Posted on 05/15/2006 7:19:15 AM PDT by Nextrush
Excerpts from the "NEA Today" monthly publication of the National Education Association for May 2006. Some of the articles are available online, others not:
1. Page 7 President's Viewpoint:
"Educators of the World, Unite!"
I see the face of a child. She has a beautiful, shy smile. She lives in a huge, sprawling shantytown in a developing country. She is dark-skinned. Her nationality doesn't matter. What matters is that she is a child with all the dazzling potential of a child.
She sleeps the sleep of a child, and when she awakens to a living nightmare of poverty, despair and ignorance. She has never spent a single day of her life in a school. Instead, every morning she accompanies her mother to a huge garbage dump, where they pick through mountains of debris, looking for something, anything, to sell..............The girl is illiterate, she's malnourished, and she knows nothing about HIV/AIDS, but soon she will become a young woman.
I think about this girl when I am doing Education International work,........
NEA'S membership in Education International (www.ei-ie.org) affords us, as educators, the opportunity to link arms with other caring educators around the world-more than 29 million of them, in fact-and to raise our voices on behalf of the children of the world and on behalf of our profession.
It is a fundamental human right for all to have a free, quality public education. Education International is dedicated to this ideal........
I was recently elected Vice-President of Education International, and it was a great honor. After all NEA is a founding member of Education International and NEA's Mary Hatwood Futrell is the founding president. Plus, the association is the largest affiliate among EI's membership of 348 national education unions in 166 countries.
Faced with the magnitude and the multitude of challenges around the world-war, famine, disease and oppression-there is an understandable tendency for people to feel overwhelmed and to withdraw into their private shells. But there is another option. It is for us to say to ourselves. I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can still do something........
Educators everwhere need to work together, because a great public school is a basic right for every child, whether that child lives in Idaho or Indonesia, Addis Ababa or Altoona.....
Your generosity of spirit and your committment to the cause of children and public education everywhere inspire me.
NEA President Reg Weaver
2. On Page 10: "Stay-At-Home-Kids":
" More than 1 million American students stayed home from school in 2003-that is, they were home-schooled, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. That's a 29 percent increase since 1999, but still just 2.2 percent of all students. The top two reasons? Home-schooling parents believe school is dangerous, they told surveyors, or they want to provide children with a religious education."
3. Page 16: "States Support NEA Lawsuit"
"Six states and the District of Columbia, the governor of Pennsylvania, school administrators, and a coalition of California elected officials and community activists have filed legal briefs in support of NEA's legal challenge to unfunded federal mandates in the No Child Left Behind law. The amicus brief filing by Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin says the states "respectfully disagreed" with a U.S. District Court judge who dismissed NEA's lawsuit in November. The association and the other plantiff's have since filed an appeal. The suit argues that NCLB is an unlawfully underfunded by more than $40 billion-in spite of wording in the law that makes clear its mandates will be fully paid by the federal government. About 80 percent of districts say they have costs associated with the law not covered by federal funding, according to a report released in March by the Center on Education Policy. For more information, visit www.nea.org/lawsuit."
4. Page 16: "Moving Beyond NCLB"
"The so-called No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law, which has introduced children all across America to the joys of bubble sheets, comes up for renewal in September 2007. That means Congress will begin considering changes to the law, possibly starting with hearings later this year. Final action may not occur until 2008 or even later, but NEA is mobilizing to play a major role.
'The problems with the law have become apparent in our classrooms and our communities across the country and to people across the political spectrum,' says NEA Executive Committee member Becky Pringle. "We're optimistic that Congress can be persuaded to make the major changes that are essential to keep this law from hurting the very children it was originally supposed to help.'
NEA President Reg Weaver appointed Pringle to head an advisory committee...The committee has held hearings around the country to gather information from members about how NCLB affects their schools and their students, and to enlist their professional expertise in crafting a positive agenda for changing the law.
Members have been telling them of the many ways in which NCLB is distorting the curriculum.....
'a custodian actually started crying while describing what's happening to some of his teacher-colleagues,' says Pringle. 'He said students are so upset that they're blaming their teachers for having to take all these tests, and deciding to punish the teachers by refusing to answer the questions.'.........
'One sixth-grade teacher said his school is spending so much time testing reading and math, they've been unable to focus on science and social studies as they used to do,' says Pringle......
Pringle adds that many teachers are saying their children are being set up to fail because NCLB ignores the problems caused by poverty and doesn't even require that students be tested in a language they can understand.......
Pringle says she believes of Congress are ready to listen, but only if they hear from their own constituents..........
'NEA's great strength is that we have members in every congressional district. But we can only harness that strength when our members collectively speak up and take action.'...............
That is so gay.
'He said students are so upset that they're blaming their teachers for having to take all these tests, and deciding to punish the teachers by refusing to answer the questions.'.........
I don't blame the kids. If they're not taught academics, how could they possibly pass an academics test?
I'm with the students 100%.
Yeah! There's tree hugging class, fisting class, abortion studies, race baiting 101, club queerdom, animal deity worship ,etc.
How can the liberal indoctrinators get to the really important stuff when useless junk like reading, writing and arithmetic keep getting in the way?
Congress has to do something to save the socialist revolution, and they have to do it now before the entire revolution falls apart.
Where's history? Oh yeah. Social studies is mandatory if the revolution is to be a success.
History has to be eliminated. Kids might learn from it. They'll figure out what "freedom" really means.
Oh! We can't have that in the liberal gooberment skrools now can we?
NCLB was designed to further extend the fed's control in education. I thought the repubs were about local control and smaller government in America.
NCLB will be swept out the door next election and we will be back to square one.
Eliminate the union. It supports the left and brings in left wing policies in return. The teachers obey, and the kids become the tools to make it happen.
When the teachers union wants a pay raise, they threaten to cut back on students fun stuff like gym, art, and recess if the parents do not obey and hand over the cash.
I'm not disagreeing with you, but what should scare you more.
Is federal control worse, or is the power of the National Education Association and its agenda worse?
I compared NEA to Al Capone and the KKK earlier and the feds went after them when local power didn't work.
I think that's the problem here, the liberal (NEA) agenda in education.
I believe in local control, but even the local elected school boards around here (PA) are filled with NEA and or liberal people. They (the school boards) aren't going to fix things and every time we elect a conservative school board in one district, they (Education Association) pour money in to take them out in the next election.
Its like some corrupt political machine the way liberals seize and maintain control of our local school boards in PA.
Send in the feds and get the gangsters out of education.
Most teachers belong to the NEA out of necessity for legal protection, not because they are communists. School boards & admin people today are all politicians that would rather file charges against a teacher than tell a parent for once that they are wrong.
Just a social reflection of our society in general.
Bull$hit. That may be the case in some instances, and it probably is, but a blanket statement like that is false.
How is NCLB hurting, dare I ask?
Good question. Do a search sometime in your locale on NCLB and 'highly qualified'. There are teachers here in NC whose students excel above the standards set by NCLB that are not 'highly qualified' according to NCLB. And it's not only in North Carolina.
The four-year-old No Child Left Behind law says teachers must have a bachelor's degree, a state license and proven competency in every subject they teach by this year. The first federal order of its kind applies to teachers of math, history and any other core class.
So for example. I know of a teacher that has taught Social Studies/History for over 40 years. But according to NCLB, science is the core course of study tied to Social Studies. This teacher has never taught science, does not plan on teaching science, and is never required to teach science. But because science is tied to social studies, this person is not 'highly qualified' according to the government. And yet, this teacher's students pass state exams with flying colors when it comes to history and social studies. And yes, I know of whole schools that are not 'highly qualified' because of this bureaucratic nonsense
Frankly, the Dept of Education, the Republican party, and any political hack, or their supporters, that defends this 'act' without knowing what it is doing to teachers can shove it.
That good enough for you?
I have to include parents for if there is one thing I agree with classroom teachers on, is that parents need to get involved and behind their children's education.
Why is home schooling successful? Because parents take personal responsibility for their children's education.
But it must be education without a liberal agenda. If parents want to challenge teachers for busting Bush in class or having a "Murder Assignment," I'm sorry, we need "charges" then.
You're repeating charges made by the National Education Association in their magazine article that I didn't include.
Are you promoting the NEA agenda, here?
There has been a gangster, liberal takeover of education in our country and federal intervention is justified until local communities have the courage and understanding to rise up and retake their schools from the liberals.
What bothers you more, the liberal politically correct agenda in education or the No Child Left Behind law? I pick the former.
Property taxes improve schools, in many areas of alaska prop taxes are non-existent and schools don't even have books. You only get what you pay for.
Local control without state oversight and accountability leads to massive corruption within school districts. It's great to live in a repub state but the down side is these same repubs refuse to expose the problems of local control; just keep the money flowing. Schools exist not to educate children but rather to provide endless money source for school boards, admin people, and their relatives to line their pockets.
Personally, I want politics out of education, the feds out of education, the local crooks out of education. A state dept of ed that is rigidly controlled by an unbiased board of (business types) no teachers, politicians, preachers, off the wall parents, ect to set goals and directions for the future.
You touched on one of the problems with our local school boards.
Many local school board members are people who teach in other school districts and are NEA members.
The boards don't represent parents-taxpayers who believe in fiscal responsibility and solid education but teachers-union members who think they may need more money, spending and political correctness to make education "better."
What irks me the most is that teacher-union school board members vote on teacher contracts that determine pay and benefits for fellow teacher-union members. What a conflict of interest?
And by the way, "staunch conservative" is liberal speak. Sounds like something the drive-by media would say.
I'm a real conservative. I don't push the liberal NEA agenda of your family members.
Property taxes drive people out of their homes, especially elderly people down here.
Its a hot issue with politicians trying to come up with new taxes to replace property taxes down here.
A scheme to take more out of our pockets so NEA members can have more pay, better health plans and fat pensions.
Where's all that oil money going up there?
Is it really that bad in education in Alaska or are you giving me some NEA propaganda?
"I see the face of a child. She has a beautiful, shy smile. She lives in a huge, sprawling shantytown in a developing country. She is dark-skinned. Her nationality doesn't matter. What matters is that she is a child with all the dazzling potential of a child. "
And the NEA is looking to squash that potential.
You think the feds are better ? They're in cahoots with the NEA as well.
No public school is the answer - private choice is.
Please - there are a very small number of parents who pull those stunts.
I am always amazed at the number of people who blame parents rather than the schools.
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