The buzz at AERA was over this large, large (seven-story) billboard a block north of Times Square. (The owner's blog post and more pictures here.)

If you can't read it, here is the description:

Now, I am not a particularly big fan of continuing to promote this kind of expenditure, especially when you don't know who is REALLY behind the millions that paid for all this, but I do think it is signifigant for a couple of reasons. First, the cost of it. Significant dollars are beginning to amass against teacher's unions, which this billboard in Times Square proves (and if not, check out their full page ads in the NY Times, their commercials, and their interview on Fox News - yes, I see you smiling - had to be Fox didn't it). Second, though, it was clearly posted because AERA was in town. Nothing was mentioned of the sort in the blog post, but if I were going to pick a spot that guaranteed everyone that attended AERA would see it, it would have been that spot because it sat in the middle of all the AERA hotels. So, clearly, someone was trying to make a statement to educational scholars as well as making a statement about how much they can spend. That is both flattering (I don't know the last time I was directly lobbied), but also concerning. Certainly, there is no rule that says you can't lobby the Ivory Tower, but such a direct and forceful effort as this shows a new kind of determination to influence scholars. The lobbyist group behind this certainly knew what it was doing and maximized the effect of this expenditure. The anti-teacher's union effort is clearly becoming more sophisticated if they can hire experienced Washington lobbyists to pull of this kind of stunt.

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Special thanks to two lovely, super-talented researchers that I am looking forward to working with on projects in the future. Karen Jackson for pointing it out to us and Maggie Barber for taking the photo (I am sort of jealous of her i-Phone). We'll see what our little investigative team can come up with next year in San Diego.