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Posted on 08/30/2010 9:51:08 AM PDT by fromscratchmom
We’re All Right-Wing Bastards Now —that is, if the NEA’s logic is to be believed.
On the final day of the National Education Association’s convention last summer, its outgoing general counsel, Bob Chanin, gave a speech for the ages. After sharing fond recollections of his 41 years as the NEA’s top lawyer, he switched gears and started lobbing grenades at “conservative and right-wing bastards,” including Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and Forbes. The NEA and its affiliates, by contrast, were “the nation’s leading advocates for public education and the type of liberal social and economic agenda that these groups find objectionable.” Chanin’s glowing portrait of the NEA was wildly wrong, of course, but so was his characterization of the union’s opponents. People of all political stripes—not just right-wing “bastards”—are starting to realize that the single biggest impediment to education reform is the NEA itself.
Take the nation’s 4,000 charter schools—public schools that operate with less red tape, fewer suffocating union rules, and a higher percentage of minorities and poor students than regular public schools do. In California, 12 of the top 15 public schools are charters, including three in Oakland that cater to exceptionally poor children. Los Angeles charters’ median score on California’s Academic Performance Index was 728 in 2008, compared with 663 for regular public schools.
Who are the “right-wing bastards” who support charter schools? Well, there’s Los Angeles’s liberal-leaning school board, which looked at its large number of failing schools and voted 6–1 to turn 200 of the lowest performers into charters. There’s Steve Barr, a card-carrying Democrat who served in the presidential campaigns of Bill Clinton and Michael Dukakis and who now operates 17 successful Green Dot charter schools in L.A. And don’t forget Democrats for Education Reform, a political action committee that supports charters and that says, in its statement of principles, that American public schools, “once viewed romantically as avenues of opportunity for all, have become captive to powerful, entrenched interests that too often put the demands of adults before the educational needs of children.”
“Entrenched interests” is a thinly veiled reference, of course, to teachers’ unions like the NEA, whose position on charter schools is very clear. According to a resolution adopted at last year’s convention, “NEA shall oppose any initiative to greatly expand the growth of charter schools”—though “by no means should this effort conflict with the ongoing and necessary work of organizing charter school teachers.” Unfortunately, this “necessary” work hasn’t helped students. A study of charter schools in Boston by Harvard economist Tom Kane found that “students accepted by lottery at independently operated charter schools significantly outperformed students who lost the lottery and returned to district schools. But students accepted by lottery at charters run by the school district with unionized teachers experienced no benefit.”
The NEA fights school vouchers even more fiercely than it opposes charters. In Washington, D.C., where public schools are a national embarrassment—tops in spending, last in achievement—the union set its sights on the Opportunity Scholarship Program. This tiny but successful voucher program gave 1,700 financially strapped parents, mostly poor African-Americans, the opportunity to free their children from horrendous public schools, getting a few thousand of their tax dollars back to help pay the tuition at private schools of their choosing. A number of the 1,700 lucky lottery winners were able to attend Sidwell Friends, the same school that President Obama’s daughters attend.
Here’s what NEA president Dennis Van Roekel wrote to Democratic congressmen last March:
The National Education Association strongly opposes any extension of the District of Columbia private school voucher . . . 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.
Vouchers are not real education reform. . . . Opposition to vouchers is a top priority for NEA.
Three months later, Congress dutifully voted to kill the program. Who are the “right-wing bastards” here? The black parents and children who benefited from the voucher program?
Just two days before Chanin’s speech, the Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights released a report, National Teachers’ Unions and the Struggle over School Reform, maintaining that the teachers’ unions consistently blocked meaningful education reform and accusing the NEA of trying to end enforcement of the No Child Left Behind act. The unions “almost uniformly call for the spending of more money and the creation of more teaching positions which, of course, result in an increase in union membership, union income and union power,” wrote one of the authors, David Kilpatrick. Perhaps the report’s authors are the “right-wing bastards” Chanin was talking about? The problem is that Kilpatrick spent 12 years as a top union officer, while the study’s other authors include former senators Bill Bradley and Birch Bayh, D.C. congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, and civil rights leader Roger Wilkins—all liberals.
That Democratic leaders and poor African-Americans in Washington have found common cause with the Wall Street Journal and Fox News shows that school reform is neither a liberal nor a conservative issue. While Chanin champions the power of an entrenched union and belittles those who oppose it, people of goodwill across the political spectrum fight back for real education reform.
Larry Sand is the president of the California Teachers Empowerment Network.
I've gotten a chance to read through many of the resolutions that the NEA passed at their convention in New Orleans and need to find something with all of them.
It is amazing how boldly they declare themselves to be the enemies of freedom, of the economy, and of God. Even as a person who had seen so much corruption and evil within the public schools as a student and later as a parent of a young child with learning challenges, I never knew that the problems were emanating from such a well organized power source that was so fully devoted to spreading and furthering all manner of evil. Now I feel far more extreme in my opposition to public schooling. All parents should flatly refuse to allow their children to ever be taught by any member of this corrupt union. And I am thankful to have had this opportunity to see and recognize it for what it is.
My favorite is C-15, where they encourage their members to work against extremist groups and they define extremist groups as any group(s) that oppose them or any of their resolutions.
One might easily decide that the NEA is the most dangerous extremist group in the country.
Oh and here is a listing of the resolutions that I already had access to:
Some NEA Resolutions Passed at the 2010 Convention in New Orleans
A-14. Financial Support of Public Education. The Association believes that:
* Funds must be provided for programs to alleviate race, gender,
and sexual orientation discrimination and to eliminate portrayal of
race, gender, sexual orientation and gender identification stereotypes
in the public schools.
* Full-day, every day kindergarten programs should be fully funded.
* Federal, state, and, as appropriate, local governments should
provide funds sufficient to make pre-kindergarten available for all
three- and four-year-old children.
A-25. Voucher Plans and Tuition Tax Credits. The Association opposes
voucher plans, tuition tax credits, or other such funding arrangements
that pay for students to attend sectarian schools. The Association also
believes that any private school or agency that receives public funding
through voucher plans, tax credits, or other funding/financial
arrangements must be subject to all accountability measures and
regulations required of public schools.
A-34. Federally or State-Mandated Choice/Parental Option Plans. The
Association believes that federally or state-mandated parental option or
choice plans compromise free, equitable, universal, and quality public
education for every student. Therefore, the Association opposes such
federally or state-mandated choice or parental option plans.
B-1. Early Childhood Education. The National Education Association
supports early childhood education programs in the public schools for
children from birth through age eight. The Association also supports a
high-quality program of transition from home and/or preschool to the
public kindergarten or first grade. The Association also believes that
early childhood education programs should include a full continuum of
services for parents/guardians and children, including child-care, child
development, developmentally appropriate and diversity-based curricula,
special education, and appropriate bias-free screening devices. The
Association believes that federal legislation should be enacted to
assist in organizing the implementation of fully funded early childhood
education programs offered through the public schools. These programs
must be available to all children on an equal basis and should include
mandatory kindergarten with compulsory attendance.
B-12. Diversity. The National Education Association believes that
similarities and differences among race, ethnicity, color, national
origin, language, geographic location, religion, gender, sexual
orientation, gender identification, age, physical ability, size,
occupation, and marital, parental, or economic status form the fabric of
a society. The Association also believes that education should foster
the values of appreciation and acceptance of the various qualities that
pertain to people as individuals and as members of diverse populations.
B-13. Racial Diversity Within Student Populations. The Association
believes that to achieve or maintain racial diversity, it may be
necessary for elementary/secondary schools, colleges, and universities
to take race into account in making decisions as to student admissions,
assignments, and/or transfers.
B-14. Racism, Sexism, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identification
Discrimination. Discrimination and stereotyping based on such factors as
race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identification, disability,
ethnicity, immigration status, occupation, and religion must be
eliminated. The Association also believes that these factors should not
affect the legal rights and obligations of the partners in a legally
recognized domestic partnership, civil union, or marriage in regard to
matters involving the other partner, such as medical decisions, taxes,
inheritance, adoption, and immigration.
B-24. Education of Refugee and Undocumented Children and Children of
Undocumented Immigrants. The Association supports access for
undocumented students to financial aid and in-state tuition to state
colleges and universities. The Association further believes that
students who have resided in the United States for at least five years
at the time of high school graduation should be granted legal residency
status, and allowed to apply for U.S. citizenship.
B-30. Educational Programs for English Language Learners. The
Association believes that ELL students should be placed in bilingual
education programs to receive instruction in their native language from
qualified teachers until such time as English proficiency is achieved.
B-39. Multicultural Education. The National Education Association
believes that multiculturalism is the process of valuing differences and
incorporating the values identified into behavior for the goal of
achieving the common good. Multicultural education should promote the
recognition of individual and group differences and similarities in
order to reduce racism, homophobia, ethnic and all other forms of
prejudice, and discrimination and to develop self-esteem as well as
respect for others.
B-40. Global Education. The National Education Association believes that
global education imparts an appreciation of our interdependency in
sharing the world’s resources to meet mutual human needs.
B-48. Family Life Education. The Association believes that programs
should be established for both students and parents/guardians and
supported at all educational levels to promote -
* The development of self-esteem
* An understanding of societal issues and problems related to
children, spouses, parents/guardians, domestic partners, older
generation family members, and other family members.
The Association also believes that education in these areas must be
presented as part of an antibiased, culturally sensitive program.
B-49. Environmental Education. The Association supports educational
programs that promote -
* An awareness of the effects of past, present, and future
population growth patterns on world civilization, human survival, and
the environment
* Solutions to environmental problems such as nonrenewable resource
depletion, pollution, global warming, ozone depletion, and acid
precipitation and deposition
* The recognition of and participation in such activities as Earth Day.
B-51. Sex Education. The Association recognizes that the public school
must assume an increasingly important role in providing the instruction.
Teachers and health professionals must be qualified to teach in this
area and must be legally protected from censorship and lawsuits. The
Association also believes that to facilitate the realization of human
potential, it is the right of every individual to live in an environment
of freely available information and knowledge about sexuality and
encourages affiliates and members to support appropriately established
sex education programs. Such programs should include information on
sexual abstinence, birth control, family planning, diversity of culture
and diversity of sexual orientation and gender identification, sexually
transmitted diseases, incest, sexual abuse, sexual harassment, and
homophobia.
B-60. Education on Peace and International Understanding. The National
Education Association believes that educational strategies for teaching
peace and justice issues should include the role of individuals, social
movements, international and nongovernmental organizations. The
Association also believes that educational materials should include
activities dealing with the effects of nuclear weaponry and other
weapons of mass destruction, strategies for disarmament, and methods to
achieve peace. Such curricular materials should also cover major
contributing factors to conflict, such as economic disparity,
demographic variables, unequal political power and resource
distribution, and the indebtedness of the developing world.
B-82. Home Schooling. The National Education Association believes that
home schooling programs based on parental choice cannot provide the
student with a comprehensive education experience. When home schooling
occurs, students enrolled must meet all state curricular requirements,
including the taking and passing of assessments to ensure adequate
academic progress. Home schooling should be limited to the children of
the immediate family, with all expenses being borne by the
parents/guardians. Instruction should be by persons who are licensed by
the appropriate state education licensure agency, and a curriculum
approved by the state department of education should be used.
The Association also believes that home-schooled students should not
participate in any extracurricular activities in the public schools.
C-15. Extremist Groups. The National Education Association condemns the
philosophy and practices of extremist groups and urges active opposition
to all such movements that are inimical to the ideals of the Association.
C-24. Comprehensive School Health, Social, and Psychological Programs
and Services. The National Education Association believes that every
child should have direct and confidential access to comprehensive
health, social, and psychological programs and services. The Association
believes that schools should provide —
* A planned, sequential health education curriculum for pre-K
through adult education that integrates various health topics (such as
drug abuse, the dangers of performance-enhancing dietary herbal
supplements, violence, safety issues, universal precautions, and HIV
education)
* Counseling programs that provide developmental guidance and
broad-based interventions and referrals
* Comprehensive school-based, community-funded student health care
clinics that provide basic physical and mental health, and health care
services (which may include diagnosis and treatment)
* If deemed appropriate by local choice, family-planning counseling
and access to birth control methods with instruction in their use.
C-25. School Guidance and Counseling Programs. The National Education
Association believes that guidance and counseling programs should be
integrated into the entire education system, pre-K through higher education.
C-30. Student Sexual Orientation and Gender Identification. The National
Education Association believes that all persons, regardless of sexual
orientation or gender identification, should be afforded equal
opportunity and guaranteed a safe and inclusive environment within the
public education system. The Association also believes that, for
students who are struggling with their sexual orientation or gender
identification, every school district and educational institution should
provide counseling services and programs that deal with high suicide and
dropout rates and the high incidence of teen prostitution.
C-31. Suicide Prevention Programs. The National Education Association
believes that suicide prevention programs including prevention,
intervention, and postvention must be developed and implemented. The
Association urges its affiliates to ensure that these programs are an
integral part of the school program.
E-3. Selection and Challenges of Materials and Teaching Techniques. The
Association deplores prepublishing censorship, book-burning crusades,
and attempts to ban books from school library media centers and school
curricula.
F-2. Pay Equity/Comparable Worth. The “market value” means of
establishing pay cannot be the final determinant of pay scales since it
too frequently reflects the race and sex bias in our society.
H-1. The Education Employee as a Citizen. The Association urges its
members to become politically involved and to support the political
action committees of the Association and its affiliates.
H-7. National Health Care Policy. The National Education Association
believes that affordable, comprehensive health care, including
prescription drug coverage, is the right of every resident. The
Association supports the adoption of a single-payer health care plan for
all residents of the United States, its territories, and the
Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.
H-11. Statehood for the District of Columbia. The Association supports
efforts to achieve statehood for the District of Columbia.
I-1. Peace and International Relations. The Association urges all
nations to develop treaties and disarmament agreements that reduce the
possibility of war. The Association also believes that such treaties and
agreements should prevent the placement of weapons in outer space. The
Association believes that the United Nations furthers world peace and
promotes the rights of all people by preventing war, racism, and genocide.
I-2. International Court of Justice. The Association urges participation
by the United States in deliberations before the court.
I-3. International Criminal Court. The Association believes that the
United States should ratify the Rome Statute of the International
Criminal Court and recognize and support its authority and jurisdiction.
I-9. Global Climate Change. The Association believes that humans must
take steps to change activities that contribute to global climate change.
I-12. Human Rights. The National Education Association believes that the
governments of all nations must respect and protect equal access to
education as embodied in the United Nations Universal Declaration of
Human Rights.
I-17. Family Planning. The National Education Association supports
family planning, including the right to reproductive freedom. The
Association also urges the implementation of community-operated,
school-based family planning clinics that will provide intensive
counseling by trained personnel.
I-22. Immigration. The Association opposes any immigration policy that
denies educational opportunities to immigrants and their children
regardless of their immigration status.
I-33. Freedom of Religion. The Association opposes any federal
legislation or mandate that would require school districts to schedule a
moment of silence.
I-34. Gun-free Schools and the Regulation of Deadly Weapons. The
Association believes that strict prescriptive regulations are necessary
for the manufacture, importation, distribution, sale and resale of
handguns and ammunition magazines. A mandatory background check and a
mandatory waiting period should occur prior to the sale of all firearms.
I-47. Elimination of Discrimination. The National Education Association
is committed to the elimination of discrimination based on race, gender,
ethnicity, economic status, religion, disability, sexual orientation,
gender identification, age, and all other forms of discrimination. The
Association encourages its members and all other members of the
educational community to engage in courageous conversations in order to
examine assumptions, prejudices, discriminatory practices, and their
effects.
I-58. Linguistic Diversity. The Association believes that efforts to
legislate English as the official language disregard cultural pluralism;
deprive those in need of education, social services, and employment; and
must be challenged.
I-61. Equal Opportunity for Women. The Association supports an amendment
to the U.S. Constitution (such as the Equal Rights Amendment). The
Association urges its affiliates to support ratification of such an
amendment. The Association also supports the enactment and full funding
of the Women’s Educational Equity Act. The Association endorses the use
of nonsexist language.
The above text is excerpted from NEA resolutions adopted at the 2010 NEA
Convention. Much language has been omitted, but no words have been
changed, added, or put out of order.
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The use of the word “bastard” by the left is most curious. A bastard, at least by the dictionary, is the child of a single mother. The left scolds us to “not perpetuate stereotypes”, but the public knows that bastards are, well, bastards for the very reason that when children grow up without an intact family and strong father, they are far more likely to get into trouble with the law.
Of all the social forces working against building and sustaining intact families, the NEA officially advocates sexual education that is free of moral absolutes. Further, it advocates socialism to such an extent that it recently put Saul Alinsky’s book, Rules for Radicals on its list of recommended reading. These are all part and parcel of policies and attitudes that tend to fracture families, and to increase the number of children who are conceived outside of stable marriages.
In short, the very people who complain about Conservative “bastards”, are themselves at the center of forces who are creating more real bastards, many of whom end up in prison after having been convicted of committing violent crimes against the rest of us.
They should know the term well - by every definition of the word, 0bama is a bastard, and that's the name he goes by in my house.
The author is upset that a union lawyer is being dishonest?
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