OPPOSING REFORM

Performance pay. Charter schools. Tenure reform. Vouchers. The list of the issues the NEA opposes simply because these types of reforms could hurt the NEA financially or dilute its power goes on.

Performance pay

The concept is relatively simple and plays out every day in the private sector: pay for doing an effective job. But performance pay, and assessments based on individual performance run contrary to collective bargaining, the singular issue that makes the NEA relevant to its members.

When President Barack Obama held steadfast to the notion of pay for performance (without providing many details), the NEA issued a video saying he didn’t really mean it. Dennis Van Roekel attempted to explain what Obama really meant.

The NEA, like many other unions, doesn’t want to incentivize hard work and an above-and-beyond effort because it dilutes the power of collective bargaining. Kids interests be damned.

Charter schools

Charter schools are unique in that they have generally demonstrated the ability to outperform traditional, often union-organized, public schools. First championed by former American Federation of Teachers president Albert Shanker as incubators of reform, he later called them a "threat" as he saw they were resisting union representation.

Such is the attitude of the NEA. The NEA opposes the freedom of charter schools because they represent competition to traditional public schools. When union interference is not there, direct working relationships exist between administrators and teachers. By maintaining a monopoly on the education system, the NEA (and AFT) there is no incentive to improve performance or enact greater accountability.

Tenure reform

The concept of tenure originally began in higher education and allowed professors to form a curriculum free from “harassment” from administrators. It spread to K-12 education, where less individual-teacher freedom exists as many school boards or states have more control over what is taught.

Thus, tenure has come to protect those accused of non-education related offenses: sexual impropriety, drug crimes, etc.

Attempts to reform tenure have been met with stiff resistance from the union because tenure is one of the school unions’ sacred cows.

Vouchers/Tuition tax credits

The idea is simple: allow the tax dollars collected by the government to educate students to follow that student to the institution that best matches his or her needs. Traditional public school, charter school, private school, or whatever: the government will put the needs of students first.

But that is not acceptable to the NEA because it impinges on its monopoly on government funding for traditional public schools.

The NEA is so afraid of choice for parents, it took to distorting the record of the Washington, DC Opportunity Scholarship Program. The NEA saying there was no evidence showing success of the program prompted U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman (D-CT) to all the NEA out. See more on the Non-educational Agenda page.