Posted on 11/20/2009 9:02:33 PM PST by neverdem
We’re All Right-Wing Bastards Now
—that is, if the NEA’s logic is to be believed.
20 November 2009
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 (API) 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 this 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 in 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, a classroom teacher in Los Angeles for more than 28 years, is the president of the California Teachers Empowerment Network.
Yeah the NEA’s done just a terrific job with all that money
Especially with the inner city schools.
That’s right, it’s Fox News’ fault.
Good Lord where do they find these idiots?
Just speaking as someone in the trenches of our public schools - the union which is supposed to represent me is a cancer on the body politic. Destroying the NEA would be a good first step toward making our schools work again.
A slight correction:
The type of liberal social and economic agenda that PEOPLE WHO CAN THINK find objectionable.
;-)
Seriously, I’d rather be considered a bastard than have to live with the biggest M’F’n MARXIST of all time who is now in control...
NEA members should face a 5% federal Surtax on their income. Lawyers should face a 10% tax on Their Billings and 5% on their Income!
They hate Sarah Palin, too.
And Gay lifestyle uber alles is the latest trendy thing...
[The NEA is] “the nation’s leading advocates for public education and the type of liberal social and economic agenda that these groups find objectionable.”
Even a liberal ought to ask why the NEA concerns itself with a "social and economic agenda" and doesn't stick to the task of representing teachers in the workplace, which is its charge.
The original and only true right wing bastards: 2ndBattalion, 4th Marines
“The Magnificent Bastards”
As a teacher, you need the NEA legal protection and you don't need blackballed by other teachers. They get us for a few gran in union dues but also send us NEA today every month; good for a few laughs towards the left. Too much politics with school boards and parents nowadays.
The NEA’s solution to public education’s problems is forever to throw more money at it(/them).
It is much better to be a right-wing conservative bas&ard than a left-wing, psychotic scu&bag.
IMHO
True not just with the NEA but with all unions. Unions give nearly all their money to Democrats so the more union members the more money to give, money taken from members paychecks. That is why Democrats favor bigger government as government workers are forced to be union members.
That is also why they want card check, to force even more people to put money into liberal coffers.
Others of the same ilk are the race hustlers like Jackson, Sharpton, ACORN, NAACP, and those flying under false colors like the ACLU, the National Council of Churches, etc.
They all claim to champion a cause and they make a lot of money from it, much of which they donate to the Democrats. Yet, the problems they claim to be solving never get solved but instead get worse. Why? No problem, no money.
Our enemies, the Left/Democrats, have always found a way to get honest, hard working Americans to fund their effort to destroy us. You rarely find them in regular free enterprise jobs but mostly in government or government sponsored NGAs.
As in most cases, follow the money.
What legal protection do you need? Protection from what? Black balled by whom, the liberal teachers?
Don't you realize the "few grand" you give them in dues is used primarily to fund those causes you say you are against and you think it is worth it to receive a monthly union rag?
You are just excusing yourself for being in the enemy's camp and keeping quiet about it so as to protect your job. You are not alone and I don't condemn you for it, well not entirely. Many teachers are in the same boat.
I know quite a few union members from all walks of life. All are living a contradiction. They defend their union but vote against all the union stands for. I am happy they do oppose the union politics but defending and opposing at the same time has to be hard on the psyche.
Have you exercised your Beck rights? If not, per the US Supreme Court decision Communications Workers v. Beck, you have a right to deprive the NEA of that fraction of your dues that goes to political campaign contributions.
Many years ago, I also once thought that we could fight the NEA and deny them our union dues too. Then I received a call from a local repub official that I knew. She put me in touch with a former Repub teacher who was forced outta teaching by the NEA & her fellow teachers over her refusal to pay union dues. Basically they come after you, set you up, if you become too controversal, better to live your life, vote & support conservative issues. Much better than losing your state teaching certificate and rendering your expensive/valuable teaching degree worthless.
Reality is the ed industry is chock full of left wingers at the top, nobody is going to change that truth. They will blackball you and get you if you become too politically opposed to their view.
Conservative school board members will never support conservative teachers, you’re an easy mark for them. They need to feed the masses too, just like in the old Roman days. Conservatives are half the problem for Conservative Teachers in America, they should support their repub teachers but never do.
Unless you have experienced the politics (as a teacher) you have no way of understanding what I’m speaking about. I actually don’t know all that many people who would jepardize their employment picture over politics in today’s world; contradiction or not; (LETS BE REAL HERE).
In Alaska, I’d say 35% of NEA members are conservatives, Repubs or members of Ak Independence Party.
Bottomline, is conservative teachers need the legal protection the NEA provides and the politics in our ed system is the reason why. Keep your personal beliefs to yourself, vote, donate, stay active away from the school, and survive. Ask any teachers that you know and they will tell you the same truths, no joke. Ya know, the only time I talk politics with fellow teachers is around the fire, when they come up to my moose camp to hunt every fall, ha. Then , we argue.
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