Posted on 05/15/2006 7:19:15 AM PDT by Nextrush
Excerpts from the "NEA Today" monthly publication of the National Education Association for May 2006. Some of the articles are available online, others not:
1. Page 7 President's Viewpoint:
"Educators of the World, Unite!"
I see the face of a child. She has a beautiful, shy smile. She lives in a huge, sprawling shantytown in a developing country. She is dark-skinned. Her nationality doesn't matter. What matters is that she is a child with all the dazzling potential of a child.
She sleeps the sleep of a child, and when she awakens to a living nightmare of poverty, despair and ignorance. She has never spent a single day of her life in a school. Instead, every morning she accompanies her mother to a huge garbage dump, where they pick through mountains of debris, looking for something, anything, to sell..............The girl is illiterate, she's malnourished, and she knows nothing about HIV/AIDS, but soon she will become a young woman.
I think about this girl when I am doing Education International work,........
NEA'S membership in Education International (www.ei-ie.org) affords us, as educators, the opportunity to link arms with other caring educators around the world-more than 29 million of them, in fact-and to raise our voices on behalf of the children of the world and on behalf of our profession.
It is a fundamental human right for all to have a free, quality public education. Education International is dedicated to this ideal........
I was recently elected Vice-President of Education International, and it was a great honor. After all NEA is a founding member of Education International and NEA's Mary Hatwood Futrell is the founding president. Plus, the association is the largest affiliate among EI's membership of 348 national education unions in 166 countries.
Faced with the magnitude and the multitude of challenges around the world-war, famine, disease and oppression-there is an understandable tendency for people to feel overwhelmed and to withdraw into their private shells. But there is another option. It is for us to say to ourselves. I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can still do something........
Educators everwhere need to work together, because a great public school is a basic right for every child, whether that child lives in Idaho or Indonesia, Addis Ababa or Altoona.....
Your generosity of spirit and your committment to the cause of children and public education everywhere inspire me.
NEA President Reg Weaver
2. On Page 10: "Stay-At-Home-Kids":
" More than 1 million American students stayed home from school in 2003-that is, they were home-schooled, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. That's a 29 percent increase since 1999, but still just 2.2 percent of all students. The top two reasons? Home-schooling parents believe school is dangerous, they told surveyors, or they want to provide children with a religious education."
3. Page 16: "States Support NEA Lawsuit"
"Six states and the District of Columbia, the governor of Pennsylvania, school administrators, and a coalition of California elected officials and community activists have filed legal briefs in support of NEA's legal challenge to unfunded federal mandates in the No Child Left Behind law. The amicus brief filing by Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin says the states "respectfully disagreed" with a U.S. District Court judge who dismissed NEA's lawsuit in November. The association and the other plantiff's have since filed an appeal. The suit argues that NCLB is an unlawfully underfunded by more than $40 billion-in spite of wording in the law that makes clear its mandates will be fully paid by the federal government. About 80 percent of districts say they have costs associated with the law not covered by federal funding, according to a report released in March by the Center on Education Policy. For more information, visit www.nea.org/lawsuit."
4. Page 16: "Moving Beyond NCLB"
"The so-called No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law, which has introduced children all across America to the joys of bubble sheets, comes up for renewal in September 2007. That means Congress will begin considering changes to the law, possibly starting with hearings later this year. Final action may not occur until 2008 or even later, but NEA is mobilizing to play a major role.
'The problems with the law have become apparent in our classrooms and our communities across the country and to people across the political spectrum,' says NEA Executive Committee member Becky Pringle. "We're optimistic that Congress can be persuaded to make the major changes that are essential to keep this law from hurting the very children it was originally supposed to help.'
NEA President Reg Weaver appointed Pringle to head an advisory committee...The committee has held hearings around the country to gather information from members about how NCLB affects their schools and their students, and to enlist their professional expertise in crafting a positive agenda for changing the law.
Members have been telling them of the many ways in which NCLB is distorting the curriculum.....
'a custodian actually started crying while describing what's happening to some of his teacher-colleagues,' says Pringle. 'He said students are so upset that they're blaming their teachers for having to take all these tests, and deciding to punish the teachers by refusing to answer the questions.'.........
'One sixth-grade teacher said his school is spending so much time testing reading and math, they've been unable to focus on science and social studies as they used to do,' says Pringle......
Pringle adds that many teachers are saying their children are being set up to fail because NCLB ignores the problems caused by poverty and doesn't even require that students be tested in a language they can understand.......
Pringle says she believes of Congress are ready to listen, but only if they hear from their own constituents..........
'NEA's great strength is that we have members in every congressional district. But we can only harness that strength when our members collectively speak up and take action.'...............
1. I've read a book about the evils of the Catholic Church written by a liberal author around 1950. He calls the National Education Association "militant." Reg Weaver proves it here with all the left-wing claptrap about poverty, oppression,etc.
But get the title "Educators of the World, Unite!" Inspired by Karl Marx.("Workers of the world, unite") The "Education International" sounds like the "Communist International."
Public education is a "fundamental human right" and are the taxes to pay it a "fundamental human right, too.
Spreading liberalism around the world, Reg, doesn't inspire me.
2. Home schooling is something the NEA is monitoring, for the momemt. Some of the parents who do it are probably teachers themsleves and are or have been NEA members.
3. The NEA is determined to take down the No Child Left Behind law. Their lawsuit got thrown out by the first judge, but now they are back in court again. And they got friends like our Governor "Fast Eddie" Rendell and other states which happen to have Democrat governors including the "moderate" Brad Henry of Oklahoma.
NCLB holds schools accountable and a union like the NEA can't accept that. Administrators (NEA members too) stand to lose their jobs if students fail tests.
4. More attacks on No Child Left Behind. This article talks about "across the political spectrum" opposition to NCLB.
I admit it's federal control over local education but the article seems to point to more reading and math in schools and less political indoctrination and nonsense because of NCLB.
Federal power has been used to take on the likes of Al Capone and the KKK, is the National Education Association any less of a threat. NCLB is our Elliot Ness and FBI to take out the NEA.
I have seen postings on FR attacking testing in schools and it makes me wonder the NEA isn't trolling in to take us along with their agenda of tearing down No Child Left Behind.
Yes. Support school choice!
And she looks soooooo HOT! I can't wait until I can get her into the cleaning closet.
Signed, her math teacher.
(Support school choice)
Home education is more than a blip on the radar. It's at 3% and climbing fast. They know we are a threat to them, but thank G-d they don't know how much.
The top two reasons? Home-schooling parents believe school is dangerous, they told surveyors, or they want to provide children with a religious education."
My top reason for doing it is that I want my kids to get a better education than they can get out of public skools dominated by the NEA.
Yes. The illegal immigrants tried that, too, and now the American people want them gone yesterday!
Do it. Shut down the schools. March in the streets by the millions on the next communist holiday and DAMAND American obedience. Do it! Do it!
Any conservative worth their salt should be standing with the NEA on this one issue. NCLB is a boondoggle and overstepping of intended federal powers. And from someone whose immediate family is being impacted currently by NCLB, I say scrap it. Now.
"No Child Left Undrugged" is more like it.
They sound like a pack of wolves howling at the moon.
That's one thing the NEA was able to take out of No Child Left Behind when it came to non- public schools thanks to some of our Republican Congress members votes.
Afterwords, I have to take a cold shower.
Signed, her math teacher (again. She is soooo hot!)
Hail Hitler!
The National Education Association doesn't want their members held accountable and they don't want to teach reading and math.
That's what NCLB is doing to hurt their agenda of no accountability and political indoctrination in schools.
How is NCLB hurting, dare I ask?
And that number is increasing each year - thank GOD (they can say that without getting expelled for not thinking like The Great Socialist Collective).
The U.S. has neither. The tax payers are getting robbed, and the kids are ending up just plain stupid.
I caught part of the Sixty Minutes Broadcast last night. It was about a man named Geoffery Canada and his Harlem Children's Zone. It was very inspiring and he was very forthright in saying his school could not work in the Public School System because of Unions (NEA take a bow).
He stated that he fired 3 teachers which was probably more than was fired in the entire island of Manhatten.
One very telling scene showed parents waiting to see if their children would get a slot in the school. Space is limited so selecting students is done by lottery. These parents know how the public school system has failed their children. They are the ones who awake everyday to the reality of poverty and crime. Yet you don't see them bashing NCLB. Instead you see them holding onto the hope that their child will be given a chance to escape the very altar on which NEA is willing to sacrifice their children.
The NEA
Sorry, but anything that requires someone else's labor or money is not a right.
Democrats in the teachers union hate work. It's a 4 letter word. They want their free government welfare checks back.
The children wouldn't be hurt if the left would stop using their little bodies and souls as political pawns.
Just stop the liberal indoctrination classes and get back to teaching academics. The problem would be solved.
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