NEA Spends $9.2 million to Kill NCLB

This from the Asia Times:

Washington lobbyists spend a record

WASHINGTON - The old jab about the United States having the best democracy money can buy still has merit, according to a report out this month.

For every day Congress was in session last year, lobbyists spent an average of US$17 million currying favor with legislators and federal officials, the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) said in its report.

Corporations, labor unions, governments and other interests spent a record-setting $2.79 billion last year in hopes of influencing policy, the group said.

This marked a 7.7%, or $200 million, increase over 2006, also a bumper year for the influence industry. "At a time when our economy is contracting, Washington's lobbying industry has been expanding," said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the 25-year-old watchdog group. "

Lobbying seems to be a recession-proof industry.

In some respects, interests seek even more from our government when the economy slows." Their efforts get results. The National Education Association (NEA), the largest US teachers' union, succeeded in blocking reauthorization of President George W Bush's 2001 "No Child Left Behind" law governing the running and judging of schools nationwide...

...The NEA spent $9.2 million, a 464% increase. CRP said it presumed the teachers' union concentrated its lobbying efforts on "No Child Left Behind".

Hat tip to Alexander Russo.

Unions: Harmony or Strife?

This from Del Stover at American School (the American School Board Journal):

When striking teachers display a giant inflatable rat outside a school—and name their new mascot after the superintendent—it’s clear that relations between school leaders and the teachers union are not good. Another clue: Teachers are spitting on cars crossing the picket line.

Name calling, rumor mongering, nails spread across the driveway of a teacher who chose not to strike, intransigence at the bargaining table—school officials saw it all during last year’s bitter, four-week strike in Richmond Heights, Ohio. “It got particularly nasty,” recalls Superintendent Walter Calinger. “The methodology was to attack unmercifully. Don’t worry about the truth of the matter. Attack. Attack. Attack.”

Thankfully, most school boards never confront such brass-knuckled tactics when dealing with their union. Last school year, there were only a score of teacher strikes, hardly a noteworthy figure given the nation’s nearly 15,000 school systems. If anything, the numbers suggest the National Education Association (NEA) and American Federation of Teachers (AFT) have decided to forsake militancy in favor of singing “Kumbaya” with school boards.

Not ready to buy that? Then let’s try another explanation: Decades of contract talks have resolved the most divisive labor-management issues, and no-strike laws in many states are keeping teachers at the bargaining table. A new generation of teachers is less interested in bread-and-butter issues and more focused on educational and professional matters. And the standards movement, coupled with inadequate school funding and a growing at-risk student population, has given teachers and school boards even more incentive to make common cause.

Today, the relationship between the school board and the union generally can be described as mature and well-established. But it’s seldom comfortable—or predictable. Thus we see the union in Denver collaborating with the school board in a partnership on performance pay that would have been inconceivable a few years ago.

Meanwhile, in Quincy, Mass., we watched the teachers’ union go on strike in defiance of state law—the first teacher walkout in a decade in that state.

At the national level, the unions have a clear agenda. Union political strategists are planning to put millions of dollars into the upcoming national elections, and lobbyists are working the halls of Congress in hopes of a major rewrite of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). And there has been an aggressive effort to bolster the unions’ membership rolls by targeting teachers in right-to-work states, higher education faculty, school nurses, and paraprofessionals. In the last few years, the NEA’s membership has grown by 400,000; the AFT is up 200,000.

There’s a lot going on—and good reason to pay attention, say education policy experts. “They are the most powerful organized force in the politics of education, period,” says Terry Moe, a professor of political science at Stanford University.

“They have a huge impact on education policy, on the way the schools are organized, and on what school boards can and cannot do.” ...

AFT, NEA show signs of agreement on Reauthorization of NCLB

After five years of following separate paths, the two national teachers’ unions are now taking a unified position on accountability under the No Child Left Behind Act.

The National Education Association has been a staunch critic of the 5-year-old law, maintaining that it is an unfunded mandate with unattainable student-achievement goals. The American Federation of Teachers has argued that the law’s goals of raising achievement were sound, but that its policies needed revising.

Last week, when the AFT announced it had endorsed the proposals of the Forum on Educational Accountability, it joined the NEA in a coalition that is lobbying to radically overhaul the NCLB law’s accountability measures.

From Education Week.