Arizona Zombie Association Objects to NEA Comparison

December 6, 2009

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

I received the following email yesterday from the Arizona Zombie Association (AZA) objecting to being compared to the Arizona Education Association (AEA). The email read:

Dr. Ladner,

I serve as President of the Arizona chapter of the American Zombie Association.  I want to let you know that the Zombie community is deeply offended by your comparison between long-suffering zombies and self-serving human groups such as the Arizona Education Association. Zombies have suffered a long history of discrimination, prejudice and oppression. Sadly your latest writing only reinforces this legacy.

Given your obvious ignorance, I will inform you of the many redeeming features of zombies. True, while being infected with the zombie virus does produce an overwhelming desire to consume human flesh, you may have forgotten that it also gives you killer dance moves:

You walking lunches humans living without the benefit of the zombie virus fail to appreciate how much zombies drive human innovation. For example, in the absence of zombies, does anyone seriously believe that humanity would have developed the ingenuity to develop machine gun/grenade launcher prosthetic limbs?

Also, we zombies have served as a constant source of artistic inspiration in ambulatory snack culture. How soon you forget such classics as this from your Irish Indie Rock subgenre:

Now that you hopefully have a greater appreciation of the greatness of Zombie culture, I will get to the crux our complaint.  Your writing on the actions of the AEA pointed to a study by the Brookings Institution showing very plainly that some teachers are much more effective than others. You then note that in defending mindless seniority, that the AEA were putting students at academic risk by threatening the careers of highly effective young teachers while defending experienced but highly ineffective senior teachers.

Why you chose to drag the zombie community into this discussion I will never understand. We zombies do indeed eat humans, but you may notice that we never attack each other. Despite the ignorant prejudices to which you seem to subscribe, we zombies do have a code of ethics: no zombie has ever harmed another, especially zombie children. Rest assured, if we zombies ever do set up a system of schools, we would never stoop to the level of defending the employment interests of adult zombies over the academic interests of zombie children. After all, there are literally thousands of other professions available which would not involve damaging the long-term interests of zombie children.

Sincerely,

GRRRRRR EATBRAIN

President, Arizona Zombie Association

My reply:

Dear President Eatbrain

Thank you for writing. You make a number of interesting points about zombies. Having grown up near the southwest border of Louisiana, I have known several zombies, and count myself stronger and more resourceful to have survived them.

Relating to the teacher quality post, I simply want to point out, however, that I was merely referencing the rules of survival in the movie Zombieland and drew no equivalence between zombies and the AEA. Any offense taken by the zombie community was purely unintentional.

Sincerely,

Matthew Ladner

3 Comments | teacher quality | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Arizona Legislature Single Taps Union Zombie

December 4, 2009

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

The movie Zombieland delivers a humorous take the zombie movie genre. The protaganist is a person who has survived the outbreak of zombe-ism by following a set of self-developed rules. “Cardio” is rule number one (i.e. stay in shape so you can out run the zombies when necessary). Rule #2: double tap. When you have shot a zombie, don’t leave them lying around wounded so that they can try to kill you later. Go ahead and finish the job.

In any case, last session the Arizona legislature passed some profoundly wise policy changes regarding public schools. They prohibited districts from paying people school district salaries to do union jobs. They required school district employees to use vacation days to do association work. Finally, in the event of a reduction in force, they prohibited the use of seniority as the sole criteria for deciding which teachers ought to be let go.

The first two items fall into the no-brainer category. No one should be getting paid to do classroom work without working in the classroom. The final item is the most important of all. The figure above is from a Brookings study, showing differences in academic gains by Los Angeles teachers. In short, some teachers are great- getting large gains, and some produce terrible results: not only failing to produce gains, but actually dragging their students down.

The Arizona Education Association is actively seeking to have these policy changes overturned. Rumor has it that this will be a condition for Democratic support in current budget session. One problem: it would be IMMORAL to keep highly ineffective teachers in the classroom simply because they had already spent years miseducating students. No one- conservative, liberal, libertarian or vegetarian should support such a policy. The AEA brings disgrace upon itself for seeking it, and any member carrying this water should be ashamed of themselves for doing so.

In short these policies represent a good start, but still only a single tap. Taking a cue from Zombieland, the Arizona legislature should go ahead and double tap the zombie by making it illegal for school districts to collect union dues from employee paychecks. School districts won’t collect dues for any other private associations, there is no case for them spending public money to do so for the AEA.

If people find the services of the AEA useful, they can write them a check in the same fashion that you do for any private organization that you support.

6 Comments | teacher quality, teacher union | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner