Why does teaching ALL children the basics require additional money? Isn't that what all the money they get now supposed to be for? They get a gillion dollars already. If your typical inner city fourth grader can't read now, I doubt additional money is gonna be the magic key.
Funny thing is, funding for public schools has gone up and up and up over the past few decades, and results have gone down and down and down.
The NEA does not give a rat's butt about children. They are just like any other political lobbyist group/union. Give us more money for crappier results, or we'll just walk out.
Just damn.
Al Shanker the former head of the American Federation of Teachers, the NEA's smaller brother, put it clearly, "We'll pay attention to the interests of children when children get to vote in our elections." And he wasn't even pretending to care otherwise. The NEA likewise exists only to pad teachers' and bureaucrats' salaries and working conditions and protect them from being accountable.