NON-EDUCATIONAL AGENDA

One of the biggest problems in public education today is that it is labor-focused and not student-focused. Regardless of what caused it, the reality is, the union focuses on the needs of its members and its bottom line, rather than what will positively impact student learning.

Organizing support personnel

The NEA has made a huge push to organize support personnel, such as bus drivers, custodians, and food service workers. Why? Well, simply put, they’re good for the dues dollars.

We are making public, likely for the first time, three strategic documents published by the NEA with regards to organizing non-instructional employees.

Building Membership, Increasing Power - Manual 1

Internal Organizing: Strengthening the Association - Manual 2

Organizing Tools - Manual 3

In addition, the NEA goes one step further with its Beat Privatization manual, a how-to guide to systematically defeat efforts to save public resources by contracting with private companies. This was first aired on MEAexposed.com, focused on the Michigan Education Association.

Maintaining the status quo

The rival school union to the NEA, the American Federation of Teachers, was starkly honest when its president, Albert Shanker, opined in 1989,

"It's time to admit that public education operates like a planned economy, a bureaucratic system in which everybody's role is spelled out in advance and there are few incentives for innovation and productivity. It's no surprise that our school system doesn't improve: It more resembles the communist economy than our own market economy."

Such is the attitude of the NEA, as demonstrated by its actions.

The NEA has long opposed the idea of providing students with a voucher to allow them to attend the school of their choice. Seeing that a federally funded program for Washington, DC Public Schools is up for reauthorization in 2009, it provides the perfect opportunity for the NEA to stomp on the idea.

In a letter to members of Congress, the NEA made patently it clear: we elected you, you know what to do with this program. In a thinly-veiled shot across the bow of any member of Congress, the NEA sent a March 2009 letter to U.S. Senators:

The National Education Association strongly opposes any extension of the District of Columbia private school voucher ("DC Opportunity Scholarship") program. We expect that Members of Congress who support public education, and whom we have supported, will stand firm against any proposal to extend the pilot program. Actions associated with these issues WILL be included in the NEA Legislative Report Card for the 111th Congress.

…

The DC voucher pilot program, which is set to expire this year, has been a failure. Over its five year span, the pilot program has yielded no evidence of positive impact on student achievement.

…

Particularly following the last two election cycles, it would be unconscionable for Congress to extend the ill-conceived DC voucher program over the objections of NEA and the tens of thousands of NEA members who toiled long and hard to elect a pro-public education Congress.

But even Democrats, the NEA’s steadfast ally, couldn’t allow the NEA’s misstatements to go idly by. Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT) issued a letter back to the NEA, noting, an independent evaluation of the program, “found that the OSP [Opportunity Scholarship Program] had a statistically significant positive impact on reading test scores.” View Lieberman’s entire letter, as well as one to his Senate colleagues.

Seniority

The NEA (and the AFT) have long held the belief that years of service (seniority) is the most appropriate for of assessing the effectiveness of teachers.

Seniority is a “legitimate and widely accepted factor in making tough decisions such as layoffs in almost all professions, and it is a crucial factor that should be considered in teaching,” Segun Eubanks said in the Saginaw (Mich.) News in June 2009.

In Indiana, where the state teachers’ union has been reeling with debt and a health insurance affiliate scandal, the shoe was on the other foot when it came time for the union to fire a quarter of its Uniserv directors, due to budget cuts.

Being a union, the only logical way to make decisions was seniority. The Fort Wayne union is outraged, and personally insulting the new Uniserv director, because its Uniserv director was let go.

From WANE TV: "Her past experience with [Indianapolis Public Schools] for nine months we questioned is that really enough experience to come in and take over to do what Steve [Brace] did here," said [local union president Al] Jacquay.

See, the new Uniserv director, despite the old one’s non-ISTA experience, had about four more years of seniority over the fired Uniserv director, Steve Brace, according to an internal seniority list.

Fort Wayne union members are appalled at this concept, but apparently find it acceptable to judge teacher quality that way. What’s the old phrase…a “teachable moment?”

This is only the beginning. This page (and site) will continually evolve into the location to obtain information the NEA doesn’t want you to know.

The NEA United Staff Organization's [yes, the union staff has its own union] What to do if you're in trouble document.