History Repeating Itself Wears Me Out
I can't say I subscribed to Santayana's often-misquoted statement, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," but recent events are leading me to rethink that position.
* This morning's Wall Street Journal contained an editorial entitled "Teachers' Pets (Cont'd)," which was a response to NEA's response to WSJ's January 3 editorial. Today's piece fleshed out more precisely the LM-2 categories -- what money went where and for what reasons -- but failed to acknowledge that the $65 million in "contributions, gifts and grants" is not equal to the amount that NEA gave "in its members' dues to left-liberal groups last year," as the original piece stated. That amount requires more information than is present in the LM-2, and one's precise definition of "left-liberal group."
But this back-and-forth between WSJ and NEA has a long and storied history. The earliest manifestation I can find begins on January 14, 1985, when the WSJ editorial page reported on the nomination of William Bennett as U.S. Secretary of Education. "The National Education Association, the once-powerful teachers' union, has already come out against him," the Journal reported.
On January 23, NEA President Mary Hatwood Futrell corrected the paper, stating that "NEA has taken no position on the nomination of Dr. Bennett." (Even now this should be news to NEA members.) The Journal printed its response the same day: "Oh."
Ultimately, it didn't matter because NEA and Bennett were fated to be mortal enemies, and they were.
* John Stossel's "Stupid in America" caused a major uproar when it aired on January 13, but as I write this I have in front of me a transcript of Stossel's "Public Schools in Bad Shape" from November 12, 1999. It is essentially the same report -- but with a teacher test instead of a student test. Stossel has been heavily criticized for bias, but it's not good news for public schools that he can basically rerun a six-year-old report and no one accuses him of being out-of-date. Agree with his conclusions or hate his guts, the situation is still pretty much the same as it was in November 1999.
* AFT and its largest local, the United Federation of Teachers, dove headfirst into the blogosphere, and is receiving kudos for doing so. Our good friends The Education Wonks, one of the nation's leading education blogs, are unofficially soliciting NEA to create a comments-enabled blog of its own.
But old-timers (?!) like me remember that NEA experimented with such an idea once before, and the outcome wasn't exactly to its liking.
Back in early 1998, NEA was gathering support for the Principles of Unity, the document that would usher in a merger between NEA and AFT. As part of its education process (or sales pitch, for the cynics out there), the union established a Unity message board, where members and non-members alike could share their opinions of the merger.
Nothing remains of that board, though you can still see references to it on Google’s cache. But my memory and the archives of documents I have from that time indicate that most of those who posted were vehemently opposed to the merger and said so in no uncertain terms.
"There has been no discussion of what I fear is a very realistic scenario," wrote one NEA member. "There seems a lot of visceral hatred of the AFL-CIO out there (I'm not one). If merger passes, how many members, or whole affiliates, will disaffiliate and form one or more national organizations? Will we not end up more divided and disunified?"
It would be easy to overstate the effects of the Unity message board, but the sheer volume of anti-merger postings could not have helped NEA in its goal to merge with AFT. Delegates to the 1998 convention ultimately voted it down by a large margin. Perhaps NEA doesn't want a repeat of that experience.
* An Associated Press story has probably reached your local newspaper by now: "NY Union-Run Charter School Draws Scrutiny." It states that the UFT charter school "is believed to be the nation's only charter school operated by a teachers union."
Well, it depends on your definition. The CIVA Charter High School in Colorado, the Integrated Day Charter School in Connecticut, and the Lanikai Elementary Public Charter School in Hawaii still exist, though NEA terminated its connection with them years ago.
The three schools were part of what was to be a six-campus Charter Schools Initiative launched by NEA in 1995. NEA hired a UCLA research team to "document and assess key learnings" from the schools. The union provided money, technical assistance and PR.
"NEA members at the six sites will have empowering opportunities for professional growth, parents will have access to real educational options for their children, Associations will be able to help members expand their participatory and leadership roles, and the school-community tie will be strengthened," reads an NEA brief on the initiative.
But a proposed school in Georgia never got off the ground, its Arizona school never opened due to lack of enrollment, and its California school was an unmitigated disaster. The San Diego school board refused to renew its charter when it expired in 2003.
The UFT charter school -- if UFT heeds Santayana's warning -- is not doomed to repeat NEA's history, and may indeed run a successful charter school. But it is astonishing how quickly NEA's Charter School Initiative, ballyhooed in 1995, was flushed down the memory hole.
* This morning's Wall Street Journal contained an editorial entitled "Teachers' Pets (Cont'd)," which was a response to NEA's response to WSJ's January 3 editorial. Today's piece fleshed out more precisely the LM-2 categories -- what money went where and for what reasons -- but failed to acknowledge that the $65 million in "contributions, gifts and grants" is not equal to the amount that NEA gave "in its members' dues to left-liberal groups last year," as the original piece stated. That amount requires more information than is present in the LM-2, and one's precise definition of "left-liberal group."
But this back-and-forth between WSJ and NEA has a long and storied history. The earliest manifestation I can find begins on January 14, 1985, when the WSJ editorial page reported on the nomination of William Bennett as U.S. Secretary of Education. "The National Education Association, the once-powerful teachers' union, has already come out against him," the Journal reported.
On January 23, NEA President Mary Hatwood Futrell corrected the paper, stating that "NEA has taken no position on the nomination of Dr. Bennett." (Even now this should be news to NEA members.) The Journal printed its response the same day: "Oh."
Ultimately, it didn't matter because NEA and Bennett were fated to be mortal enemies, and they were.
* John Stossel's "Stupid in America" caused a major uproar when it aired on January 13, but as I write this I have in front of me a transcript of Stossel's "Public Schools in Bad Shape" from November 12, 1999. It is essentially the same report -- but with a teacher test instead of a student test. Stossel has been heavily criticized for bias, but it's not good news for public schools that he can basically rerun a six-year-old report and no one accuses him of being out-of-date. Agree with his conclusions or hate his guts, the situation is still pretty much the same as it was in November 1999.
* AFT and its largest local, the United Federation of Teachers, dove headfirst into the blogosphere, and is receiving kudos for doing so. Our good friends The Education Wonks, one of the nation's leading education blogs, are unofficially soliciting NEA to create a comments-enabled blog of its own.
But old-timers (?!) like me remember that NEA experimented with such an idea once before, and the outcome wasn't exactly to its liking.
Back in early 1998, NEA was gathering support for the Principles of Unity, the document that would usher in a merger between NEA and AFT. As part of its education process (or sales pitch, for the cynics out there), the union established a Unity message board, where members and non-members alike could share their opinions of the merger.
Nothing remains of that board, though you can still see references to it on Google’s cache. But my memory and the archives of documents I have from that time indicate that most of those who posted were vehemently opposed to the merger and said so in no uncertain terms.
"There has been no discussion of what I fear is a very realistic scenario," wrote one NEA member. "There seems a lot of visceral hatred of the AFL-CIO out there (I'm not one). If merger passes, how many members, or whole affiliates, will disaffiliate and form one or more national organizations? Will we not end up more divided and disunified?"
It would be easy to overstate the effects of the Unity message board, but the sheer volume of anti-merger postings could not have helped NEA in its goal to merge with AFT. Delegates to the 1998 convention ultimately voted it down by a large margin. Perhaps NEA doesn't want a repeat of that experience.
* An Associated Press story has probably reached your local newspaper by now: "NY Union-Run Charter School Draws Scrutiny." It states that the UFT charter school "is believed to be the nation's only charter school operated by a teachers union."
Well, it depends on your definition. The CIVA Charter High School in Colorado, the Integrated Day Charter School in Connecticut, and the Lanikai Elementary Public Charter School in Hawaii still exist, though NEA terminated its connection with them years ago.
The three schools were part of what was to be a six-campus Charter Schools Initiative launched by NEA in 1995. NEA hired a UCLA research team to "document and assess key learnings" from the schools. The union provided money, technical assistance and PR.
"NEA members at the six sites will have empowering opportunities for professional growth, parents will have access to real educational options for their children, Associations will be able to help members expand their participatory and leadership roles, and the school-community tie will be strengthened," reads an NEA brief on the initiative.
But a proposed school in Georgia never got off the ground, its Arizona school never opened due to lack of enrollment, and its California school was an unmitigated disaster. The San Diego school board refused to renew its charter when it expired in 2003.
The UFT charter school -- if UFT heeds Santayana's warning -- is not doomed to repeat NEA's history, and may indeed run a successful charter school. But it is astonishing how quickly NEA's Charter School Initiative, ballyhooed in 1995, was flushed down the memory hole.
Informative (and enlightening) post. How much would you like to bet that John Stossel will do a similar program in 7 years?
We've sent copies of our posts URLs as well as letters to NEA suggesting a comments-enabled weblog.
So far, the NEA hasn't even bothered to acknowledge the receipt of the correspondence.
Which just goes to show one what paying full NEA dues for over 14 years gets one.
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EdWonk |
January 28, 2006 11:56 PM
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