I tried this morning to catch up on one of the longer running labor disputes in the state, involving the Saucon Valley SD. After a second strike, the teachers are back at work, and a recent Morning Call article has a summary of the issues. It looks as if the two sides are very close to a final settlement.

Apparently, one of the last sticking points has been links between pay raises and graduate credits. Here’s the board’s proposed language. This is a substantive issue that deserves more attention than it usually gets. Teacher unions usually despise cyberschools for kids, but they love them when it comes to racking up graduate credit hours for themselves.

Actually, the whole notion that districts should be shelling out large amounts of money to pay for graduate credits is open to question. The Saucon Valley board wants to give credit only for courses that are part of a graduate degree program. This is understandable as a tactic for eliminating junk courses, but the link between graduate degrees and student achievement is probably non-existent — at least when the graduate work is in education. (There appears to be a positive effect when the courses are in teachers’ subject-matter fields, especially math and science.) For at least some links to the research see “Separation by Degrees” at the website of the Center for American Progress — a progressive (left-leaning) think tank.