Posted on 07/22/2002 10:40:20 PM PDT by kattracks
The National Education Association adopted several new goals at its annual convention held in Dallas over the long Fourth of July weekend. No, they don't have anything to do with improving schoolchildren's reading, writing or calculating skills.
The NEA's first and most important goal is to fight against any voucher plan, such as the Cleveland plan which was recently upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, and which the NEA now forecasts will be imitated in seven or eight other states.
Criticizing the Court's ruling in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, NEA's outgoing president Bob Chase proclaimed in his keynote address: Just because the Court said vouchers are constitutional, "that does not make it right." What's so bad about vouchers? Two reasons, according to Chase's platform histrionics. First, "it is driven by ideologues ... not by teachers and other educators," and second, it rests on "the big lie ... that public education has failed."
Voucher advocates must confess to the accuracy of the first charge: their movement is not driven by teachers but by parents and taxpayers. But they are no more ideologues than NEA officials.
To support his claim that it's a "lie" to assert that public schools have failed, Chase cited a Money magazine report that 10 percent of public schools are as academically outstanding as the most prestigious private schools. For those who had fuzzy math and didn't learn how to subtract, that means 90 percent of public schools are NOT as good as private schools, which is why vouchers look attractive to so many parents.
It's clear that opposition to vouchers is the litmus test for election as an NEA official. Delegates listened to 17 candidates who were given a couple of minutes to make their case, and most of them used their time allotment to denounce vouchers.
Chase's math is just as fuzzy when he talks about funding for public schools. He shouted in indignation that the president and Congress appropriated "trillions for tax cuts, overwhelmingly for the rich," plus billions for the Pentagon, corporate bailouts and farmers, leaving "no new money left for public education." In fact, Congress authorized a record $26.3 billion for public education in President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, plus "such sums as may be necessary" for 10 specific programs. That's $8 billion more than the last Clinton education bill.
The NEA carries on a vicious personal counterattack against parents who oppose NEA policies or candidates. The convention passed New Business Item 5, which calls on the NEA "to provide ongoing strategic information to members and affiliates that increase member knowledge of the ongoing attacks designed to destroy NEA and its affiliates, limit educators' freedom of speech and their right to political participation."
This information will include "identification and history of individuals and organizations that support the attacks and sources of funds that support these attack efforts," "status reports on tactics used by attack groups at the local, state, and national levels," and "status reports on responses by NEA and its affiliates to deal with the attacks." All this sounds ominously like a database on parents who object to NEA politicking or left-wing curricula.
In NEA newspeak, "attack groups" mean groups of concerned parents and "attacks designed to destroy NEA" means support for vouchers or tax credits. "Limit educators' freedom of speech" means parental efforts to opt their children out of courses promoting premarital sex, gay rights or anti-Christian multiculturalism, and limiting "their right to political participation" means objecting to teachers proselytizing schoolchildren in behalf of the NEA's designated candidates, school-tax increases and bond issues.
The NEA convention delegates approved their usual dozen or more resolutions promoting gay rights and feminist curricula, activities and employment policies. The NEA's board of directors adopted a new plan to encourage school districts to develop materials for classroom discussions on homosexuality.
The NEA's principal goal, of course, is to expand jobs that produce dues to the teachers union. New Business Item 57 reveals that one of the purposes of the push for early childhood education is to "organize and represent early childhood employees" who can fill the gaps in the union's declining membership.
Jobs are also behind New Business Item 67, ordering a new NEA push for bilingual education. Experience since the passage of California's Proposition 227 proves that the way to teach English to immigrant children is to scrap bilingual education, but the NEA wants to perpetuate the bilingual bureaucracy anyway.
NEA members who don't toe the officially mandated line of NEA bosses never get recognized by the chair. There was no resolution, for example, to criticize the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeal's decision declaring the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional in public schools.
But some delegates had their moment of spontaneous rebellion. When the Convention opened with the customary recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, a large number of delegates shouted "under God!" in their loudest voice and were warmly applauded.
Read Phyllis Schlafly's biography
©2002 Copley News Service
The big Truth, you mean?
"Repent NEA, or you will surely perish."
Since the NEA will never repent, let's help them perish. A wealthy NEA can buy whatever political clout they need to get their agendas passed. Help defund the NEA by informing teachers that they are entitled to a refund of the portion of their dues that the NEA and their state affiliates used for political activities. This refund can amount to several hundred dollars. See:
Reply # 14 in the thread Let's Help Nail the Teachers Unions -- It is National FReep Time
LANDMARK REPORTS NEA FLAUNTING FEDERAL LABOR REPORTING LAW
Here's some interesting information from the The Education Intelligence Agency (EIA) COMMUNIQUÉ (On the Web at http://www.eiaonline.com) -- May 13, 2002 issue:
"1) Are the Fat Years Over for NEA and AFT?
It used to be relatively easy for EIA to obtain accurate, up-to-date membership numbers for NEA and its state affiliates, but recently it has become a lot more difficult. Perhaps it is coincidental that the numbers are becoming harder and harder to find just as the news becomes less and less cheerful.
The tremors are small: lots of talk about needing inroads with Generation X teachers... financial problems here... possible layoffs there. In the past, membership problems were localized in the chronic, hard-to-organize states that had competing organizations. Today, the sounds are more widespread. NEA has grown every year since the mid-1980s, but for the first time the end of the boom may be in sight. The union experienced an increase of some 37,000 members this year -- about half of what it achieved in 2000-2001. More alarming if you're an NEA official is the fact that 20 state affiliates had a decrease in membership last year -- even as the number of potential members nationwide continues to grow at a fairly steady 2 percent annual clip.
EIA cannot yet identify which state affiliates are growing and which are not, though it seems safe to assume that the large states -- California, New Jersey, Michigan, Illinois, et al. -- continue to enjoy solid growth, while perennial weak sisters are now having serious problems. Activities to reverse the trend are already underway. The NEA Board of Directors granted $175,000 to the Mississippi Association of Educators for additional organizing. The North Carolina Association of Educators is laying the groundwork for an effort in support of collective bargaining in the state. North Carolina law currently bans collective bargaining by teachers.
Accurate AFT numbers are even harder to amass, because more of its members are not K-12 teachers. Nevertheless, the same tremors are coming from AFT. The AFT Executive Council's organizing committee met to discuss ways to get younger members more involved and active in the union. EIA estimates that about 70 percent of teachers are NEA and/or AFT members. Public school teaching may be the most highly unionized sector of the American workforce (the private sector is only 9 percent unionized). Is something about to give?"
We also need to inform teachers and education majors that there are alternative professional education associations that teachers can join for much less than what they are paying to the NEA:
Association of American Educators
25201 Paseo de Alicia, Suite 104
Laguna Hills, CA 92653
Phone: 949-595-7979 or 1-800-704-7799
Fax: 949-595-7970
Email: info@aaeteachers.org
Website: www.aaeteachers.org
Please note that the AAE is not a union. It is a professional association. Annual dues are $125 per year for teachers (includes $2 Million liability insurance - one of the reasons teachers join the NEA or AFT is for liability insurance). Student, retired educator, and associate/support memberships are $25 per year.
Call the AAE and ask them to send you some of their brochures. Stuff them with Teacher317's "UNION DUES REFUND NOTICE" and hand them out to teachers and education majors. Take them to PTA/PTO meetings. Leave copies at school supply stores. Join the AAE as a support member.
Here are some links that will be of interest to teachers (and parents):
"Grading the NEA - What Every Teacher Needs to Know About The National Education Association: A Special Report" by Perry L. Glanzer, Ph.D. & Travis R. Pardo (http://www.family.org/gradingthenea/news/a0012243.html)
"Teacher Unions and Parent Involvement" (http://www.educationpolicy.org/EPIseries/parent-bklt.htm)
17 posted on 5/21/02 7:21 AM Pacific by EdReform
NEA doesn t show up in court; union fined $800,000 for intentional violations of state law
Please pass this information on.
EIA 2001 NEA State Affiliate Survey - Professional & Support Staff
Pretty good salary and benefits for working less than 11 months per year!
We need to convince education majors that joining the NEA will be a waste of their money and time. They would be much better served by the Association of American Educators.
NEA "educators" finished Mickey Mouse education courses. As a result they believe that recess should be replaced by Ritalin and that homosexual activists should have a free access to the school children.
I gotta tell ya...I have a friend whom I have known since she was in her single-digits. She's a very nice person, but she's not exceptionally intelligent (as I think teachers should be), and she especially doesn't read aloud well.
Nonetheless, she completed her education courses at City College of San Francisco (which includes a textbook that tells the ways that teachers can surreptiously involve their students in activism -- as well as how to handle parents who subsequently object). She is now a teaching assistant, and in the San Francisco USD, she's just a few bureaucratic steps from being in line for her own classroom. It's a shame.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.