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Editor's note: In this issue Charlene Haar, a former teacher and life member of the National Education Association, reports on the NEA 's recent conclave in Atlanta. Haar examines NEA President Bob Chase 's reform agenda, which sounds refreshing but may be more show than substance. She also highlights the union's political activities, its obeisance to the diversity crowd, and its connections to leftist nonprofits, observing how NEA financial support for ideological interest groups like People for the American Way furthers its anti-school choice agenda. |
On August 31, Bob Chase completes the first year of his three-year term as president of the 2.3 million member National Education Association. Chase, who campaigned for the NEA presidency on an agenda which called for aggressively embracing school reform, says he wants to change the NEA's increasingly negative image, specifically the widely-held perception that the union is an ideological special interest group more concerned with teacher salaries than the education of children. However, if the group's July 1-6 annual convention in Atlanta is any indication, the nation's largest teachers' union has a long was to go.
As in the past, the NEA Representative Assembly provided a six-day window on the NEA in action. The 1997 NEA convention also provided an opportunity to assess Chase's leadership during the past year in realizing his campaign promises and his concept of "new unionism."
NEA's school renewal agenda
As president, Bob Chase is comfortably in charge. He talks a lot about school reform and insists that the NEA has an obligation to help fix a failing government school system. His rhetoric departs from the defensive combative tone of his predecessors. Unlike them, he leaves the impression that his organization is actually concerned about students and education.
Chase's attempts to improve the NEA's bad boy image can be traced to a study conducted by a Washington public relations firm. It is widely known that the Kamber Group, a consulting firm with close ties to the Democratic party, undertook a study of the NEA which concluded that the teacher union is perceived as an obstacle to education reform. To overcome this impression the PR firm suggested that "...the NEA should adopt, or call for [substantive measures] to improve public schools (for example, standards for teachers, standards for students, Association accountability for teaching quality)."
To this end, Chase has been making positive statements about the NEA's responsibilities. And he has put forward a number of proposals under the twin banners of reform and professionalization--most notably calling for some form of teacher evaluation by peer review to help weed out incompetent teachers.
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The NEA is accustomed to getting what it wants, which is not surprising given its vast resources: The 1997-98 NEA annual operating budget is $209,698,886, including external recoveries. As a tax-exempt organization, the NEA pays no income tax. And even though it occupies a building valued at almost $79 million, it pays no property tax either. Ask your Congressman why. In addition, the NEA 's affiliated foundation, the National Foundation for improvement in Education (NFIE), has a $16 million endowment and is also tax-exempt. |
In his keynote address to the 9,300 convention delegates, Chase recommended peer assistance and review as steps toward professionalization. He argued that by exercising collective responsibility for high standards of entry and professional practice, including teacher evaluation and review, teachers will move toward the professional status whose hallmark is self-regulation.
He reiterated that the NEA should no longer assert that poor teachers are not a union responsibility. "The quality of education is our responsibility," he emphasized. Specifically, he asked each union member the following questions and provided the new-union answer: "Are you --
Sounds good. But union watchers know the chasm between what the NEA says and what it has done in the past is very broad, and questions remain. Is the new-found emphasis on reform genuine or just window dressing? Does Chase have the clout to make the necessary changes? And will the powerful NEA bureaucracy go along? Just as teachers often control the success or failure of reform efforts at the school level, some of NEA's influential staff bureaucrats clearly have not accepted the new course Chase envisions. First-time delegates and younger teachers cut him some slack. But there were signs at the Atlanta gathering that staunch unionists and staff include many Chase critics.
One thing remains clear. Despite the reform rhetoric, the NEA remains unalterably opposed to anything that will increase parental choice. At its massive Washington, D.C. headquarters, NEA has over 40 staffers in its government relations department who drive this message home, and their booth at the convention distributed packets decrying "The Radical Right." The lobbyists provided members with talking points featuring capsule arguments against voucher plans and school privatization proposals. Delegates also were urged by the NEA to mail pre-printed postcards back to People for the American Way, which would then forward them to elected officials. And the NEA also provided cards to be returned to members of Congress opposing a federal voucher plan for the District of Columbia.
A New NEA?
What is Bob Chase' s agenda? At the heart of its lobbying program, the NEA' s Quality Public Schools Agenda promotes a five-point program. Four of these points largely repackage what the NEA and the liberal education establishment have always said: America' s school problems are the result of inadequate funding for education. This deficit must be remedied by concerted national action, i.e. increased federal spending. During the convention about 4,000 delegates assisted their professional lobbyists by forwarding computer-driven letters of support to members of Congress and state officials. In typical NEA fashion, the barrage of letters request federal funding for each of these points in the Quality Public Schools Agenda.
First comes "Safety and order in every school." Based on survey data, the NEA, like the American Federation of Teachers, has found that violent assaults on teachers and students are a major concern of parents, students, and teachers. Because of this rather unsurprising discovery, the NEA has targeted school safety as a top priority. Predictably, union solutions include additional federal grants and school staff dedicated to security. In addition, however, the NEA has turned the issue of safety into a vehicle for greater "diversity." The NEA's influential gay and lesbian caucus has co-opted the safety issue into a program to combat violence against gay and lesbian students.
Celebrating its tenth anniversary within the NEA, the Gay and Lesbian Educators Caucus sponsored a screening of "It's Elementary," a video recommended by the NEA's Health Information Network and the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Teachers' Network (GLSTN). NEA Today endorsed the video. "It's Elementary" shows how teachers from kindergarten through junior high school can engage students in discussions about homosexuality. Not surprisingly, the message is that homosexuality should be celebrated and that homophobia is an evil which must be overcome in its earliest stages.
Recognized as a "leading force within the NEA," the Gay and Lesbian Educators Caucus continues to influence NEA policy on a wide variety of issues. Through the years, the NEA Gay and Lesbian Educators Caucus has worked "with the NEA leadership and staff to ensure that the diversity of sexual orientation has been included in all aspects of the Association, including policy documents, training, workshop offers, writing, and speeches of leaders." Over 2,000 delegates attended the NEA's annual Human and Civil Rights dinner at which a Utah high school student received an award for "coming out" and establishing a lesbian/gay/straight club in her high school.
Item number two: "Every child ready to learn." What this means: universal health care for children and pregnant women, expansion of Head Start, increased funds for the Special Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC).
Item number three: Every school building in good condition. What this requires: The NEA encourages support of President Clinton' s proposal for "...a $5 billion incentive plan designed to leverage $20 billion in new resources to upgrade our schools." Despite concerns of many local education officials and taxpayers on political and constitutional issues of authority, the NEA is fighting hard to get federal government money for public school infrastructure. Obviously, if this need can be met by funding from outside the school budget, money is freed for increased teacher salaries and benefits. And teacher unions would benefit too. Some teachers now pay national) union dues. As teacher salaries go up, so do union dues.
Item number four: Every student's, classroom connected to new technologies. This has become a major cause celebre for technophiles. Kids can't spell, multiply or divide on their own, but let' s get them computers. NEA calls for increased federal investments and resources for every public school and college classroom. Sensitive to criticisms that technology is a tool many teachers aren't qualified to use effectively, "the NEA has entered into a partnership with U.S. West Foundation so that 4,000 teachers in the 14 states served by the company will receive training in the use of computers and on-line services. In turn, these teachers have committed to train 10 teachers each." Programs are also in place with the U.S. Department of Education and others to develop teaching materials for the Internet. NEA calls on the 105th Congress and the Administration to provide the cash.
Item number five: "A qualified teacher in every classroom." This is the cornerstone of Chase's vision of a new unionism, and it is a vehicle by which he hopes to reinvent the NEA. It is also the agenda item that is arousing suspicion and criticism among some staffers at NEA headquarters. Chase has been advocating "peer review" in speeches across the country. His claim is that the union and teachers ought not to protect their incompetent peers, but should exercise responsibility for improving their colleagues' performance or weed them out of the profession. Remarkably, the NEA expects Congress and the Administration to "Provide grants and other incentives for experienced teachers to mentor beginning teachers in the first and second years of teaching in the public schools." Apparently, the union will promote professionalism, but expects taxpayers to pay for it.
Peer review is the most controversial aspect of the Chase agenda. For months Bob Chase had been selling the five-point Quality Public Schools Agenda to the Congress, the media, the public, and NEA members. But not everyone is buying. Indeed, it is odd that guest observers from the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) seemed much more aware of the peer review issue than most of the delegates to the NEA Representative Assembly. The AFT is the nation's second largest teachers union, and many expect an eventual merger of it and the NEA. The AFT supports peer review, and several AFT affiliates, including those in Toledo, Rochester, and Cincinnati, already use peer review and assistance.
Peer review as envisioned by Chase was a hard-sell to delegates at the convention. And it was made harder because the NEA needed to repeal a prior statement of formal opposition to teachers serving as evaluators of other teachers. This proved to be a challenge to Chase and it served as a rallying point for opponents of his proposal.
The Battle on the Convention Floor
Prior to the convention, Bob Chase convinced the Chase-appointed internal editing committee and others on the NEA resolutions committee to support revocation of the present policy and to substitute a new resolution for approval. With that accomplished, the measure was scheduled for Saturday floor debate. Chase acknowledged that he had received slings and arrows from NEA members who worry about what he plans for the organization. To appease long-time NEA members who comprise a major source of his opposition, Chase acknowledged the union's successes over the previous 30 years in "improving the wages, benefits, and working conditions of public school employees" through hard-fought collective bargaining negotiations. But to appeal to newer and younger members, he pledged now to assist NEA members in developing their professional careers. Deftly addressing himself to all sides, he vowed to listen carefully to the debate.
Two days later the debate began. Very quickly amendments were introduced to strip the peer review resolution of some of its significant features. Opponents from California, New Jersey, Massachusetts and other delegations lined up at the microphones. To cheers from their supporters, they affirmed their opposition to NEA's participation in any program designed to dismiss incompetent teachers. But Chase also brought his supporters to the microphones as delegates from Virginia, Kansas, Ohio, Maryland and elsewhere endorsed the new vision of accountability and professionalism. Chase prevailed in the final vote --albeit far less authoritatively than he originally proposed. By a significant majority, NEA official policy was changed to allow NEA local affiliates to approve proposals to explore peer review and mentoring programs.
Parents whose children have passed through failing government schools may wonder why the teacher union has taken decades to recognize its own role in these failings. Understandably, many will remain skeptical that the union rhetoric will translate into positive action.
Regardless of the merits or demerits of Chase's proposals, and it has major critics among conservatives as well as within the NEA, implementation of the agenda rests largely on the NEA bureaucracy at the local, state, and national levels. These highly paid staff members were in place before Chase took office, and they will be there after he completes his term in two years. (He is eligible to run for a second three-year term.) Early indications are that the Chase agenda will meet resistance on most fronts.
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Financial Links: the NEA and Leftist Advocacy Groups While it supports a handful of Republican teachers, the NEA contributes over $I million annually to more than 50 other organizations it deems useful to its agenda. To date the NEA has not been forthcoming with a complete listing of organizations that receive its financial support. But this much is known: In NEA Contributions to People for the American Way crisis and alarm over the activities of religious conservatives, and its brochures and pamphlets focus heavily on the role of the Christian Coalition in politics Paradoxically, PAW seeks to portray Christians as a small fringe group unrepresentative of the people--yet on the verge of taking control over the past, groups like the American Association of University Women, the National Organization for Women, and the NAACP have received NEA money or other forms of support. In its next fiscal year, the NEA will give $2,000 to the American Civil Liberties Union. More importantly, NEA intends to provide $80,000 to the far left People for the American Way. Between fiscal year 1991-92 and fiscal year 1995-96, People for the American Way received $425,000 in NEA money.
NEA's $80,000 grant to People of American Way is intended to help it fight "radicalism" in society. Of course, one would be hard pressed to find many groups more radical than People for the American Way (PAW) or the ACLU. PAW's only purpose is to battle what it sees as the ominous right wing in American politics. In particular, it tries to create a sense of crisis and alarm over the activities of religious conservatives, and its brochures and pamphlets focus heavily on the role of the Christian Coalition in politics. Paradoxically, PAW seeks to portray Christians as a small fringe group unrepresentative of the people -- yet on the verge of taking control over the nation's political system. Like the ACLU, People for the American Way is committed to protecting people from religion. Although the NEA leadership shares many of the policy prescriptions of these groups, its support is driven by more practical considerations. The ACLU and People for the American Way are two of the leading opponents of state school choice plans. Both groups are supporters of litigation efforts to stop reforms permitting parents to use vouchers to send their children to religious schools. Such proposals are anathema to the NEA, which prefers public school monopolies that subordinate parental decisionmaking to teachers and administrators. Look also for the NEA to seek ties with so-called "mainstream" religious organizations that oppose tax funding for faith-based schools. | ||||||||||||
The NEA and National Politics
The NEA excels in politics and no discussion of the NEA would be complete without addressing its political activities. Quite simply, NEA is arguably the most powerful constituency group in Bill Clinton's Democratic Party, and its influence cannot be overstated. (The attorneys in the American Trial Lawyers Association (ATLA) may object.) During the six-day convention, NEA delegates raised $731,243 for their political action committee, almost $7,000 more than the raised at the convention in 1996, an election year. These funds, along with another $6 million or so, will be used to elect Congressional candidates in 1998 who support NEA's agenda. In the 1994-96 election cycle, NEA-PAC supported Bill Clinton and 348 Democratic senate and congressional candidates. Even though about one-third of NEA members are Republicans, NEA-PAC supported only one Republican candidate for Congress in the last election cycle.
Still, the NEA continues to cultivate the fiction that it is bipartisan. This year, the NEA hired a Republican consultant named Ken Ruberg to improve relations with the Republican party and to encourage more Republicans to run for office with NEA-PAC support. Perhaps because it has taken a page or two from Bill Clinton's election handbook, NEA delegates to the Atlanta convention appeared to have some awareness that their union has become very closely identified with liberal social policy. After lively debate, convention delegates voted twice (New Business Items 5 and 20) to uphold a decision by the NEA-PAC board to eliminate two litmus test items from the NEA-PAC candidate questionnaire. To qualify for NEA-PAC support in 1998 congressional candidates will no longer have to agree to support "the addition of the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution." Nor will they be required to support "reproductive freedom without government intervention," i,e. abortion on demand. Those who supported dropping these demands persuaded delegates that the action was necessary because, in the words of one delegate, "...NEA keeps getting beat up by the radical right with these non-education issues included in the NEA-PAC candidate questionnaire." The NEA can easily took elsewhere for a candidate's position on these issues, but the new criteria may make it easier for NEA-PAC to support liberal Republicans and maintain its bipartisan cover.
One might expect Republican delegates to take advantage of NEA's purported bipartisanship by questioning NEA support for racial quotas, diversity curricula, and entitlement programs. This has not happened. NEA subsidizes a handful of Republican teachers who comprise the union's Republican Educators Caucus (REC), a major NEA public relations asset. The president of the Republican Educators' Caucus, Jonathan BinkIey of Ohio, did what he could to represent Republican positions in the caucus proceedings. However, he was outmaneuvered by Republican teachers who believe that REC's mission is "...to help the Association (NEA) through Republicans, not to help Republicans through the Association."
Teachers Seek Alternatives to the NEA
Not all teachers are members of a national union like the NEA or the AFT. Ironically, the NEA held its meeting in Georgia, a state where the Professional Association of Georgia Educators (PAGE) outnumbers the combined membership of the NEA and AFT affiliates. Tim Callahan, Director of Public Relations and Membership Services, said "PAGE has over 41,000 members now and we hope to increase that to 45,000 after our membership drive." Callahan acknowledged that PAGE's $99 annual membership dues appeal to many new teachers who find excessive the annual NEA dues of $300 plus. Moreover, PAGE supports charter schools and it happily enrolls private as well as public school teachers in its ranks. PAGE offers an alternative for teachers unwilling to embrace the rigid liberal orthodoxies of the NEA and the AFT.
NEA organizers, however, are determined to recruit new members. Ralph Nobel, Secretary-Treasurer of NEA's 32,000 member Georgia affiliate, announced his concern that "NEA is not committed to fighting the expansion of the independent organization in Georgia and other states." Nobel introduced a New Business Item at the convention to increase NEA' s $300,000 annual budget to oppose independent education associations. It passed.
But teacher opposition to coercive unionization is growing and is fueling dissent within the NEA ranks. The Association of Texas Professional Educators is 80,000 strong. Doug Rogers, ATPE's executive director characterizes his state's independent association as the teachers' battleship: he says the NEA and AFT are rowboats! Increased NEA funding is not likely to change the now-dominant status of independent professional associations in Georgia, Texas and Missouri. However, it may affect teacher memberships in the 18 other states that have independent teacher organizations which constitute an alternative to the NEA and/or AFT.
