LAMPHERE FEDERATION OF TEACHERS
AFT Michigan #1614
June/July 2006
Congratulations--To Lamphere Federation Member retirees, Anita Hamid and Eileen Gottlieb. We wish you the best.
Track Changes-- If you have taken enough coursework to move to a new salary track you must inform the Human Resources Office by August 1st.
Contract--The Schedule B Pay Scale was missing from the printed and cd version of the contract. Schedule B is different than our Schedule A or salary pay scale. It will be added to the page in the contract area. For now you can click on the words pay scale to access it.
Certification--If you received a notice regarding the update of your teacher certification please make sure you follow through on updating your credentials. Current teacher certification is a condition of employment.
Calendar Change--The administration approached the LFT to ask for a change in the negotiated calendar for 2006-07. The bargaining team agreed to the change which adjusted professional development days from half days to full days. A copy of the calendar was distributed in each building by both the union and the administration. It is also available on a link from the index page of the LFT web site.
High School Dropout Rate Overstated, Says New Report--Recent reports that only two-thirds of all students and half of minorities obtain a high school diploma are overstated and rely on seriously flawed data, says a new Economic Policy Institute report. Rethinking High School Graduation Rates and Trends, released April 20, argues that a wealth of better data show high school completion rates are much higher, with about 75 percent of black and Hispanic students receiving diplomas nationally. Although substantial gaps remain between the graduation rates of whites and either blacks or Hispanics, the report documents that graduation rates have been growing and racial/ethnic gaps closing over the past four decades, (see http://www.epi.org/docs/news/high_school/HS_race_gap.pdf.) Claims that black and Hispanic students have only a 50-50 chance of completing high school rely on data collected by the U.S. Department of Education from state databases, says the report's authors, EPI president Lawrence Mishel and economist Joydeep Roy. These data have been too unquestioningly accepted even though the results they yield differ substantially from findings based on a wealth of other government data on high school completion, including the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS), considered the best available on this issue. EPI's report comes on the heels of a new Manhattan Institute for Policy Research study by Institute senior fellow and school voucher proponent Jay Greene. Greene’s study claims that the nation's overall high school graduation rate is 70 percent, with 55 percent for African-American students and 53 percent for Hispanic students. The EPI report says that the gold standard NELS data, which track individual students over time and verify diplomas against actual transcripts, show overall national graduation rates of 82 percent, and rates for black and Hispanic students of about 75 percent.
AFT SUMMER LEARNING CALENDAR NOW ONLINE--The
AFT and the National Geographic Society have partnered to create the most dynamic and
adventurous AFT Summer Learning Calendar yet. The theme of this year's calendar—which
is available in Spanish and English—is geography. For the third consecutive year,
online and print versions of the calendar are available and contain an entire summer's
worth of activities and projects for students ages 8 through 12. Whether they receive one
of the colorful posters distributed by classroom teachers or choose to
access the calendar online, students will have a host of instructive and fun activities
available to them. The Summer Learning Calendar also is linked to the Learning Line, the
AFT's toll-free educational phone line for students, which will
feature learning activities based on the calendar's geography theme. The Learning Line
(800/242-5465) offers a new activity every week.
SHANKER INSTITUTE EXPLORES READING COMPREHENSION--The Albert Shanker Institute brought two prominent education scholars to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., in May to discuss the relationship between content knowledge and reading proficiency. The May 19th event, part of a series of lunchtime discussions, was moderated by AFT secretary-treasurer Nat LaCour and featured E.D. Hirsch, Shanker Institute board member and founder of the Core Knowledge Foundation, and Donald Deshler, professor of special education and director of the Center for Research on Learning at the University of Kansas. Both speakers agreed that there is strong evidence showing that students' reading comprehension depends on vocabulary and background knowledge, and that poor children and struggling readers are disproportionately disadvantaged by this fact. Thus, a curriculum that provides all young students with broad background knowledge of history, science and culture could help prevent the "fourth-grade plunge" in test scores and significantly narrow the achievement gap. Similarly, any successful intervention for struggling readers in secondary school must work to improve decoding skills and content knowledge simultaneously. A transcript of this event is available on the institute's Web site.
PD/Trade Off Day- Professional Development offered in the summer is voluntary.
CEC Summer Workshops--If you are attending a workshop or taking a course during the summer and wish to verify that you are receiving CEC credit make certain that the proper accompanying paperwork has been submitted.
Entertainment Discounts for Summer Vacations and Everyday Purchases!
Do you know about the AFT PLUS Entertainment Discounts Program? Members are raving about the money they are saving on purchases such as movie tickets, amusement park admissions, movie rentals from Blockbuster and even theatre tickets.
It's now more affordable for you and your family to enjoy family vacations, movie
nights, and sight-seeing across the country.
The AFT PLUS Entertainment Discounts Program offers reduced prices on:
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Theme parks, museums, aquariums, zoos;-Live theatre, movie rentals, movie tickets;-Ski lift tickets for New England ski resorts;
-Sporting events and many more options.
To start saving, call 800/565-3712 (use ID# 744387769) or visit www.unionplus.org/entertainment.
We encourage you to update your AFT PLUS F.Y.I Benefits Blast subscription profile by going to http://www.aft.org/aftplus/signup. This is a quick two-minute process.
Respectfully submitted,
Judy Schram, LFT President
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