely read. The class she was assigned to was a special kindergarten intended to take advantage of the reading skill head start gives, When we met with her to discuss how this was to be done, it turned out that a number of these kids coud read better than she.
This reacher was a very nice person and told us she had used her seniority to get the job even though she was unqualified.
This was only one of many such experiences we had where the union work rules over rode good practice:
gym teachers assigned to advanced algebra classes.
teachers of history who literally were reading to just keep ahead of their kids!
a programming instructor who had never l3earned programming.
During this period I cam up with the simple idea of requiring every teacher to post her credentials for the parents and students to read. The idea ENCOURAGED the dea that self learning by a teacher was itself a good credential.
The union had a fit and blocked my idea.
sparky said
That attitude makes sense for a labor union bit not for a preofessional association. The idea of merit pay is not to take courses and get pieces of paper but to demonstrate superior skills.
OF COURSE evelautions will be an issue. That si true in every work place but teachers ar4e unique among the white collar crowd in claiming they can not be evaluated by their peers or supervisors.
Lawyers have evaluation systems and certainly work damn hard for merit increases, all levels of the military have rifgrous review.
Medicine is a but wooly here and in some setting has begun to adopt teacher’s union style rules.
34 Sparky ..
I am glad to hear that Oregon has charters. In WASTATE it was voted down after a rigorous cmapaign by the NEA, AFL CiO.
What would you think of Seattle turning Garfield into a central academic campus ion the model of the Latin School or Bronks Science?
37 funk
I would agree that test based merit pay makes little sense. But why can’t we use peer evalauation, student evaluation, parent evaluation, and supervisors?
OF COURSE any evaluation system can be misused. To protect against that here at UW we have very carefully written code that protects faculty against such abuses.
@37 funk
Again, I would assume that shop teacher or gym teacher would be very much eligible for merit pay.
A more3 difficult issue is differntial pay for differences in knowledge and rarity of individuals with the needed knowledge.
Math teachers are scarce, does this mean math teachers should be paid more?