Millions of American parents concerned about the skyrocketing costs and dismal educational results of government schools cannot count on the PTA as an advocate for their views -- or even as a forum for airing their views. Instead, national PTA policies, which are automatically adopted as state and local PTA policies, reflect the dominant influence of the teacher unions, especially the National Education Association (NEA). Consequently, the PTA vigorously opposes any market oriented reform measures opposed by the teacher unions, such as contracting out school management or educational vouchers for parents wishing to send their children to the school of their choice.
Part of PTA's ineffectiveness as a parent advocacy organization is illustrated by a 1968 position statement on "teacher negotiations, sanctions, and strikes." The resolution, reaffirmed in 1987, identifies the "dilemmas" that teacher militancy and union negotiations imposes on local PTA members:
"1. If the PTA provides volunteers to man the classrooms, during a work stoppage, in the interest of protecting the immediate safety and welfare of children, it is branded as a strike breaker."
"2. If the PTA does not take sides in issue[s] being negotiated, it is accused of not being interested."
"3. If it supports the positions of the board of education, which is the representative of the public in negotiations, the teacher members of the PTA have threatened to withdraw membership and boycott the local PTA activities."
What are PTA members permitted to do? The resolution urges them to be alert to symptoms of teacher dissatisfaction (abnormal turnover, complaints, and "teacher-supported legislation defeated by state legislature") before a strike's onset and to promote the public airing of issues.
In attempting to be "neutral," on labor and education policy matters that should be of utmost concern to parents, the PTA position clearly defers to the unions. As a result, PTA places itself outside the arena of debate on education issues regardless of their impact on students, parents or the public. Clearly, as the PTA's position statement recognizes, a significant threat to the PTA is the teachers' threat to withdraw membership. Obviously, if such a threat were carried out, it would jeopardize the 60 national PTA staff positions in Chicago and Washington.
That teachers might have the upper hand in the PTA was not apparent at first. PTA membership, at one million in 1927, began to rise after the Depression and nearly doubled in the five years after the end of World War II. Membership peaked in 1966 when more than 12 million teachers, administrators, and parents were members of the national PTA.
While the baby boom was contributing to the increase of parent members in the PTA, teachers were discovering other ways to secure their interests. Many teachers looked to unions and collective bargaining to achieve higher salaries, job security, and increased benefits, As early as 1935 the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) had called for collective rather than individual negotiations between teachers and school boards. Since 1961 NEA has also advocated collective bargaining, although many NEA members feared unionization would lower their professional status. Notwithstanding, NEA membership has increased in all but four years since a 1978 federal court held that the NEA is a union. Today, almost 70 percent of America's 3.5 million public school teachers are NEA or AFT members.
PTA activists and officials are often former teachers; state and local PTA presidents are frequently classroom or substitute teachers, many of whom have teacher union backgrounds. Unfortunately, the alleged absence of demographic data, such as union affiliation, age, and occupation, enables the national PTA to avoid facing the painful facts about who is leading, joining and leaving the organization today. It also prevents PTA from measuring the differing attitudes of the parents and teachers who comprise the PTA membership. Although coalitions among the PTA, NEA and AFT are common to shield public education from competition, the teacher union agendas, especially the NEA's have embraced positions on social issues, such as condom availability in the schools, which are anathema to many parents.
Ever since the 1960s, the NEA and AFT have lobbied vigorously for state legislation requiring school boards to bargain collectively with teacher unions over teacher terms and conditions of employment. Collective bargaining is used in most school districts to resolve such issues as teacher compensation for extra-curricular activities, class size, parent grievance procedures, and frequency and scheduling of parent/teacher conferences. Paradoxically, collective bargaining laws greatly strengthened the political power of the public sector unions while public accountability has decreased. As pointed out by Robert S. Summers, Cornell University Professor of Law, public sector collective bargaining "redistributes governmental authority to one major participant - the union - which is not publicly accountable at all for its actions. Under a bargaining statute, the voters of a school district, for example, do not elect a union, nor can they vote a union 'out of office' after it has successfully negotiated a collective bargaining agreement objectionable to the voters. This particular law-making and budget-creating entity is neither elected by nor accountable to the public."
By its refusal to challenge the teacher unions in collective bargaining, the PTA has eliminated itself as an independent advocate for parents. Despite a policy to "seek to participate in the decision making process establishing school policy," PTA cannot compete with the teacher unions as a power broker in educational affairs. The reality is that if school boards sacrifice parental to teacher interests, as often happens, the PTA cannot and will not object.
In addition to its refusal to challenge the union positions in collective bargaining and teacher strikes, the PTA opposes vouchers and tuition tax credits. In other words, instead of supporting parental choice in education, the PTA has capitulated to the NEA/AFT position to support public education at all costs. On May 5, delegates to the 1994 state convention of the California Congress of Parents, Teachers and Students -- also known as the California PTA -- broke into thunderous applause as a speaker congratulated them on defeating the school choice ballot initiative known as Proposition 174. "You were the voice of the California children!" she shouted. Over one million California "PTA volunteers defeated Proposition 174; all the California Teachers Association (CTA) did was put up the money." Indeed, the CTA spent over $13 million to defeat the measure. The California PTA had joined the teacher unions in opposing an initiative which would have greatly increased parent power in educational affairs.
PTA volunteers from all corners of California sponsored forums for their anti-voucher message, registered voters, manned telephones, wrote letters to newspapers, and finally, voted overwhelmingly against Proposition 174. At one workshop a PTA executive reminded delegates that "We will pull the PTA Charter if any unit goes beyond the PTA agenda - as we would have with any PTA that supported vouchers!"
Thirty-six days later, PTA delegates from 53 states and territories representing over 6 million parents and teachers met in Las Vegas for the 98th annual national convention. With slot machines clanking out quarters in the background, convention delegates participated in two days of workshop training: How to produce materials that generate positive public reaction to PTA. How PTAs can respond to extremist groups challenging health/sex education curriculum. How to implement PTA's, HIV/AIDS awareness programs. (A $320,000 grant from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention funded an AIDS brochure.) How to respond to right wing groups favoring school choice. A Washington, DC legal counsel offered a session to explain the advantages and restrictions on PTA's tax-exempt status as a nonprofit corporation.
Delegates sporting PTA badges, hats, and "PTA Puts Children First" vests considered a number of resolutions. They dealt with violence in video games, inhalant abuse, the quality of indoor air in portable classrooms, and the sale, resale, and destruction of confiscated firearms. These are substantially the kind of non-educational, social issues on which NEA and AFT delegates focus at their own national conventions.
Similarly, state PTA convention workshops reinforce the national PTA positions. Maryland PTA's Vice President for Legislative Activity was criticized by a PTA leader and grandfather from Baltimore for "her hostility in the workshop session" on
privatization. Several delegates angrily stomped out of the standing-room-only session when the chairwoman refused to permit a balanced discussion of audience views on this issue. The PTA officer opted instead to ridicule ideas which challenged the inflexibility of PTA's opposition to contracting out school management. What is the reason for PTA opposition? Unionized teachers could lose their jobs. Concern for educational accountability, standards and improvement, and student achievement were missing in the Maryland convention devoted to "PTA Facing Children's Issues."
Opposing voucher legislation is the No. 1 priority of the New Jersey PTA. New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman has introduced an extremely limited charter school and tuition voucher pilot program for two grades in the Jersey City schools. The voucher program would not be available to new schools, which means that it would be several decades before it could have a significant impact on public education. Nevertheless, as a result of this frightening "threat" to public education, New Jersey PTA delegates voted to "Take an active role in opposing private school vouchers and other legislation which would provide public funds for private schools." Not surprisingly, the PTA and the New Jersey Education Association, the NEA affiliate, are part of a coalition to defeat this or any other voucher proposals. NJEA president Dennis Testa said that the teacher union "has committed $10 million for a two year media and public relations campaign to promote Pride in Public Education."
Nationally, the liberal left leanings of the PTA were echoed by Senator Edward Kennedy in a recent letter to Education Week. The Democratic Senator praised the National PTA and its affiliate state and local organizations for "generating and reinforcing support for Goals 2000...and the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act." His letter went on to say, "The PTA played an important role in supporting the nomination of Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders." Dr. Elders' was fired in December by President Clinton after she said masturbation "perhaps should be taught." She has a lengthy reputation for her support for sex education, condom distribution, and abortion rights. To urge confirmation of Dr. Elders, PTA officers and lobbyists, as well as members wrote letters of support, phoned members of congress, and promoted Dr. Elders because "PTA shares her views."
While PTA leaders share Dr. Elders' views, many PTA parents do not and they are finding it increasingly difficult to articulate their preferences, defend their needs, and lodge their complaints. Given the way these organizations are governed at the present time, it is virtually impossible to develop independent pro-parent positions on educational choice, contracting out, parent/teacher conference availability, report cards, testing, tenure and other proposals in which parental issues may conflict with teacher union interests. To do so would require that parents challenge teachers at meetings where both are present.
Because they are subservient to teacher union interests, the PTAs cannot provide parents with a useful role in educational policymaking. PTA programs are designed to diminish dissatisfaction with poor school performance. Instead of conducting hearings to expose academic deficiencies, PTAs sponsor events presenting students' best work. Much time and effort goes into women's auxiliary or support services: trip chaperoning, bake sales, and other fund raising activities. Good PTA parents are supposed to be supporters, not critics of schools and teachers. After almost 100 years of existence, the PTA cannot offer even the pretense that it affects basic educational decisions.
What might be done to make the PTA a better representative for parents?
* Leadership at the local level still can make a difference. In Greenwich, Connecticut, local PTA president Kay Wall questioned state implementation of a misnamed "outcome-based education" (OBE) program in June 1992. Without the support of the PTA, she organized a protest group, the Committee to Save Our Schools (SOS), which contributed to the collapse of Connecticut's plan. And within her local PTA chapter, Ms. Wall has organized and chairs an Academic Challenge and Excellence Committee (ACE) that focuses on restoring high academic standards for all children. She concedes that some members hesitate to challenge in any way the "PTA Position." But Ms. Wall warns that Goals 2000, the new federal legislation that PTA strongly supported must be carefully studied.
* Another step would be to revise PTA membership policy. Including unionized teachers employed under collective bargaining procedures within the PTA makes it futile for parents to attempt criticisms of education policy. The NEA's own experience is instructive here. Before the enactment of collective bargaining laws, the NEA included administrators as well as teachers at the local, state, and national levels. The result was that local NEA associations almost invariably were unable to promote teacher interests. Actions or policies critical of school administrators were seldom discussed. Likewise, parents need their own organization. If the PTA is unable to effectively represent parents, new parents' organizations should be established.
* Ongoing education reform is introducing new ways for parents to become involved in schools. For instance, charter and magnet schools within public school systems often make provisions for parental involvement. Citizen (i.e. parent) participation is meant to increase the input of those who are not employees in the schools. The good news is that parents concerned about education want to do more than attend monthly PTA meetings. They are forming groups and creating procedures that will empower them as consumers of government services and they are demanding a response from government monopolies.
The bad news is that as the struggle intensifies, the teacher unions will do their utmost to preserve the PTA as their subservient ally.
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