To quote the old Mercedes Benz airbag commercial: “Some things in life are too important not to share.”
The National Education Association’s national convention begins today at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, FL. Outside, the Evergreen Freedom Foundation (a Washington State think tank) is parking a truck with a billboard highlighting some of the expenditures the NEA listed on its 2004 federal financial disclosure forms.
I love the name of their web site. www.teachers-vs-union.org
I imagine that many of the teachers are not happy that the union bosses make more money than they do and that much of the teachers' salary union dues goes to political candidates that they do not support.
The Education Intelligence Agency
NEA Convention Coverage – July 1, 2006
On the web at
http://www.eiaonline.com
1) "Measurable Outcomes" the New Mantra for NEA Budget
2) Ballot Measure/Legislative Crises Fund Put to Use
3) Ten State Affiliates to Receive Media Fund Money in 2006-07
4) NBIs, Committee Reports, and Assorted Flotsam
5) NEA Convention Diary – Day 1
6) Quote of the Day
1) "Measurable Outcomes" the New Mantra for NEA Budget. Greetings from Orlando, Florida, where the National Education Association will open its annual Representative Assembly tomorrow morning. NEA spent much of this year on organizational process stuff – a new slogan ("Great Public Schools Are a Basic Right"), a new statement of "vision, mission and core values" (whatever), and, amazingly enough, a new budget structure.
The budget documents supplied to NEA delegates used to have categories like "Improve Teaching and Learning - $10 million." These expressed lovely sentiments but were not so useful in determining where the money was going and why. Well, NEA must be feeling its oats because the two-year budget for 2006-08 has a ton of "measurable outcomes" that are supposed to be achieved by the union's relevant departments.
For example, one strategic goal is to "increase by 10% the positive image and support of NEA by ethnic minority opinion leaders and sustain the support among the general ethnic minority public." Another is to get 10% of the membership to contribute to the PAC. Another is "assist at least three state affiliates with introducing legislation to protect and/or expand [membership] markets."
"It's an exciting area," said NEA Vice President Dennis Van Roekel.
"We've never had this kind of measurable record of our activities before," added NEA Secretary-Treasurer Lily Eskelsen.
How this all pans out is an open question, since union officials admitted they are still establishing the baseline data against which those outcomes will be evaluated. But it's certainly a positive step that NEA recognizes the value of having concrete and specific goals to meet, and the sense of tying your budget to meeting those goals. If only they felt the same way about public education.
NEA's financial and membership health is improved from two years ago, evidenced anecdotally by the return of "Friendship Night" at the convention (though not to the Gladys Knight or Pointer Sisters level), and numerically by the union's estimate that its revenues will exceed $307 million in 2006-07. I remind you that's just the national union. When state and local affiliates are mixed in, NEA is a billion-dollar business. But people still ask why I bother covering it.
As is its recent habit, NEA released year-old membership numbers along with its financial statements, but of course you can get six-week-old figures off the EIA web site. NEA expects growth of about 22,000 full-time equivalent members in 2006-07 (maybe about 28-30,000 actual human beings). National dues will rise to $145 in 2006-07 and are expected to go to $148 in 2007-08.
NEA staff salaries and benefits are expected to rise 4.4% next year, and 9.2% over the two-year life of the budget. In 2007-08, the payroll costs for NEA's 555 employees will exceed $100 million.
Questioned about the status of the IRS and Department of Labor audits, NEA Vice President Dennis Van Roekel announced that they were complete. "NEA was found to be absolutely correct in all our reporting," he said. "It was a clean audit."
It is true that the IRS audit made no measurable difference in the one big issue involved: NEA's reporting of political spending. The issue has been, and will continue to be, the various definitions used for "political spending," allowing both unions and their critics to use whatever definition suits them, depending on the audience.
NEA wasn't "absolutely correct in all" its reporting, however, as the union's financial report notes that the IRS "proposed adjustments" for the years it examined. Eskelsen told the delegates these had to do with income from advertising revenue in NEA publications. NEA is appealing the IRS decision.
EIA is not quite as certain that the Department of Labor investigation is complete. I don't want to torpedo my own work, but let's just say Freedom of Information Act requests can be denied on the basis that a case is still open.
2) Ballot Measure/Legislative Crises Fund Put to Use. Dues money from NEA's Ballot Measure/Legislative Crises Fund are used to support or defeat specific initiatives that arise between NEA conventions, such as the $10 million NEA sent to the California Teachers Association to defeat Gov. Schwarzenegger's initiatives.
Here are the complete 2005-06 allocations from the fund:
California - $7,500,000 (last installment of CTA payment for November 2005 election)
New Jersey - $700,000 (pension and health insurance)
Michigan - $490,000 (K-16 funding)
Idaho - $250,000 (sales tax measure, with the notation "check being held at state request." Don't know why.)
South Carolina - $200,000 (oppose vouchers, listed as "on hold")
Wisconsin - $160,000 (oppose TABOR)
Oklahoma - $130,000 ($30,000 to oppose TABOR, $100,000 to challenge signature-gathering in court)
Texas - $125,000 (oppose GOP education reform)
Arkansas - $124,355 (oppose performance pay)
Utah - $115,000 (K-12 funding)
Florida - $100,000 (redistricting)
Connecticut - $90,000 (retirement funding)
Vermont - $89,400 (health care reform)
Montana - $80,000 (minimum wage)
New Mexico - $52,600 (retirement funding)
Maine - $15,000 (gay rights measure)
In addition, $250,000 of contingency fund money was sent to Americans United to Protect Social Security, and $583,375 was spent "to fund additional polling, research and model legislation related to 'The 65% Deception' and TABOR."
3) Nine State Affiliates to Receive Media Fund Money in 2006-07. Dues money contributed to NEA's Media Campaign Fund helps pay for the national union's public relations message, but it also gets distributed to state affiliates wishing to have their own media campaigns subsidized. In the 2006-07 school year, the following nine state affiliates will receive NEA money:
Connecticut Education Association - $150,000 for a statewide TV campaign
Hawaii State Teachers Association - $134,000 for a statewide media campaign
Louisiana Association of Educators and Mississippi Association of Educators – a total of $200,000 for a statewide media campaign
Nebraska State Education Association - $91,600 for advertising directed at minority communities
Pennsylvania State Education Association - $100,000 for a statewide radio campaign
South Dakota Education Association - $90,000 for a statewide TV and radio campaign
West Virginia Education Association - $30,000 for a statewide radio campaign
Wyoming Education Association - $30,000 for a statewide print and radio campaign
4) NBIs, Committee Reports, and Assorted Flotsam. I always devote the day before the opening of the convention to mining the data in a big package of reports that the delegates get. There was a new business item last year that would have required NEA to publish these documents on its web site at least one month prior to the convention. That motion was referred to the NEA Executive Committee which, four weeks ago, decided to take no action. That leaves EIA to continue to provide that service both to NEA members and the general public. But without the means (or the least bit of desire) to post the entire package on the web, you'll have to be content with the following pithy summaries:
* New Business Items (NBI) – These are measures debated and voted on by the delegates that require the union to take a specific and defined action. Two have been submitted already. NBI A would commit NEA to take a bigger role in national health care issues. NBI 1 calls on NEA to see to it that "any immigration process will protect the rights of all children, support a safe environment, and provide an opportunity to learn."
* NEAFT Partnership report -- This report gets shorter and shorter each year. The 2005-06 report consists of five paragraphs, including one with the admission that the unions' Joint Council did not meet.
* Legislative program – One significant change from previous years regarding performance pay. The previous legislative program simply stated NEA's opposition to "federal initiatives that mandate or promote traditionally defined merit pay schemes." The new language adds to the end of that sentence "or other pay-for-performance systems that link teacher compensation to student achievement." What strikes me about this line is that it doesn't just specify student achievement on standardized tests, but student achievement by any measure at all. This is unusually candid phraseology.
* NBI implementation report – EIA finds this to be the most underappreciated report in the NEA box. Thousands of delegates spend long days debating important issues and unimportant minutiae, but virtually no one discusses what the "measurable outcome" of it all is. Here are just a few:
+ Last year, NBI 13 read, "NEA will continue to oppose attempts by Eli Broad and others to remove elected school boards from cities in California and other states or territories." NEA's action was: "An e-mail message is being sent by NEA Government Relations through the regional directors to alert all state affiliates to the Association's continued opposition to attempts to remove elected school boards." Evidently, this e-mail never reached United Teachers Los Angeles.
+ Last year's NBI 33 read, "The NEA will develop a strategic program to help Republican members advance a pro-public education agenda within the Republican Party." In response, NEA established a Republican Advisory Committee, which has two goals: "to empower NEA Republicans to become more active in their Party's activities and to influence Republican politics and policies to become more NEA-friendly. A series of focus groups with Republican NEA members began in March 2006."
+ Last year's NBI 61 had to do with Iraq, and read, in part, "NEA calls on President Bush and the United States Congress to support our troops by creating an exit strategy to end the U.S. military occupation of Iraq and bring American troops home." NEA's action was: "NEA Government Relations continues to advocate for national priorities that target resources to domestic priorities such as public education."
* Reports of committees – Last year, I made a joke about the NEA Human and Civil Rights committee's decision to "determine whether vendors or contractors have a history of profiting from slavery and if so, whether they have established plans for addressing said profit through reparations or other appropriate strategies." Believe it or not, the committee "is obtaining an index of businesses known to have profited from slavery and will make this available to other NEA departments that have vendor or contractor interactions."
While everyone was distracted by a resolution with no material value, NEA's Committee on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identification was busy with something far more substantial: "That NEA advocate for the inclusion of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender issues in the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) teacher education program review process." NEA has already contacted NCATE about this.
NEA's Committee on Professional Standards and Practice is very concerned (again) about distance learning. "The committee believes that it behooves NEA to remain flexible in its attitude toward new technologies and advancements," the report reads. "The committee, however, see troubling trends for the Association, its membership, and public education in general."
The "troubling trends" are virtual schools, or cyber-schools. The reasons the committee think they're troubling say more about the committee than about the cyber-schools:
+ "The increasing number of alternatives to traditional public schooling raises concerns of maintaining a system of quality public education in the United States." Keep reading that sentence over and over. Think about what it means, Then read it again. Then replace the words "public schooling" and "public education" with any other service, like "health care" or "mortgage banking" or "supermarkets."
+ "Since many alternatives to traditional public schooling, particularly those not publicly funded, are outside the jurisdiction of the education system, few mechanisms exist to ensure equal access for all students."
+ "Alternatives to traditional public schooling are growing due to increased demand by students and parents. As students opt for these alternatives, the per-pupil expenditure is reduced to the traditional public schools." There are an awful lot of different debates going on about American public education, but THAT'S what it's all about, in a two-sentence nutshell.
5) NEA Convention Diary – Day 1. Over at Intercepts, I've posted one of those little "random thoughts" columns that reporters like to us when nothing in their notebook adds up to a story. But you, dear reader, get both! The story on this page and the impressions over there. Enjoy!
6) Quote of the Day. "We're kind of building the airplane as it's going down the track." – NEA Secretary-Treasurer Lily Eskelsen, on NEA's new performance-based budget. The last time I heard the unmixed version of this metaphor was 1999, when Denver Classroom Teachers Association Vice President Becky Wissink used it to describe the performance pay plan for teachers. Something about evaluating outcomes must make them think of air disasters.
