Ed at AFT 

Mike Petrilli was in the midst of an unusually cogent discussion of technology and instruction earlier this week, wherein he was looking at why more teachers don’t make use of Al Gore-like multimedia presentations in their instruction. (He could also have been talking about the opening scene of the Da Vinci code).  Then we find out that one reason is because of the teacher unions.  The logic is that this technology would make it easier to teach and thus undermine wages. No data, not even an anecdote. This is a particularly lame example of the “when did the union stop beating its wife?” school of education policy.

Had the NEA or AFT been in the process of working out a program to create standards-based off-the-shelf PowerPoint and video content, Petrilli’s lament would just as easily have been that we were either trying to increase the skill level of teachers and thus the salary premium, or somehow ease our burden of representation.  To put the shoe on the other foot, I could ask is Petrilli really this lazy, or is he just bought and paid for?