The NEA and the Politics of Education
The National Education Association (NEA) convention (July 2-11) is underway in New Orleans. There’s plenty of goings-on to interest political junkies- even those who don’t care all that much about education issues.
Neither President Obama, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan—nor anyone from the current administration for that matter– is scheduled to speak to the delegates this time around. Ditto for the convention of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). NYT reporter Sam Dillon explains why:
But in a sign of the Obama administration’s strained relations with two of its most powerful political allies, no federal official was scheduled to speak at either convention this month, partly because union officials feared that administration speakers would face heckling.
Come to think of it, I haven’t noticed any of those Teachers for Obama bumper stickers on the roadways lately.
The NEA spent more $50 million to help Obama and other officeholders — mostly Democrats– get elected. But many of the union members are not happy with the administration’s education agenda.
The largest union’s meeting opened here on Saturday to a drumbeat of heated rhetoric, with several speakers calling for Mr. Duncan’s resignation, hooting delegates voting for a resolution criticizing federal programs for “undermining public education,” and the union’s president summing up 18 months of Obama education policies by saying, “This is not the change I hoped for.”
“Today our members face the most anti-educator, anti-union, anti-student environment I have ever experienced,” Dennis Van Roekel, president of the union, the National Education Association, told thousands of members gathered at the convention center here.
Democrats are counting on teacher union support in the next election, so they’re taking steps to improve relations. It’s gotten so bad, that the administration is even appealing to Republican education bloggers:
“The administration is aware of the anger and wants to do whatever they can to cool it off, including getting third parties to issue words of praise for the unions when warranted,” said Chester E. Finn Jr., a Republican who last month used his influential education blog, Flypaper, to highlight the forward-looking positions taken by union leaders in Delaware, Tennessee and six other states. Mr. Finn said he decided to write the post after an administration official pointed out how many local unions had helped lead overhaul efforts.
Some teachers are upset that the administration resisted moving federal stimulus funds from its pet project– the competitive grant program called Race to the Top (RttT)– to a union-favored jobs bill (and thereby, so the argument goes, saving what have come to be called edujobs). To get their way union members had to fight the administration– and so they contacted their congressmen:
E-mail messages pleading for the jobs measure rained down on Congress from thousands of union teachers, and despite a veto threat by the White House, Democrats in the House voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to create the $10 billion school jobs fund and to trim Mr. Duncan’s grant programs. The bill must be reworked by the Senate. On Friday, Mr. Duncan shrugged off what appeared to be an administration setback, expressing confidence that lawmakers would eventually find a way to spare Race to the Top.
In fact, Education Week, reporting on the NEA’s vote of “no confidence” in Race to the Top yesterday, described it as “a symbolic slam on the Obama administration.”
Interestingly, although RttT is an Obama-administration-devised program, the president’s name was not mentioned in the resolution. According to Education Week:
Even then, the resolution did not actually name or blame President Barack Obama for the policies. At least one delegate said he felt that those omissions were disingenuous.
For the NEA, Barack Obama is quickly becoming the equivalent of Voldemort: He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.
Over at the NEA website, Tim Walker described NEA President Dennis Van Roeke as “energized and angry.” In his keynote address to the 8200 delegates, Van Roeke said:
“Plain and simple – this is not the change I hoped for. Our members feel betrayed and so do I! Our members are angry . So am I!”
Van Roeke proposed how that anger could be put into action:
“We must not allow another bad ESEA. Because if they take the old NCLB, fancy it up and call it the new ESEA, I think we ought to just call it TNT and blow the whole damn thing up!” Van Roekel said as the delegates roared their approval. To follow up, he asked delegates to send a clear and concise message by sending postcards to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan listing the three things they would like to see changed in ESEA. Nine thousand postcards, Van Roekel said, will send a loud and powerful message.
To build on that effort, Van Roekel is also calling on every state president to plan and implement a day of action between now and September to send a message to Congress.
To be truly effective, though, NEA needs to change hearts and minds. According to Stephen Sawchuk– in a post titled “How Much Does Good Press Cost?”– there was quite a debate about how much money should be spent on media:
The original resolution would have directed the National Education Association to prepare and launch a major public relations strategy to “revive public confidence” in public schools.
Sawchuk says that the $52 million expenditure for major media buys was deemed too expensive. “So the delegates substituted an amendment to put out the union’s message on a ‘social media platform’ at a cost of only $125,000.”
But I think Sawchuk has missed the more interesting question. Why should it take a media blitz of any kind to “revive public confidence” in public schools? It seems to me that their successes and failures speak for themselves.
More on “”Van Roekel twisting himself into a bit of a rhetorical pretzel” here.
More on the NEA’s criticism of the Obama education agenda here.
[...] teachers’ unions, as we’ve noted before, are no fans of RttT and the competition that is its cornerstone. As Alarkon reports: The National [...]