EducationNews.org

1) Mike, first of all, tell us about your "Education Intelligence Agency". What are you trying to accomplish?

I never quite subscribed to the notion that a reporter should cover public education differently from any other societal endeavor. At all levels of government, we spend close to a half-trillion dollars per year on public education, yet investigative reporting of the subject is relatively rare. I spend much of my time on the teachers' unions because they are a private entity intertwined with a public function, but without the public accountability faced by elected officials. I'm not trying to accomplish anything other than to report on an underreported subject. We have more than enough policy papers out there.

2) Who are the people who really need to read your "Education Intelligence" materials?

Everyone! No, seriously, I think my stuff is for anyone who wonders why things happen the way they do in the public school system. I treat it all with a sense of humor because too many commentators are uber-serious about the topic.

3) What do YOU think most teachers need to know more about? What do you think most parents need to know more about? What do you think most administrators need to know more about?

I could make a list, but it's easier to make a single recommendation for all: Don't get all your information or perspectives from a single source. Public education discourse is a sea with lots of islands and no boats. I think consensus is highly overrated. If everyone in your circle agrees, it's time to increase the size of your circle.

4) Sadly, I think most people have this vague, global, general knowledge of what goes on in the schools- however, they don't know much about the specifics of school law. How do YOU help these individuals?

A lot of people come to me for advice because they think they have been treated arbitrarily by an individual or a bureaucracy, and I can often show them there's a provision in the state education code or the local collective bargaining agreement that requires such treatment. I usually can't fix the problem, but I can help them identify it.

5) Opinion question- how well have the unions been doing in terms of helping teachers in the last 20-30 years?

Unions have been very good for the pocketbook of the average education employee. They get many teachers more money and better benefits than they might otherwise get. What I haven't been able to decipher is why so much of our public policy is centered on helping the unions do that. The public pays educators for a service. They pay more in the hope of getting more or better service. It's hard to argue that unions make teachers better, just more expensive.

The union salary structure not only fails to address shortages in difficult subject areas, it guarantees them. In most districts, if I want to attract a new math teacher, I have to raise the salaries of English teachers who already work for me. If I have to lay off a teacher, I have to use seniority. But what's worse, if they were both hired on the same day I'm usually required to lay off one at random, rather than keep the best one. So the benefit to the average teacher is a detriment to quality education for the students.

6) Is there a disjoint between what teachers want and what the unions provide?

There is evidence that younger teachers are less enamored with traditional union services. But I would say, rather, that there are misconceptions about what unions provide. Their primary purpose is to provide security. They do it well. All employees want security. We debate endlessly in other aspects of American life about the trade-off between security and freedom. The same trade-off exists in public education. At some point the walls you create to protect employees become prisons.

7) Any way to make the unions more accountable?

I believe in less regulation rather than more, so it's clear to me that the way to make unions more accountable is to open up the field of teacher representation to competition. In my mind, there's nothing wrong with collective bargaining agreed to democratically by the employees involved. The problem is the first thing that happens is exclusive representation. If a National Teacher of the Year were to go into a superintendent's office and demand a raise, it's the union that would shoot her down.

8) Tough area now--special education- what kinds of information do you provide for parents in this realm? What kind of information needs to be provided?

I don't have any special expertise in that area.

9) Do you think the upcoming election will bring about any kind of REAL CHANGE in education?

It depends on how you define real change. For better or worse, there's no doubt the No Child Left Behind Act was a real change in education, and a future president could craft a similar change. Real change, as I define it, will only come at the insistence of the parents, the citizens who don't have children in school but pay for the system anyway (often left out of these discussions), and the students themselves. I've had great teachers and I've had terrible ones. But I'm responsible for what I learned or didn't learn, not them.

10) What do you see as the most pressing issues in education as we approach this Presidential election?

The only thing I worry about in education is that the next generation will be split into a tiny group of people who can create things like iPhones, Google, vaccines, robots and space stations, and a vast group of people who are unable to read and understand the directions to operate these things.

11) What question have I neglected to ask?

My best time in the marathon is 3:43, but I'm hoping to slice 8 minutes off that and qualify for the Boston Marathon.

Published March 10. 2008